Making a Difference with Public Relations

When I first tell people that I am pursuing a career in public relations, and for a large company on top of that, people unfamiliar with the career often don’t see the opportunities to positively affect others in this career choice.

Through reading Edelman and the Rise of Public Relations, learning about the many positive campaigns that the company has been a part of and their company’s standards demonstrate to me once again that public relations is the career for me and that the profession does have a place in creating and sharing positive messages.

 To make the firm an even more well respected and transparent company, Edelman created a plan called “Working for a Shared Focused Future” to create unity in “its vision mission values” (91).  With words such as “quality, integrity, respect, and mutual benefits” used to describe the “Edelman personality” its easy to understand how the team would see a conflict in representing tobacco companies, especially having represented a tobacco lobbying company (91).

As Edelman also worked on the Dove Real Beauty Campaign, raising awareness of heart disease with the American Heart Association and a slue of other campaigns the firm has continued to show time and time again that public relations has the ability to do good not only for a specific company for a larger population.

While working for different clients doesn’t always provide the opportunity to be a part on campaigns that take on such important issues, finding a company, such as Edelman, where you can find opportunities like these from time to time allows a career in PR to become all the more fulfilling.  

Lisa Rodriguez is a senior at DePaul University studying Public Relations and Sociology. She was recently hired on at GolinHarris as a Media Associate. Lisa can be reached at lisa.rodriguez823@gmail.com or follow her at @lrodriguez823.