PR AGENCIES? What do they do?
Out of context: Reply #10
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- monNom0
As I understand it, most PR is thinking about ways that they'd like people to talk about things, then the PR agency puts together source material and draft articles that news outlets can easily pick up and use for filler. Essentially they're making that way of thinking the path of least resistance. None of it is paid placement, they rely on newsrooms being over-worked and starved for content to get placement. They have to pitch story ideas so their content needs to be decent to have any chance of getting picked up.
So say you've got some real-estate client who's building a 'green development' of overpriced townhouses. A PR company might come up with a bunch of articles about the utopian ideal community that this housing development is the embodiment of, and then try to get that picked up by the local or national papers. They might also coordinate some kind of greeny grass-roots community event like a recycling drive to give the impression like the community/ideal is already occurring in that area organically.
Then there's the "crisis managment" side which is all about lies, spin, and perceptions being reality. That side is full of sociopaths.