Cities for Sale: Municipalities as Public Relations and Marketing Firms

Chapter Four: Communication, Marketing, and Public Relations

31 FOUR Communication, Marketing, and Public relations so far, building blocks are stacking up to give further shape to the municipalities as PR and marketing firms metaphor. First, metaphors were detailed, then market models of government. Now I turn to organizational communication, because it is naturally at the core of the metaphor. efforts to bring market-based, or quasi-market-based, models into public administration have changed the values and delivery methods of government (Box, 1999; Kelley, 2005). Such a transformation has been chalked up to symbolic politics (Fox, 1996), but there remains little doubt that the changes have had profound effects on government service modes and values, for good or ill. one area little explored in the critiques against market models is organizational communication. with the metaphor presented, the possibility emerges that the sales-minded administrator turns toward promotion while reducing simple information. Before that argument is further explored, it is imperative to lay out what an organization’s communication, public relations, and marketing functions mean and how the fields do—or do not—work together. organizational Communication organizational communication certainly is not a new field of study. within the United States alone, there have been well-known efforts to use communication tactics—i.e., propaganda—to manipulate and shape public opinion (herz, 1949; Sparks, 1971; Spitzer, 1947). A recent Rolling Stone article 32 Cities for sale described the U.S. Army deploying soldiers specially trained in “psychological operations” to convince sitting senators to increase funding for the war in Afghanistan (hastings, 2010). Traditionally, such information-manipulating tactics are deployed against enemies. As one soldier put it in the article : “‘My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave,’ says Lt. Colonel Michael holmes, the leader of the Io unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. ‘I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. when you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line’” (hastings, 2010, para. 3). Despite leanings toward, and criticism of, propagandistic practices, governments recognize the need for specialized communication officers (not psychological operations level) because “it is generally accepted that whenever the American people are properly informed of government activities, they are more likely to understand what is being done and why” (Fitzpatrick , 1947, p. 530). Congress, though, did not like the term the Department of Agriculture used to refer to people charged with disseminating information —publicity experts—and so it passed a law in 1913 banning the federal government from hiring publicity experts. Instead, we now have public information officers, public affairs officers, marketing directors, and other incarnations of this same publicity function. organizational communication is so important that the practice is seen as an essential function of both executives (Barnard, 1968) and all employees alike. employees in everyday situations communicate vertically and horizontally. Different languages are used when speaking to power and speaking from power (Farmer, 2003). organizational communication can be viewed as “various message sending and receiving phenomena affecting formal social units in which individuals work toward common goals” (Greenbaum, 1974, p. 740). Put differently, these formal communications are the glue holding an organization’s functions together. I also would add an informal layer to the definition, as what is said around the proverbial water cooler—though not official communication either vertically or horizontally—has important social ramifications for the people within an organization. Such communication can support (Barnard, 1968) or subvert (o’Leary, 2010) the organization’s mission and goals. Clear channels of communication are important in any organization, as “much of the daily routine of organizations entails information exchange and coordination” (Bacharach & Aiken, 1977, p. 365). Communication, Marketing, and Public relations 33 In addition to employing internal communications, organizations, especially those operating in the public sector, communicate externally. organizations pay attention to both internal and external communication because they shape public opinion (Cheney & Vibbert, 1987) and help, or hinder, internal marketing efforts (Zavattaro, 2010). every audience (stakeholders, as I define them below) has the power to accept or reject an organization’s construction of itself, thereby reflecting public opinion. Information shared with external audiences can take many forms; public relations and marketing are among the most common. Public relations and Marketing As this book propounds the metaphor of organizations based on PR and marketing, it is important to conceptualize those...