I am proud to be a PR-expert. I’m passionate about it. This is what I always wanted to do, this is what is on my mind when I’m at work and when I am not. This is not an 8 to 5 job; this is something you do 24/7. When you are in PR, there are no holidays. I love it!

And it hurts when other people don’t see it that way. When they think we are just plain manipulators or that our job is to lie to them. It bothers me when people who should care about reputation, don’t find it important or interesting enough to even learn about it. I’m astonished when even advertising professionals do not have a clue about what we do from dawn to dusk.

So I have set out to spread the word. You can call it a mission. I’m going to educate people on what Public Relations is and what it is not. And I will do this without using the old school expressions of “public” “relations” and “trust”.

So…what is it that we are all about? We Make People Understand Each Other.

This is what we do, plain and simple. We help people (governments, companies, NGOs, institutions) communicate in a way so that others would actually understand. We support them in answering some vital questions: Who am I? What do I do? What do I want to say about myself?

We help them create messages. Message is what you want to say. But how you say it, that is the most important thing. We take people’s messages to other people in a way that they understand. So they can react. And may times we take to reaction back. This is called INTERACTION.

And it results in UNDERSTANDING. I strongly believe that if there were more PR-professionals (professional communicators) out there to help, there would be less conflicts, less chaos and less misunderstanding.  As most of these negative things happen because people hear each other, but do not understand. You need those little helpers – call it dwarfs or angels (I prefer angels) – to come and support. To create strategy, messages and find the right channels. To get the words across. To do it right and create harmony.

This is why I am passionate about PR.

Author: Zsofia Lakatos

Zsofia Lakatos is the President of the Hungarian PR Association, owner of Emerald Public Relations and a board member of the Superbrands Committee in Hungary. She started her career as a journalist, jumping into agency-world later as Director of Capital Communications and from 2008 to 2015 as Managing Director of Hill+Knowlton Hungary. Zsofia holds an MBA in Management and a degree in Public Relations. She is an internationally acknowledged CSR-expert, a frequent lecturer of conferences on PR and CSR. Her book „Corporate Social Performance in Emerging Markets” was published in July 2013 in London

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