Other concepts I like for PR practice are co-orientation (which helps us think about common ground) and facilitate (defined as making things easier,to be of use or increasing the likelihood of something happening).

BTW, I teach holistic communications to ensure PR practitioners consider more than words as Toni considers. This ranges from source credibility to body language, visual imagery to aspects such as timing of communications. Words in terms of content are important, but not the entire scope of communications.

However, we still have to think what the particular circumstances and the objectives are. If we are conducting an information campaign to the whole population of a third-world country to stop smoking or stop causing wildfires or obtain immunisation to polio, we are probably still communicating the message ‘to’ since the medium will often be radio or TV in this instance (no online tools here). Although an effort should be made to supply telephone numbers or addresses of relevant government departments or community clinics, etc. where more info can be obtained, there is no feeling or possibility of interaction between the communicator and the receivers of the messages (in any case, not in countries like mine where most people don’t have access to the internet). But if we are conducting a PR campaign on behalf of an organisation with its stakeholders from a 2-way symmetrical point of view, we will hopefully make sure that it is communication ‘with’ even if it is in the 3rd World. It is here that oramedia (traditional media) come in such as industrial theatre, village theatre, puppet shows, etc. However, oramedia is just not practical and too expensive if the message has to reach the whole population in an information campaign.

Heather, the same probably holds true for love. We send our love ‘to’ somebody, but we make love ‘with’ somebody!!

Toni, I agree with Judy that I prefer manage to govern. However, it might be that govern is stronger in English than in Italian. In English there are strong overtones of ‘ruling’. To me, strategy has a different meaning than program or initiative or tone of voice. An initiative, for instance, can be most unstrategic. But for the rest of the terms, I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Only, I am reminiscent of a recent discussion on this-here blog between peter walker,ursula stroh and joao duarte in which the term management seemed to shape a connotation of top-down and control practice.

On the other hand, the term governance, in itself rather recent, seems to have filled from an organizational perspective the subtle difference between traditional top down and control oriented management and the increasing need of a more symmetric approach.

It also true however, as peter walker pointed out in the discussion (I am afraid I don’t know how to link to our own blog from this position but if you are interested in reviewing this fascinating discussion it is post number 78)that quote
Mary Parker Follett (a social scholar who wrote on the topic in the early twentieth-century-see wikipedia) defined management as “the art of getting things done through people” NOT controlling them unquote.

cheers

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/govern
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/manage

Particularly when you run through the synonyms for govern:

Synonyms: administer, assume command, captain*, carry out, command, conduct, control, dictate, direct, execute, exercise authority, guide, head, head up, hold dominion, hold office, hold sway, lead, manage, master, occupy throne, order, overrule, oversee, pilot, regulate, reign, render, run, run things, steer, superintend, supervise, sway, tyrannize

This one was found on Thesauras.com, specifically the Roget’s New Millennium™ Thesaurus citing

I have been using these terms and explaining the reasons to my staff, my clients, my students, my colleagues (both professionals and scholars) since a couple of years now.

Today, I see and read the terms applied by others whom I have never met, but who have probably come in relationship with either one of those publics (though I certainly would never claim ownership….can’t remember who first inspired this in my mind, but it was probably my first boss, John Verstraete director of communication of 3M Company back in 1963…).

I was at a briefing the other day by a leader of a major advertising agency and she was explaining to a client how contemporary advertising (she actually said post-modern…Benita I hope your ears don’t scream to much..)is picking up on the whole birectional and tendentially symmetrical dialogue growing fad, and said something like ‘ we do not communicate to any longer, we communicate with’.
If advertisers can claim this and survive others’ laughter, why can’t we?

Maybe if all of us of pr conversations(posters, commenters and visitors) decided to adopt this terminology constantly (obviously only if we agree with the reasons and implications) we could spread the word.

It does no harm, it makes others think (which is never a bad thing) and it might even actually help….

After all, I am sure you are all well aware that the term reputation (which, as some of our commenters seem to think, is so much more convincing than public relations), was early-adopted by a major pr agency in the late eighties in the USA in a conscious attempt to distance the firm from the term ‘image’ which, according to its leadership, had accumulated too many negative overtones…and has since not only become another buzz word but has also started an international avalanche of theory, books, research companies, academic positions and power games…
Many even state that one can govern (manage?) reputation, although when confronted, and if they are not fundamentalists, they will quickly accept that most of the variables which create reputation cannot be evaluated nor measured…. and therefore not governed (managed?).
Of course all of our attempts (whatever we do or say) finish in the reputation basket (waste basket?), but the most we can really try to govern (manage?) are relationships (evaluable and measurable they certainly are…).

Other terms from our traditional lingo that I try not to use in order no to give a bad example, are manage (prefer govern), targets (prefer publics and even stakeholders), strategy (prefer program or initiative or tone of voice…), press office (prefer media relations or relationships with the media or even better journalists), persuade (prefer con-vince in the sense of winning together, or even better dialogue, converse, even negotiate is better).

Of course words are words and very much depends on the contents and on the rest of the sentence…but words are what most of us fill our mouths (in the literal sense of food we buy with the money we collect by using words).

And, a propos….
what about the role of graphics, images (still and moving)and other visual representations we never seem to consider seriously enough to debate and converse about amongst ourselves because we do not consider them sufficiently serious, although we are always ready to pay lip service to the concept when we agree that one image can communicate more effectively than a thousand words…

what do you say?