Critique on an example of public relation: Homepage of iTV.

Reason for choosing this PR example

Hong Kong Telecom rolled out Interactive TV (iTV), one of the world's first large-scale video-on-demand (VOD) services at the end of 1997. Citizens will be able to plump themselves on the couch, press a few buttons and order television programs, movies, video games and other content via high-speed telephone lines, delivered whenever they want to view them. A year was passed, this service provided by Hong Kong Telecom is still striking into the market for more subscribers. This particular example is chosen because some of the PR strategies used are quite good and worth some discussion.

Evidence for being a PR activity

This homepage is an example of public relations because it aims to create open communication and maintain mutual understanding between the organization (Hong Kong Telecom) and its publics. It tries to obtain insights into possible problems of their client from the client's publics.

Clock Tower and Kowloon Station (KCR) in Tsim Sha ...

Hong Kong Telecom

A data visualization of Wikipedia as part of the W...

It is also the medium through which organization reaches the public with repacked messages.

Organization

This PR example is working for iTV, which is one of the services provided by Hong Kong Telecom.

Intended publics

There are seven main intended publics for this example. They are customers, special interest group, potential subscribers, media, suppliers, community neighbour and advertisers. All of them shared a common interest - iTV. Either subscribers to the service or not, these publics are interested in installing iTV, wanted to know more about it, therefore they would be interested in this PR message and tried to find out answers to their questions from this homepage. The key characteristic of the public is that none of them are not members of the organization (Hong Kong Telecom), all of them are in the external environment of the organization.

Function of the PR example...