Public Opinion - Assignment Example

Public Opinion Public opinion is very important to the success of public relations and success of a PR campaign as one of the frequently set objective of PR campaign is to influence the public. Public opinion is a view of majority, which helps to influence and persuade other relevant groups of population (Tench and Yeomans, 2006). The role of public opinion has grown with the increase of human literacy and awareness as society and public in general nowadays have a strong power of influence on organisations, companies, politicians, and others.

While in general publicity is good, some campaign result in bad publicity. One of the often cited examples of bad publicity is the survey carried out by the tobacco company arguing that the “final cost of smoking outweighed the benefits in Czech Republic” (PHA Media, n.d., n.p.). The campaign has caused a huge PR backlash and led to bad publicity of a company.Many PR campaigns end with bad publicity because of various factors, not because they initially were planned to fail. However, many people and/or companies intentionally who create bad publicity in order to gain publicity in general.

Celebrities are good examples of it, as they participate in scandals and other negative events in order to remind about themselves to a public and make people to talk about them. This behaviour cannot be viewed as ethical, especially if it has negative impact on other people.It is important to measure the results of PR efforts as this helps to evaluate the success of a campaign. However, in order to be able to interpret the results it is important to carry out evaluation not only after a campaign but also before it starts (Gunn, n.d.).

This information will help to understand what impact the PR campaign has. Some of the ways of measuring these results include the following: surveys, interviews, sales figures, enquiries, changes in behaviour of target audience, website hits, etc. (Gunn, n.d.). References:Gunn, S. (n.d.). Evaluating PR Campaigns, Unit 6: Understanding Public Relations Campaign. Available at: http://www.contentextra.com/publicrelations/files/topicguides/PR_TopicGuide_6_3.pdfPHA Media (n.d.). Top ten worst PR fails, bad PR examples and reputation disaster ever.

Retrieved 13 April 2015, from: http://pha-media.com/insights/crisis-reputation-management/top-ten-worst-reputation-management-disasters/Tench, R., & Yeomans, L. (2006). Exploring public relations. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall.