PR comes home: past, present and future

On one hand, the visual and spatial dimensions of communication have always been part of human history and, at times, the chapters in this collection provide fresh and contemporary insights into centuries-old issues. Architecture and art were used in Ancient Egypt, to impress a particular message on the public of the greatness of the pharaohs. In England, the Bayeaux Tapestry was used to commit one account of the importance of the Norman Conquest into history; the network of Norman castles established after the Conquest become not just material, military sites but also symbolic icons of power. Maps and cartography too can be seen as symbolic abstractions of reality. In essence: all such phenomena have been strategically designed and deployed to tell a story.

Fast forward to the twentieth-century and, as L’Etang (2004) points out, in the UK the government was the driving force behind the early use of public relations. During World War I and World War II the need to unite people in a single cause stimulated creative persuasive approaches using a greater variety of printed means. This adoption of visual communication arguably begins with the growth of the poster with leading designers, such as Tom Eckersley, Abram Games, F.H.K Henrion and Hans Schlege, being commissioned to produce highly impactful print work to educate mass populations on matters of public interest and safety.

All of these figures established their graphic design reputations during WW2 and subsequently revolutionised communication design post-war. From the 1930s too, film units were increasingly attached to public organisations’ publicity or public relations departments, including the Post Office, Empire Marketing Board, and later during World War II the Ministry of Information.¹ Such techniques and approaches further stimulated the use of film by commercial organisations, including Dunlop, ICI and Shell.

The notion of spatiality, too, while conceived in this text as a distinctly contemporary concern has antecedents in history. One of the most quoted historically significant public relations moments, the 1929 ‘Torches of Freedom March’ in New York, when women joined the Easter Parade in a collective public of public smoking, was not only a visual stunt but also demonstrated the importance of time and space. Orchestrated by Edward Bernays and A.A. Brill, the march intended to challenge the taboo of cigarette smoking among women (and thus aimed to increase sales for the American Tobacco Company). Although scholars such as Murphree (2015) suggest that Bernays subsequently over inflated the importance of the event in changing attitudes towards the social acceptability of smoking among women and the subsequent media coverage, it nevertheless points to the early significance of the performative and spatial dimensions of strategic communication.

While this book explores afresh the role of graphic design, visuality and spatiality in the context of contemporary public relations, it can be argued that such a distinction between the disciplines is not born out of historical precedent. Acknowledging, returning to and learning from such an historic inter-disciplinary perspective could enable strategic communications to become much more resilient to the field’s future needs and challenges. Public relations practitioners and scholars should see themselves continuing the tradition of creating and studying powerful ideas that tell emotionally-compelling stories across time and space.

Sense-making

Another thread emerging from these chapters is how visual and spatial forms of communication help people to make sense of reality and the world around them. This links to the growing body of research around the concept of sense-making. Although there is no single agreed definition of sense-making (Brown et al., 2015), broadly it is taken to mean the processes by which people seek plausibility to understand ambiguous, equivocal or confusing events (Colville et al., 2012; Maitlis, 2005; Weick, 1995). This has relevance to how people construct the realities of their day-to day lives (Holt and Cornelissen, 2014).

Although much attention has been paid to sense-making in communications scholarship from a textual perspective, most notably by Taylor and van Every (2000), visual and spatial communications are also forms of narrative and discourse. Often illustrations, pictures and drawings can be used to give voice to emotions and contribute to understanding (Barner, 2008) with greater efficacy that simply text. In addition to purely functional sense-making uses of imagery, visual metaphors – defined as a way if enabling the understanding of one kind of concept in terms of another (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) – and other types of visual cues can help people engage more deeply in important debates and topics. In doing so, meaning becomes co-created between the communicator and receiver, arguably fostering a deeper emotional connection and resonance.

The strategic significance of such phenomena is being explored within organ-isational and management studies and is a growing area of exploration (Davison et al., 2012; Meyer et al., 2013; Mitchell, 2011; Vince and Warren, 2012). These scholarly perspectives argue that visual materials, such as images, photos, drawings and, importantly, physical objects are being used to add depth and richness to organisational culture and communication. The role of such artefacts in constructing or directing meaning in organisational and, even, public (or ‘quasi-public’) spaces is also an area worthy of further examination by public relations and strategic communications scholars.

The recent ‘cultural turn’ in public relations theory has also challenged the functional and managerial focus arising from system theories. Here the work of scholars such as Edwards, Curtain and Gaither, Hodges, Holtzhausen and Ihlen have heeded the call made by L’Etang (2004) of the need to expand the analysis of public relations to become more interdisciplinary and critical. At the forefront of attempts to link public relations with concepts drawn from media and cultural studies is a concern with dicsourse, framing, semiotics and representation (Dan and Ihlen, 2011; Edwards and Hodges, 2011). Yet these fields are changing too.

Moving beyond the ‘visual turn’ in cultural studies, that has refocused critical attention on ‘visuality’ and ‘visual technology’ (Mirzoef, 2005) and the role such factors play in mediating the range of consumer, cultural and informational experiences, cultural and critical scholars have started to explore the physical and spatial elements of communication. Such approaches, termed the ‘spatial turn’ ‘[s]ituates communication and culture within a physical and corporeal landscape’ where ‘infrastructure, space, technology, and the body become the focus’ (Packer and Wiley, 2012: 3).

As with the increasingly visual nature of contemporary society, so is the material interaction between individuals and the built environment becoming a central domain in which strategic communication occurs. Central to the creation and reception of these experiences is the role of the public relations practitioner. Thus, understanding in more detail the way the visual, material and, in totality, the experiential nature of strategic communication is deployed is vital – both in terms of evolving effective practice as well as being able to adequately analyse and critique such approaches.

Exploring pre-communicative contexts

Moving the focus of public relations and strategic communication beyond text and out to the full physical and bodily experience in which information is received opens up fertile – and potentially controversial – routes for practice and scholarship. Taking such a perspective means recognising that the visual and material attributes of the communicative environment in which messages will be decoded play a dual role. Firstly, the environment operates at a functional or representational level in that it acts as a medium to carry persuasive messages. Thus, the communicative context has intrinsic communicative value. Secondly, however, this communications environment also functions at a pre-suasive level. That is, the affective context in which functional or representational communications are received and consumed can play a vital role in influencing and determining the ways in which such messages are decoded.

This, then, presents wider implications and challenges for practitioners and scholars alike in terms of extending key considerations for the efficacy of strategic communications and the factors influencing sense-making on an individual and social scale. The significance of this pre-communicative context is a largely unexplored area within public relations studies, although Cialdini (2016) recently has taken steps to articulate pre-suasion as key component of persuasion. In his work Cialdini argues that pre-suasion, which includes visual cues, operates as a way to prime and prepare audiences for any following functional, persuasive communication.

Validating the importance of public relations and strategic communications scholars paying attention to this pre-communicative context is evidence from wider marketing research demonstrating that visual priming, particularly in advertising, has strong links with information processing (Fahmy et al., 2006). Moreover, recent work by Baxter et al. (2014) has shown how phonetic cues can in product messaging can influence consumer-decision-making and improve preference among consumers.² Crucially, such findings indicate how it isn’t the intrinsic, representational or rational value of marketing communication that persuades here, rather it is the sounds in words which convey meaning. And, arguably, phonemes can be primed at a pre-suasive level to improve the efficacy of whole words operating at a more conventional, representational level.

Specifically, then, priming plays an important role in helping to encourage the understanding, retention and cognition of information in receivers.

While the contributors to this book have focused primarily on the visual and spatial dimensions of public relations, the pre-communicative context discussed here opens up much broader affective dimensions for strategic communication. For example, seeking to understand a multi-sensory world of communication is likely to become increasing relevant. Although, scholars from marketing disciplines have arguably had a longer tradition in exploring multi-sensory consumer experiences – the manufactured ‘new car’ smell is a classic example – this domain is not as well researched from a public relations perspective. Bartholme and Melewar (2009) have done much to reassess corporate communications by bringing reflecting on corporate identity from the perspective of sound, smell and taste, but the ways in which a multi-sensory world relates to the full plethora of organisational stakeholders is something that public relations scholars needs to grasp.

Ethical concerns

As with all forms of public communication, there are ethical concerns and dilemmas especially in relation to the concept of communicative power (Perloff, 2010). It could, however, be argued that such concerns are amplified in the context of presusasion, priming and the strategic creation of immersive environments to affectively enhance or degrade the efficacy of functional communication. For example, where Clark and Mangham (2004) talk of organisational theatre whereby corporate events are used to produce immersive experiences in which to communicate strategically planned and, usually, commercially-oriented outcomes. This raises issues of ensuring persuasive efficacy or corporate compliance through affective means, an area little researched in scholarly terms and thus even less likely to have been considered as part of ethical frameworks at the level of industry regulations and guidelines, let alone at a societal, legislative level.

Here the debate focuses on organisational power and its legitimacy – or otherwise. While public relations can be used for good through its role in community building, creating shared understanding and conflict resolution, it is arguable that the economic resources and large-scale planning required to establish such an immersive environment is likely to be affordable by large corporations and/or governments and states, rather than NGOs and community groups. Thus, while Davis (2002) argues that public relations’ cultural capital ensures that its social power is not directly related to economic capital, such a transformation of strategic communication into a fully immersive experience challenges this perspective.

Challenges and opportunities

Moving forward there are both challenges and opportunities for public relations and strategic communication practice and scholarship. For practice, there is a framework and emerging creative space within which strategies can be planned and implemented that embrace visual, spatial and – potentially – other multi-sensory forms of communication. This offers a landscape rich with opportunities for highly original and immersive experiences that will improve the efficacy of communications. However, making full use of such a domain extending beyond text will require a better understanding what this means for professional practice in terms of skills and behaviours necessary for this twenty-first century discipline.

Moreover, as noted above, how practitioners engaging in such types of multi-modal public relations ensure they act professionally will inevitably raise ethical questions around the enhanced persuasiveness and communicative power that practitioners may have at their disposal. And the need to navigate – and potentially regulate – these forms of multi-sensory communications to ensure a level-playing field between corporate and civic organisations and actors will likely need to be addressed.

For researchers and scholars, the chapters in this collection assert an urgent need to grasp and apply interdisciplinary perspectives to public relations. This includes extending the range of theoretical approaches used to inform and underpin scholarship in the field as well as well as recognising that studying strategic communications beyond text will require the researcher to draw – and, crucially, build – on a wide variety of methodologies to evaluate, de-construct and understand public relations effectively from this new stand-point.

Moreover, collaboration with colleagues from different fields needs to be encouraged and welcomed. Fields as diverse as spatial and graphic design, urban planning, architecture, built environment, psychology, performing arts, fine art, museums and heritage, organisational studies. Not forgetting, of course, public relations’ fellow-travellers in cultural and critical studies, as well as marketing and advertising. As Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India before and after Independence observed: ‘We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open’ (Merchey, 2005). We hope this book has helped to open public relations scholars and practitioners eyes and encouraged them to take some initial steps on a strategic communications adventure.