Receiver

This is the target audience, the people you must reach. You must learn about the characteristics and attitudes of your projected receivers if you are to communicate effectively and persuasively. Such factors as educational level, economic status, occupa­tion, place of residence, religious affiliation, national origin, social class, and political affiliation affect how a target audience receives and perceives your message.

As business becomes more global, there is also a growing need to understand the attitudes, customs, and cultures of people in other nations. Faulty translations of pub­licity materials can cause a number of gaffes if one does not understand the language and culture of a nation.

Your responsibility is to research your audience. Reference books, surveys and polls, online databases and personally talking to members of the target audience are good approaches. Armed with such knowledge, you can give information in such a way that the recipients will accept the message, absorb it, and eventually act on it.

Men’s perception of information

There exist some peculiarities of men’s perception of information. The today world is overloaded with information. Information has always been important to people: our five senses alone provide much info, that in most cases is the basis on which we make conclusions and act in a certain way. With the development of society the five senses grew insufficient for orientation. Human mind acquired the ability to perceive and analyze the info we get. And what is important our memory has the ability to filter the coming info in order to avoid an informational shock, that might be caused by an overflow of info. So human brain selects information.

So human brain tends to perceive not more than 10% of info intended to persuade. It means that every 10^th message only can possibly be perceived. The conclusion we can make is that the message must be distinguishable, outstanding, must catch people’s attention. That’s why PR is bent on using all sorts of sensations, hot news, or on the advertising level –creative decisions, like using music, distinctive texts, humor.

Then the quantity of the messages that are kept in mind afterwards is not more than 5% of all the perceived. And if the message contradicts your principles and your world view, you’ll simply ignore it. Thus the net-perception of the messages is as low as 3%.

As you see it is very difficult to influence people’s mind, but possible if you use some specific techniques and act according to some specific rules.

• Physiological needs. These are the constituents of self-preservation. They include air, water, food, clothing, shelter, rest, and health — the minimum neces­sities of life.

• Safety needs. These comprise protection against danger, loss of life or property, restriction of activity, and loss of freedom.

• Social needs. These include acceptance by others, belonging to groups, and enjoying both friendship and love.

• Ego needs. These include self-esteem, self-confidence, accomplishment, status, recognition, appreciation, and the respect of others.

• Self-fulfillment needs. These represent the need to grow to one's full stature — simply as a human being or in terms of some special talent, gift, or interest.

Effective messages carry components of these needs from the standpoint of help­ing people achieve them in some way. In sum we're talking about the self-interest of the audience. Indeed, if you can keep in mind the self-interest of your target audiences when formulating messages, you will be an effective communicator.

Most public relations activity is aimed at lower-level needs because people are generally more concerned about their families, jobs, and homes than they are about more abstract goals. Economics may get most of the attention, but don't forget that there are many people who do have non-economic interests.

Understanding the concepts of opinion formation, the process of information diffu­sion, and the psychological needs of audiences has a great deal of practical application for the public relations practitioner.