Overview of Public Relations

Public relations (PR) are the techniques of using communication channel for effectively managing the public perception of an organization or an individual. Public relations for an organization are the way in which they communicate to the media and public (Watson 2014). They communicate with the target audience indirectly or directly through the media with the major aim to maintain and create positive image to build a strong relationship with the audiences. This includes newsletter, public appearances, and press releases. This also includes the utilization of social media and World Wide Web (Rahi 2016).  The business world is characterized nowadays by the existing fierce competition to win the new customers and retain the current ones so that the firm can differentiate itself from the increasing competition.  

The firms and PR specialists uses various techniques to increase their clients public image and providing meaningful relationship with the potential customers. The organization uses various tools like news releases, newsletter, and statement for media, convection wards and public events conferences. They utilize the internet tools through blogs and social media networks. Good public relation would result in creating article that features the clients. Public relation uses intermediaries for communicating the audience and further influencing them. The intermediaries may include stock analysts, customers, investors and employees (Williams 2016). The public relations are the strategic communication process practiced in an organization to build strong and mutually beneficial relationships among the company and the potential target individuals or the public’s.

Few people think PR as the ‘free advertising ‘method to build relationships with the target audiences. Public Relations are important for various reasons in the recent times due to the following:

Raising awareness- the people and society at large nowadays trust the established brands. The people want their business to be known to compete with the established brands through websites, popular magazines, social media celebrity or respected influencer (Westerlund, Magnusson Hanson and Peristera 2017).

Building credibility- promotion of company’s brand image through magazines can increase the organizational image as the product or service reviews comes as a recommendation for the community.

Helps in managing reputation- The trusted connections of the media helps in building brand reputation and increasing company’s sales (Song et al. 2015). Media connections helps in repairing any damage caused to the company through press release or advertizing.

Promoting brand values- PR helps in promoting the company’s brand values by sending positive message to the potential target audience.

Why Public Relations is Important

Strengthens community relations- through building a strong relation with the community by making new connections the organization can establish their credibility with their consumers, peers and other editorial contracts (Stacks 2016).

Malaysia is a reputed country that diversifies in religions, races and cultures. The public relations in Malaysia are crucial yet a bigger challenge as the brand image or good reputation for an organization is vital to gain the country support. Genting Malaysia, a well reputed organization of Malaysia public relations activities has been discussed. Furthermore the challenges and strategic public relation campaigns is also important for the evaluation of public relations practices in Genting Malaysia (Denhardt and Catlaw 2014).

Genting Malaysia is the leading hospitality and leisure corporations present in the world that has RM 20 billion approximately in its market capitalization (Gentingmalaysia.com 2018). They operate and own the world’s major properties that include Genting Casinos UK, Resorts World Genting and the upcoming in New York City, which is named as the Resorts World Casinos. Genting Malaysia was voted consecutively for six years as the best and leading Casino Resorts in Asia. Moreover, as the leading Resort in the world by the famous World Travels Awards. Resort World Sdn bhd, which started its business operations as a private limited company in 1980 converted into public company in the following year and subsequently changed its name to Genting Malaysia Berhard or Genting Malaysia.  In the year 1989, both the organization that is Genting Malaysia and Genting Berhard underwent organizational restructuring to maximize the business growth (Zerfass and Schramm 2014). Genting Malaysia acquired the overall hotel, gaming, resorts operational activities, goodwill and various relevant assets from the Genting Malaysia.

Resort World Genting (‘RWG”) is a major entertainment and leisure resort in Malaysia. Malaysia has been mainly involved in the hospitality and leisure business that covers themes likes gaming, parks, seaside resorts, hotel and entertainment since 50 years. This is a premier resort of Malaysia that is equipped with more than 10,300 rooms that is spread across many hotels with entertainment attractions, themes parks, retail and dining outlets, business convention and international shows facilities. The recent opening of the current Genting Highlands Premium Outlet also helps in the existing and new offerings at RWG. Moreover, the retail outlets and indoor theme park is completely makeover. The facilities and attractions consists the world’s first innovative 20^th century Fox World theme park that is expected to be opened from the next years (Valentini, 2015). The two beautiful seaside properties owned by Genting Malaysia that includes Resort World Kijjal, situated in Terengganu and the other in Langkawi is Resorts World Langkawi. The shares of Genting Malaysia have been traded in the Bursa Malaysia’s main market after its listing in 1989.

Public Relations in Malaysia

The aim of Genting Malaysia is to create sustainable profits and growth so that the stakeholder’s value can be enhanced consistently. Moreover, the company’s mission is to be committed in serving the customers with remarkable and delightful experiences to its customers.

Genting Malaysia’s vision is to be the top or leading integrated head of the resort operator present in the world.

Being the global leader in the hospitality sector throughout the world, the company aims in providing top class entertainment and services in the sustainable and safe environment (Men and Tsai 2014). Genting Malaysia’s main goal is to provide high governance standards across the overall business operations to manage the environmental impacts, promotes responsible business practices and fulfils the social needs required by the nation and community.

Employees are an integral part of Genting Malaysia is the organization is highly committed to the development of human resource. The workforce of the overall organization is more than 20,000 employees comprising of individuals from all over the world like India, China and mostly from Malaysia (Wu, Chen and Cui 2016). The female to male employee ratio is 40:60; besides creating a safe and enjoyable holiday experiences to its target customers the organization also believes in creating and generating a workplace, where employees develop and thrives. The board of Directors of Genting Malaysia has the overall responsibility to manage the affairs of the corporations by setting up appropriate standards for better corporate governance.

The roles and Responsibilities of the Board:

Genting Malaysia’s major roles and responsibilities for managing and controlling the business affairs are as follows:

• Adopting and reviewing the Genting Groups strategic plan.
• Evaluating and overseeing the businesses conduct.
• Identifying the major risks and then appropriate systems should be managed to implement these risks.
• Formulation of corporate strategies and policies for Genting Malaysia.
• Integrity and adequacy of the management system should be informed from time to time.
• Performance of the Audit Committee and their terms of office determination is also the duty of the directors.
• Approving the various financial matters related to the investments, divestments, capital expenditure, acquisition and disposal for the Genting Malaysia.
• The Code of Ethics is also established by the boards for Genting Malaysia.

The PR practitioners or specialists of Genting Malaysia use various techniques and tools to raise their organizational image in public. The PR practitioners of the firm helps in maintaining better reputation among the customers and media (Yeo, A.C., Chong, C.Y. and Carter, S., 2017). They communicate on the behalf of the company and present the services, products and overall operations in an efficient manner. The PR practitioners use various techniques to generate relationship with the customers to increase the sale. The PR practitioner’s main function is to build the bridges of goodwill, understanding and awareness between the public and the organization. They PR practitioners can work in various areas like consulting, media liaison, community involvement, and industrial affairs and employees communication. The major roles that a PR plays within the organization are as follows:

• Strategic planner- the PR practitioners of an organizations are the strategic planners that enables the organization to changes its operational activities from reactive to proactive mode (Speklé and Verbeeten 2014). Genting Malaysia’s public relations practitioners align the business activities with specific goals to evaluate the success rate of the organization.
• Communicator- in the recent times PR practitioners, masters all the emerging technology such as print, broadcasting and films. The PR practitioners of Genting Malaysia are provided with additional trainings like graphic psychology, advertizing, diffusion process and information mapping (Park and Ghauri 2015).
• Researcher-efficient management of the public relation begins with a sound research and evaluation of the business environment. The PR practitioner of Genting Malaysia should research the market condition for gaining competitive advantage and building relationship with its customers (Noordegraaf, M., 2015). This can be done trough data analysis and informal research techniques.

Despite the high rise of internet usage, the public relation industry in Malaysia has not yet complete potential in the business environment. As the technology is increasing at such a rapid pace it is becoming a challenge for the PR practitioners to communicate. The people of Malaysia are mostly used to TV scripts and newspaper and it is becoming quite difficult for them to be tech savvy (Smink, Hekkert and Negro 2015). Public Relation is still an emerging phenomenon in the developing countries of the nation. The dynamism present in the world has posed major challenge for public relation since their main job is communication oriented.

• Financial constraints: Recently, organizations are just lowering their budgets and hence leading to low budget or financing of the departments under public relation (Hofman and Newman 2014). Organizations are generally reluctant to expend at least little revenue for improving the company’s media profile.
• Increase in communication platform: Choosing the right communication channel is a major challenge nowadays faced by the organization. It is an easier way to be used for disseminating the message to the potential target audience (Lee et al. 2015). However, it is a lot of time consuming to reach out for the right audience and getting the desired results.
• Poor use of Social Media:In the digital age, social media is used as the basis of public relations. The PR practisioners lacking the capabilities for using the social media’s like Linked-in, Twitter, Face book may fade out from their profession soon. Though many social network users abuses them while the others become diplomatic in commenting for the ways the message is communicated.
• Inefficient Man-Power Situation: Public relation is a crucial element for the business so the PR practitioners should have full-fledged knowledge and information about the public relation. Some of the practitioners are advertisers, practicing journalists, graphic artists and marketers (Macnamara 2016). Sometimes the practitioners organize campaigns, which are usually substandard and present with professional misconduct.

Case Study: Genting Malaysia

Unlike advertizing, PR has its own credibility as it’s creates ideas for the customers that is mostly created by the third parties. Genting Malaysia should think big that is beyond their imagination to live a remarkable impression in the long run (Jackson and Moloney 2016). They strategic PR campaigns are mainly meant to emphasize their best assets for retaining and attracting the guests. The audiences are generally targeted and awareness is raised for the property among the business experts for developing more credibility for their property.

• Genting Malaysia generally search for the sites of other resorts and hotels far and near and reviews their business ideas and make them applicable to their hotel businesses as well (Valentini 2015).
• Genting Malaysia share stories about their upcoming events in the local places to visit, communities, and annual festivals through the social media.
• Genting Malaysia lays more emphasis on their special services like family style eating’s, spa, tennis lessons, swimming areas, driving range for golf for the guests especially the business travelers.
• Word for mouth is one of the best techniques of business promotion that is used by the PR professionals of Genting Malaysia to promote their hotel businesses. The target customers are asked to give reviews and share their views on the part that they liked the best (Kim et al. 2014). Later on, it is posted on the social Medias to draw the attention of the customers.
• Genting Malaysia also provides facilities like free drop-off as well as pick-up services to their amusement parks or other related activities.
• Extreme customer services are provided by Genting Malaysia to provide breakfast buffet for their high class guests giving them the best luxurious services (Graham, Avery and Park 2015).

Recently, Genting Malaysia has concluded its media accounts and regional creative pitch in their covering business markets like, Indonesia, India, Singapore and China besides the mid-eastern countries (Moreno et al. 2015). Meanwhile the hotel creative account has been awarded to Crispin Porter and Bogusky that is taking over from the Grey and M&c Saatchi. Moreover, Genting Malaysia has added various regional new PR agencies, which is accounted by the Allison and Partners. They are the strategic PR firm that specializes in digital PR marketing, media relations, management and communication services (Duhé 2015)

• G3 Volunteer Program Launch: Resorts World Genting (RWG) under Genting Malaysia has recently launched its new initiative Genting Green Generation (G3) as their new volunteering programs for their employees at Getting Highlands (com 2018).
• Warriors Fund 2017: Genting Malaysia has also contributed millions of bucks for the warrior funds to increase.

Digital media or online media is playing a vital role in Malaysia as the power of internet has the major potential to reach out to everyone in the world having an online access. Genting Malaysia uses online media for the business growth at an international level (Huang and Yang 2015). The penetration or increase in the social media and internet has provided Malaysia to be abreast with the other developed countries. Genting Malaysia generally portrays it image more through online media rather than using traditional media. Before the digitalization era, the professionals related to public relations mostly engaged with the public only after making any major drastic changes in the organization (Steyn and Niemann 2014). Such as announcing any new offerings, minimum reputation damages or any changes in the industrial patterns.  Through online media the organizations now proactively participate in managing the reputation of their organization. Through counsel leadership and identifying major problems in maintaining the organizational relationship with the public (Ciszek 2015).

Genting Malaysia uses social media for eliminating the existing wall present between its brand and potential public. This also helps in shortening the time for the organization to react the relevant stories and thus removing the fine line present between public relations and marketing. Maintaining and crafting positive public appearance needs a proper balance for creating awareness among the public (Davidson 2015). In the rapidly connected world, online media is used as prior line of defense by the modern PR professionals.

Influencing consumer behavior: In the hospitality industry, it is a golden opportunities for the owners to attract the potential customers through photos and videos of the hotel services and facilities. Genting Malaysia uses these techniques by uploading the photos and videos of their hotels, destinations and resorts on the social networking sites or their own personal websites (Jin, Liu and Austin 2014). The internet is generally a virtual area used by the customers to search for vital information for making decisions regarding choosing the best hotel.

Building Brand Image and Creating Awareness: Genting Malaysia has increased its popularity by participating in the various social networking sites and increasing its popularity by building brand images and promoting their hotels. Genting Malaysia positively replies to their customers reviews with morality and maintain their business.

Time and Cost effective: Online media are crucial to raise brand awareness and help them in gaining popularity. Genting Malaysia takes active participation by stay online through the social networking sites and not missing out any posts (Coomb and Holladay 2015). They are investing more time by staying online and investing their money and time on the different sites, which are inexpensive in nature and moreover is used as an effective and efficient marketing tool.

Promotions: The online media are used as a vital source for the promotion of the business products and services. The social media works as an efficient tool for the promotion of their products and promotion of their latest facilities in less time (Meng 2014). Special offers are also provided to face book users for liking the face book fan page of Genting Malaysia.

Targeting the customers: Genting Malaysia by using the online media for communication attracts the potential customers and target the potential niche in the market. The organization gains more knowledge by gaining more knowledge about the consumer behaviors and needs. Genting Malaysia further improves their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) by using the social networking sites.

Genting Malaysia promotes its brand mainly through its Public Relation activities. PR is just like advertizing, but it also helps in increasing their sales also, which includes the vital element of marketing (Westerlund, Magnusson Hanson and Peristera 2017). PR activities and advertizing goes side by side but they both are totally a different concept with and totally different goals. Advertisement is mainly focused on promoting the products and services with a major aim to motivate the potential audience to purchase their product or services while public relation is a specialized technique of communication done through the help of media and public. Public Relation is more beneficial or effective than the advertizing as it is mostly focused on creating positive publicity about Genting Malaysia. PR helps in maintain positive publicity about the Genting Malaysia and creating better reputation among the public of Malaysia.

The effect of PR on public is very different than the usual advertisement done through newspaper articles and TV report. While going through advertisement the public knows that the organization wants them to be persuaded to buy their particular products or services (Gentingmalaysia.com 2018). It will be quiet difficult for them to believe or not believe the information that are communicated to the public. When the news comes for the benefits of services and products come from the third party, like through an online article and newspaper, the public perceive it to be more informative that seeks their attention. The press release in public often encourages them to build a positive image for the products and services.

Moreover, the PR activities used by Genting Malaysia are cost effective as the PR campaign is less expensive as compared to the advertizing. The PR tools and press releases attract publicity and put greater impact on the potential audiences. There is no need for attracting the customers for the same services repeatedly. Therefore, PR more often precedes and accompanies the marketing campaign as an integral part for the advertisement strategy.

The planning methodology using the 10-point plan was developed by Ketchum, which can be applied in any size of the corporate organization and business market (Wu, Chen and Cui 2016). The strategic campaign for public relation can be developed in the following ways:

• Objectives: The main objectives required for the public relation campaign should be developed to attain maximum benefits. This should be set up by the management team or the board of Genting Malaysia.
• Goals and Measurements: Measurement is generally an end process in the public relation programs. Performance measurement plays a crucial role in public relations. It can be defined as an outset that is included throughout the campaign.
• Publics or audiences: the key element for good practicing is defining the public or the audience that is based on behavior, demographic and locations.
• Research: to develop the strategic public relation campaigns more focus should be given on the public and the media that they use to have an efficient outcome.
• Insights: the ability of identifying publics and using the data to understand the motivation and behavior is the major reason where science and art meet in public relation (Yeo, Chong and Carter 2017).
• Strategy: the strategy statement of Genting Malaysia should summarize the plans to achieve the goals through a simple action focused statement.
• Creativity: the content required in the strategic plan developed by the organization should engage the public in conversations through various channels.
• Channels:  modern public relation campaigns should be used across all other media. Owned media generally leads with social used as a means for engagement and amplification.
• Work plan: the modern equivalent public relation uses new grids to set out the campaign against time and media channels.
• Resources: the resources and investment required for the PR campaigns should include all the relevant planning, measurement and data science that is creative and required for the programs.

Public Relations are a management and leadership function that helps in achieving the organizational objectives and facilitates the required change in the management. The PR professional of an organization communicates with all the relevant external and internal publics for developing consistency and creating positive relationship between the societal expectations and organizational goals (Graham, Avery and Park 2015). The several PR practices used by other organization are public relations (PR) activities and tools that helps in promoting positive behavior and attitude towards their business are as follows:

Media relations: in the current scenario, the organization is using various media strategies to manage the businesses. As the media helps in developing a positive image about the business by managing crisis or issues affecting the business. Therefore developing a good media relation would help the companies to promote the business.

Business events: nowadays businesses are the opportunities used by the businesses for promoting the new products and services (Jin, Liu and Austin 2014). Trade shows often provide opportunities for the organization to compete in the market industry and sharing information about their business to the people in the similar fields. This event helps in building customer confidence by clearing their doubts.

Community relations: creating good relationship with the community’s member, where the business is carried helps in building customer loyalty. Recently building public relations is vital for the organization to survive in the competitive business environment.

Engaging stakeholders: the organizations are recently engaging the local stakeholders as well as the decision makers for building their profile (Meng 2014). This helps in attracting more of potential customers through word of mouth and furthermore ensuring the business interest that are factored for the decision making of the community.

Employee relation: Many large organizations are nowadays conducting g employee relations by building the team relationships and business culture by sharing information, instilling sense of pride for the business achievement and promoting involvement (Steyn and Niemann 2014). This further helps the organization in improving staff retention, teamwork and productivity by making sure that the staff is consistently representing the business with right message.

In the current scenario, maintain good public environment is common to every organization and individuals in the present business environment. PR activities used by the various organizations thus helps in managing the increasing competition through diverse organizational publics (Davidson 2015). PR practices helps in evaluating the public behaviors and attitudes by harmonizing the policies, procedures and goals of the organization and individual with the common public interests. Therefore while launching a PR campaign the hoteliers should be realistic in their approach for their expectations and the outcome. Good public relationship can only be achieved by the organizations through proper choice of communication, efficient strategies and relationship-building approaches. The hotel chains and brands of Genting Malaysia can achieve more business growth through efficient usage of the PR practices as it is an effective tool for generating visibility and awareness about their hotels and resorts.

References:

Ciszek, E.L., 2015. Bridging the gap: Mapping the relationship between activism and public relations. Public Relations Review, 41(4), pp.447-455.

Coombs, W.T. and Holladay, S.J., 2015. Public relations’“relationship identity” in research: Enlightenment or illusion. Public Relations Review, 41(5), pp.689-695.

Davidson, S., 2015. Everywhere and nowhere: Theorising and researching public affairs and lobbying within public relations scholarship. Public Relations Review, 41(5), pp.615-627.

Denhardt, R.B. and Catlaw, T.J., 2014. Theories of public organization. Cengage learning.

Duhé, S., 2015. An overview of new media research in public relations journals from 1981 to 2014. Public Relations Review, 41(2), pp.153-169.

Gentingmalaysia.com 2018. Genting Group – Malaysia Leading Corporation. [online] Gentingmalaysia.com. Available at: https://www.gentingmalaysia.com/ [Accessed 14 Jan. 2018].

Graham, M.W., Avery, E.J. and Park, S., 2015. The role of social media in local government crisis communications. Public Relations Review, 41(3), pp.386-394.

Hofman, P.S. and Newman, A., 2014. The impact of perceived corporate social responsibility on organizational commitment and the moderating role of collectivism and masculinity: Evidence from China. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25(5), pp.631-652.

Huang, J. and Yang, A., 2015. Implementing dialogic communication: A survey of IPR, PRSA, and IABC members. Public Relations Review, 41(3), pp.376-377.

Jackson, D. and Moloney, K., 2016. Inside Churnalism: PR, journalism and power relationships in flux. Journalism Studies, 17(6), pp.763-780.

Jin, Y., Liu, B.F. and Austin, L.L., 2014. Examining the role of social media in effective crisis management: The effects of crisis origin, information form, and source on publics’ crisis responses. Communication research, 41(1), pp.74-94.

Kim, S.Y., Choi, M.I., Reber, B.H. and Kim, D., 2014. Tracking public relations scholarship trends: Using semantic network analysis on PR Journals from 1975 to 2011. Public Relations Review, 40(1), pp.116-118.

Lee, N., Sha, B.L., Dozier, D. and Sargent, P., 2015. The role of new public relations practitioners as social media experts. Public Relations Review, 41(3), pp.411-413.

Macnamara, J., 2016. The continuing convergence of journalism and PR: New insights for ethical practice from a three-country study of senior practitioners. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 93(1), pp.118-141.]

Men, L.R. and Tsai, W.H.S., 2014. Perceptual, attitudinal, and behavioral outcomes of organization–public engagement on corporate social networking sites. Journal of Public Relations Research, 26(5), pp.417-435.

Meng, J., 2014. Unpacking the relationship between organizational culture and excellent leadership in public relations: An empirical investigation. Journal of Communication Management, 18(4), pp.363-385.

Moreno, A., Navarro, C., Tench, R. and Zerfass, A., 2015. Does social media usage matter? An analysis of online practices and digital media perceptions of communication practitioners in Europe. Public Relations Review, 41(2), pp.242-253.

Noordegraaf, M., 2015. Hybrid professionalism and beyond:(New) Forms of public professionalism in changing organizational and societal contexts. Journal of professions and organization, 2(2), pp.187-206.

Park, B.I. and Ghauri, P.N., 2015. Determinants influencing CSR practices in small and medium sized MNE subsidiaries: A stakeholder perspective. Journal of World Business, 50(1), pp.192-204.

Rahi, S., 2016. Impact of Customer Perceived Value and Customers Perception of Public Relation on Customer Loyalty with Moderating Role of Brand Image. The Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, 21(2).

Smink, M.M., Hekkert, M.P. and Negro, S.O., 2015. Keeping sustainable innovation on a leash? Exploring incumbents’ institutional strategies. Business Strategy and the Environment, 24(2), pp.86-101.

Song, M., Kim, W.C., Lee, D., Heo, G.E. and Kang, K.Y., 2015. PKDE4J: Entity and relation extraction for public knowledge discovery. Journal of biomedical informatics, 57, pp.320-332.

Speklé, R.F. and Verbeeten, F.H., 2014. The use of performance measurement systems in the public sector: Effects on performance. Management Accounting Research, 25(2), pp.131-146.

Stacks, D.W., 2016. Primer of public relations research. Guilford Publications.

Steyn, B. and Niemann, L., 2014. Strategic role of public relations in enterprise strategy, governance and sustainability—A normative framework. Public Relations Review, 40(2), pp.171-183.

Valentini, C., 2015. Is using social media “good” for the public relations profession? A critical reflection. Public Relations Review, 41(2), pp.170-177.

Valentini, C., 2015. Is using social media “good” for the public relations profession? A critical reflection. Public Relations Review, 41(2), pp.170-177.

Watson, T., 2014. Let’s get dangerous–A review of current scholarship in public relation history. Public Relations Review.

Westerlund, H., Magnusson Hanson, L. and Peristera, P., 2017. Paid and unpaid working hours among Swedish men and women in relation to depressive symptomsParaskevi Peristera. European Journal of Public Health, 27(suppl_3).

Williams, J., 2016. A critical exploration of changing definitions of public good in relation to higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 41(4), pp.619-630.

Wu, F., Chen, Z. and Cui, D., 2016. Business is business? Stakeholders and power distributions in guanxi-related practices in the Chinese public relations profession: A comparative study of Beijing and Hong Kong. Public Relations Review, 42(5), pp.867-878.

Yeo, A.C., Chong, C.Y. and Carter, S., 2017. Governance Practices and Disclosure by Not-for-Profit Organizations: Effect on the Individual Donating Decision. In Empowering 21st Century Learners Through Holistic and Enterprising Learning (pp. 243-254). Springer, Singapore.

Zerfass, A. and Schramm, D.M., 2014. Social Media Newsrooms in public relations: A conceptual framework and corporate practices in three countries. Public Relations Review, 40(1), pp.79-91.