Think Global. Act Local

“A global communications community combined with a global marketplace has created both necessities and opportunities for public relations people to work across borders,” observes Newsom, Turk, and Kruckeberg (2010, p. 344). No doubt, a job in PR today will require interaction across political, economic, social, and cultural borders different from one’s own. This is more easily said than done due to that beautiful yet frustrating concept…culture. Typical public relations work consists of putting forward press releases, speeches, and conferences, all message based activities, which tend to reflect culturally mediated patterns of communication of a given region. Public relations practitioners must project how their organization will relate to both its own indigenous culture and the materializing global culture (p. 348). Though cultural awareness is an important and seemingly basic component to successful public relations on a global level, few organizations do the research necessary to build beneficial relationships with desired publics (p. 348). As companies expand, success will come to the ones able to “think globally while acting locally” (p. 351).