Services

Ser­vices Pro­vided by PR/Communications Consultancies

Germany’s asso­ci­a­tion of lead­ing PR agen­cies, GPRA (Gesellschaft Pub­lic Rela­tions Agen­turen e.V.), sees pub­lic rela­tions as pro­fes­sional com­mu­ni­ca­tion man­age­ment: via the strate­gic, effi­cient and target-oriented deploy­ment of all rel­e­vant com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools, PR influ­ences how peo­ple form opinions.

PR aims to ful­fill the fol­low­ing objec­tives for com­pa­nies, fed­er­a­tions, gov­ern­ment agen­cies and other organizations:

• Rais­ing profiles
• Form­ing a pos­i­tive image and con­sol­i­dat­ing a good reputation
• Com­mu­ni­cat­ing infor­ma­tion both within an orga­ni­za­tion and to the pub­lic; cre­at­ing trust and under­stand­ing regard­ing the con­tents of this communication
• Estab­lish­ing appro­pri­ate and pro­fes­sional com­mu­ni­ca­tion with var­i­ous tar­get groups both offline and online
• Man­ag­ing change processes within companies
• Pre­vent­ing crises
• Brand build­ing
• Pro­mot­ing the sale of prod­ucts and services
• Moti­vat­ing employees
• Acquir­ing highly qual­i­fied new employees

GPRA’s mem­bers develop and deploy strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tion processes for the suc­cess­ful real­iza­tion of their clients’ wishes. These processes can be imple­mented by the orga­ni­za­tion in ques­tion and/or by the GPRA agency over­see­ing the PR project. The fol­low­ing pro­vides an overview of the basic services:

• Con­sult­ing: Advice and sup­port regard­ing analy­sis, bench­mark­ing, strate­gies, posi­tion­ing, media com­mu­ni­ca­tion, orga­ni­za­tion, cri­sis and issues man­age­ment, change processes, cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­ity, facil­i­ta­tion and certification
• Cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions: Con­cept cre­ation and devel­op­ment of the cor­po­rate brand, cor­po­rate image, cor­po­rate iden­tity, cor­po­rate cul­ture, cor­po­rate design, cor­po­rate word­ing, mis­sion state­ment, inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions, change communication
• Mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions: Brand for­ma­tion process, posi­tion­ing, sales– and consumer-oriented communication
• Media rela­tions: Pro­fes­sional con­tact man­age­ment for TV, radio, print media; clas­sic media activ­i­ties (set­ting themes, prepa­ra­tion of offline and online press kits, press releases, inter­views, arti­cle draft­ing, TV and radio appear­ances, joint projects with media, press con­fer­ences, back­ground talks and work­shops) and media training
• Finan­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions: Investor rela­tions, projects to accom­pany IPOs
• Cam­paign­ing: Cam­paign strate­gies tai­lored to the desired tar­get audi­ences; imple­men­ta­tion of infor­ma­tion, aware­ness and inter­ven­tion cam­paigns, cross-marketing activities
• Issues man­age­ment and pub­lic affairs: Mon­i­tor­ing, lob­by­ing, cor­po­rate governance
• Cor­po­rate pub­lish­ing: Mag­a­zines for cus­tomers and employ­ees, newslet­ters, brochures, fly­ers, hand­books, busi­ness reports, annual reports
• Online rela­tions: A range of online and mul­ti­me­dia appli­ca­tions (incl. web­sites, online newslet­ters, blogs, ban­ners, CD/DVD pro­duc­tion) with inter­face options for mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tions (cell phones, PDAs, MDAs)
• Events and spon­sor­ing: Man­age­ment of road shows, con­fer­ences, trade fair par­tic­i­pa­tion (B2B and B2C) and cor­po­rate events; man­age­ment of spon­sor­ing activ­i­ties for sport, cul­ture, social respon­si­bil­ity and edu­ca­tion, incl. event con­sult­ing and con­tact consulting
• Eval­u­a­tion and research: Analy­sis of media echo, media mon­i­tor­ing, mar­ket research, com­pe­ti­tion analy­sis; GPRA has devel­oped its Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Value Sys­tem (CVS) as a man­age­ment sys­tem for communications

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­sul­tan­cies can have strat­egy devel­op­ment as their focus, or they can be more involved with imple­men­ta­tion. GPRA’s mem­bers view them­selves as ser­vice providers with par­tic­u­lar strate­gic capa­bil­i­ties. Against the back­drop of ongo­ing spe­cial­iza­tion, into mar­ket niches and of tar­get groups, some GPRA mem­bers con­cen­trate on par­tic­u­lar eco­nomic sec­tors, i.e. healthcare/pharmaceutics, banks/finance, IT, energy, con­struc­tion, etc.

GPRA e.V.
July 2007