Public Relations and Corporate Communication Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Preparing an advertising media plan is not a public relations function.

A media plan decides where and when paid advertisements will appear and how the advertising budget is spent across media. It is the work of the advertising agency's media department.

Deciding communication strategy, conducting a communications audit and finding out what the public thinks of the organisation through opinion research are core public relations functions, all aimed at managing an organisation's relationships with its publics.

Answer: C

The key gives prosperity crisis.

The reading is that a firm which is doing well can become overconfident about its profits and complacent about risks, and that this can bring on a crisis in the middle of prosperity: the firm is not short of cash or leaders, it has stopped watching for danger. Writers on crisis management do list complacency after success as a cause of crisis.

A cash crisis comes from a shortage of money to pay bills, a financial crisis is a wider breakdown of finances, and a leadership crisis comes from the loss or failure of those at the top; none of these is named for overconfidence in profits.

I could not find 'prosperity crisis' as a standard term in a crisis-management or public relations text, so this answer follows the official key and the elimination of the other options.

Answer: C

In SWOT analysis, 'O' stands for Opportunities.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Strengths and weaknesses are internal to the organisation; opportunities and threats are external factors in the environment, such as market trends, new technology or regulation, that the organisation can exploit or must guard against.

Opponents and obstacles would fall under threats, and 'others' is not part of the framework.

Answer: A

A start-up is most likely to hire a boutique agency.

Boutique PR agencies are small, specialised firms that offer personal attention, flexible services and lower fees, often focused on one sector such as technology. These features suit start-ups with small budgets and specific needs.

Large traditional agencies are expensive and suit big clients, an in-house department is a company's own PR team rather than an agency, and an a la carte arrangement is a way of buying selected services, not a kind of agency start-ups usually hire.

Answer: A

Engagement is measured through social media likes and shares.

Engagement is about how actively the audience interacts with communication, not just whether they were reached. Likes, shares, comments and similar interactions are direct, countable evidence that people responded to the content, which is why they are the standard engagement metrics in PR and digital communication.

Campaign reports describe what the organisation did and are outputs. The number of mails sent measures distribution, not response. The brand's key messages are what is communicated, not a measure of how the audience reacted to it.

Answer: B

The public relations exercise was the Dandi March.

In March-April 1930 Gandhi walked about 385 km from Sabarmati to Dandi to make salt in defiance of the salt law. The march was planned for publicity: a symbolic, easily understood issue, a daily route announced in advance, a growing procession, and Indian and foreign journalists reporting every stage, which carried the civil disobedience message across the country and the world.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre (1919) was carried out by the British. Purna Swaraj was a Congress resolution at Lahore in 1929, and the train incident at Pietermaritzburg (1893) happened to Gandhi rather than being planned by him.

Answer: D

The current thinking is based on the stakeholder model.

The stakeholder model, set out by R. Edward Freeman in 1984, holds that a company is responsible not only to its shareholders but to everyone affected by its activities: employees, customers, suppliers, communities, government and the environment. That is the basis for CSR, in which firms accept social duties beyond making profits.

The liberal (or classical) model holds, in Milton Friedman's words, that business's social responsibility is to increase its profits within the law, which is the opposite view. The statist model leaves social welfare to the state, and the ethical model is a general appeal to values rather than the basis of current CSR thinking.

Answer: A

A PR manager should not treat PR as a personal publicity platform.

Public relations serves the organisation and the relationship between it and its publics. A PR manager who uses the role to promote himself or herself confuses personal interest with the organisation's, which is both unethical and damaging to credibility.

The other options are legitimate parts of the role. PR does involve practical tactical skills, it can act as an advocate (printed 'abvocate') of public policy positions, and in the two-way model it is precisely a system for collecting feedback from publics and conveying it to management.

Answer: C

It is important in a press conference.

At a press conference the speaker addresses journalists from a stage or podium, and television cameras and photographers record the scene. A logo on the backdrop screen or on the front of the podium appears in every picture and broadcast clip, so the organisation's identity is carried into the coverage.

A press tour takes journalists to a site, with no single stage. A press kit is a folder or package of material handed to journalists, and a press release is a written statement sent to the media; neither involves a speaker on a stage.

Answer: C

The immediate and relevant publics are students, parents, government officers and industrial houses.

An engineering college's key publics are its students, their parents, the government and regulatory officers who approve and fund it (state departments, AICTE, the affiliating university), and industry, which takes students for internships and placement and supports research.

Each other option includes a group that is not an immediate public for such a college. Shareholders belong to a company, and most colleges have none; coaching classes and politicians are not its core publics; and celebrities and NGOs are at most occasional or indirect publics.