Traditionally, public relations (PR) professionals try to influence audiences, often by attempting to gain positive coverage in the news media. Social media like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Tumblr have shortened the path of communication; now PR pros can communicate directly with their audience—as can many of their famous clients.

But entertainers who live by social media may also see their mistakes and foibles go viral on social media. For example, actress Amanda Bynes was subject to speculation and ridicule when she took to Twitter, responding to reports of personal troubles—and providing more fuel for gossip sites and even casual observers.

Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, best known by just her first name, is an even larger figure in the entertainment industry. She was the best-selling female artist of the first decade of the 2000s, and in 2013 was among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, listing her occupation as simply “Diva.”¹ Since her marriage to Jay-Z, a rapper and one of music’s wealthiest producers and entrepreneurs, the couple has almost royalty status in American culture.

Beyoncé’s successful career is a testament to her great talent and a public relations strategy to assiduously control everything about her iconic image. Emblematic of this is the “temperature-controlled digital-storage facility that contains virtually every existing photograph of her” at her midtown Manhattan office suite. Since 2005, she has also employed a “visual director” who has recorded thousands of hours of footage of her private life. All of the digital media are being archived in her own special catalog from which she can immediately retrieve any public or private record of herself.²

But events for Beyoncé over the past few years demonstrate the difficulty of being able to completely control one’s image in a world in which social media puts publicity power in so many other hands. For example, when Beyoncé gave birth to her daughter in early 2012, she and her husband had arranged a special suite at a hospital in New York, with limited access and a large security team prowling their floor. They ensured their own privacy, but social media reported stories about noncelebrity families who couldn’t gain access to the neonatal unit to see their own children.³

The next year, social media were abuzz with rumors that Beyoncé lip-synced her performance at President Obama’s second inauguration. In response to the charges, she admitted she did lip-sync, but simply to control the quality of the performance (she said she was a “perfectionist”). In a masterful public relations move, she delivered a powerful a cappella version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a Super Bowl press conference a week later, which put any criticism of her singing abilities to rest.⁴

A few weeks later, Beyoncé’s 2013 Super Bowl halftime show was a hit, but then Web sites like BuzzFeed and Gawker posted unflattering action photos of her performance. Beyoncé’s publicist asked BuzzFeed to remove seven photos from their site, and BuzzFeed responded by publishing the e-mail request and republishing the photos under the title “The ‘Unflattering’ Photos Beyoncé’s Publicist Doesn’t Want You To See.”⁵

For her 2013 Mrs. Carter tour, Beyoncé instituted tighter rules, prohibiting professional photographers from covering her concerts, and instead only issuing images taken by her official photographer. The Guardian newspaper suggested it was in response to the unflattering Super Bowl photos. One blogger responded that it would ironically force the media to use amateur photos from concert fans, which would be of even worse quality.⁶

THE BEYONCÉ STORY ILLUSTRATES A MAJOR DIFFERENCE between advertising and public relations: Advertising is controlled publicity that a company or an individual buys; public relations attempts to secure favorable media publicity (which is more difficult to control) to promote a company or client.

Public relations covers a wide array of practices, such as shaping the public image of a politician or celebrity, establishing or repairing communication between consumers and companies, and promoting government agencies and actions, especially during wartime. Broadly defined, public relations refers to the total communication strategy conducted by a person, a government, or an organization attempting to reach and persuade an audience to adopt a point of view.⁷ While public relations may sound very similar to advertising, which also seeks to persuade audiences, it is a different skill in a variety of ways. Advertising uses simple and fixed messages (e.g., “our appliance is the most efficient and affordable”) that are transmitted directly to the public through the purchase of ads. Public relations involves more complex messages that may evolve over time (e.g., a political campaign or a long-term strategy to dispel unfavorable reports about “fatty processed foods”) and may be transmitted to the public indirectly, often through the news media.

The social and cultural impact of public relations has been immense. In its infancy, PR helped convince many American businesses of the value of nurturing the public, who became purchasers rather than producers of their own goods after the Industrial Revolution. PR set the tone for the corporate image-building that characterized the economic environment of the twentieth century and for the battles of organizations taking sides in today’s environmental, energy, and labor issues. Perhaps PR’s most significant effect, however, has been on the political process, where individuals and organizations—on both the Right and the Left—hire spin doctors to shape their media images.

In this chapter, we will:

As you read through this chapter, think about what knowledge you might already have about what public relations practitioners do, given that PR is an immensely powerful media industry and yet remains largely invisible. Can you think of a company or an organization, either national (like BP) or local (like your university or college), that might have engaged the help of a public relations team to handle a crisis? What did they do to make the public trust the organization more? When you see political campaign coverage, are you sometimes aware of the “spin doctors” who are responsible for making sure their candidate says or does the “right thing” at the “right time” so they can foster the most favorable public image that will gain the candidate the most votes? For more questions to help you understand the role of public relations in our lives, see “Questioning the Media” in the Chapter Review.