‘We Don’t Need PR Yet’: Challenging Misconceptions of Public Relations in the Startup Community

Abstract

There is a dearth of research about how startup companies use public relations in their tenuous and critical first few years of existence. While there does exist a small body of literature focused on how startups should use marketing, the public relations literature is limited (exceptions: ter Halle, Beekhoff, and Ruel, 2016; Schlierer, Hans-Jörg, et al., 2012).

The leaders of startups usually have very limited resources, and that includes very few personnel to whom they can delegate responsibilities. Unlike the C-suite leaders in a more established business, the startup leaders are almost solely responsible for crafting the messaging and communication strategy of the startup. Being tasked with not only the management and growth of the business as well as all things marketing, public relations and brand strategy, the leaders of startups, having limited time and resources, often focus on what they view as the most pressing tasks (usually related to product development or financing) (Halle, Beekhoff, and Ruel, 2016).

Given the lack of previous research on the subject and the unique insight that startup leaders can provide, the research focused on:

• RQ1. How do startup leaders conceptualize Public Relations?

• RQ2. What value do startup leaders place on Public Relations?

In the fall of 2017, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 leaders of startups in St Louis, Missouri. The answers were thematically analysed (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The responses were analysed using the constant-comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) allowing researchers to identify recurring patterns in the interviews. After the initial coding was complete, axial coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) was conducted, making connections between the initial themes. The emergent themes from each question are discussed in the results section and the implications for the fields of PR and entrepreneurship will be covered in the discussion section. Some of the key findings are that many startup leaders do not understand what PR is, they don’t understand its benefits and they cannot differentiate PR from marketing.

Citation

VanSlette, S. (2019), "‘We Don’t Need PR Yet’: Challenging Misconceptions of Public Relations in the Startup Community", Big Ideas in Public Relations Research and Practice (Advances in Public Relations and Communication Management, Vol. 4), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 115-126. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2398-391420190000004009