The Practice of Public Relations in Malta
Carmel Bonello
July 2004

Any account of the current state of public relations in Malta has to take into account its geographical position and size, its past and present neo-colonial history, the historic stronghold of the Catholic Church on the people (Sultana 1994: 34), the economic situation, the gender issue as well as mass media. Malta has two official languages: Maltese (a Semitic language that has undergone much influence from Italian) and English.

Situated 96 kilometres from the southern tip of Italy and 290 km from North Africa, Malta’s geographical position reflects its culture and value systems. It has a population of 400,000 in a surface area of 316 sq. km, making it the fifth most densely populated country in the world. The Knights of St John (1530–1798) and the British (1800–1964) left their mark not only through massive defensive architectural projects that today serve as valuable tourist attractions, but also on the commercial and social life.

The British colonial legacy is amply evident. Today’s educational, financial, commercial structures, general institutions and business culture are all modelled on British bureaucratic culture and make ample use of the English language. This neo-colonial legacy is sustained through the continuous flow of British consultants, conference speakers, examiners and trainers.

Although Malta is one of the most densely populated countries (1,263 per sq km), its populations is only 400,000. GDP growth at current market prices is just 1.6% while unemployment rate hovers around 7.9% (Central Bank of Malta 2004).

Values in Malta are shifting towards greater individualisation. This shift does not have any special connection with the fact that Maltese are islanders (Tonna 1996: 161), but, as Collins (1992: 54) suggested, it is a permanent mixture of the cultural sky of modern societies. A values survey conducted by the Maltese sociologist Anthony Abela in 1995 found that the priorities for what Maltese consider to be important in life are family, work, religion, leisure, friends and politics (Abela 1996: 52–54).

Successive Maltese governments pursued a policy of restructuring and diversification. This was based on tourism with 1.12 million total arrivals in 2003, and on manufacturing for export with over 928 million Maltese lira (€ 2,177 million) in 2003, mainly to European Union countries (Central Bank of Malta 2004). From the 1990s onwards, Malta’s international finance and maritime facilities were developed and marketed internationally.

Other important developments in the last two decades include the digitalisation of the telecommunication system, the establishment of a major ‘offshore’ business centre, the Malta Freeport, which is one of the largest and most active in the Mediterranean and e-government together with a drive to diminish the digital divide.

Brief historical overview of public relations

The first organised efforts in public relations on a national scale in Malta were carried out by the Central Office of Information (COI), set up in 1955. The COI’s aims were to ascertain that the Maltese people were kept informed about the government’s plans, policies and achievements and that, through publicity campaigns, the government’s plans are introduced and achieved (COI 1956). While in other colonies a department of information or propaganda was set up by the colonisers, who used it to boost the colonial government’s credibility (Beng 1994), Malta was probably the only British colony where this happened the other way round.

Following Independence in 1964, together with an increase in tourism and a booming construction industry, the Maltese market was ready for a significant increase in the range of imported products. The people employed by importing and manufacturing companies not only gained job experience in public relations from their British counterparts, but went on, in the 1970s and 1980s, to obtain marketing certificates and diplomas with a public relations content that were recognised in the UK.

The development of professional public relations in Malta is still in its initial stages. Companies manufacturing for export—both the local and the foreign-owned companies—rarely engaged in visible and planned public relations activities, either in Malta or abroad. They base all their efforts on the one-to-one contacts that are generally established during international specialised fairs, or during trade visits abroad organised by Malta Enterprise.

Companies manufacturing for the local market focus their marketing communications strategy on advertising and participation in local specialised fairs. Thus, through a tradition of good quality products in a small market, they have built a loyal clientele for their products and services. The culture, now ingrained, in which the managers of these companies have been bred does not consider spending hard-earned money on marketing communications as an investment to build and maintain a hospitable environment for their organisation.

So far, international public relations campaigns have only been carried out by Air Malta and the Malta Tourism Authority, mainly in Western Europe. Other Maltese organisations, such as the Malta Maritime Authority, Malta Enterprise, and the Maltese government itself, have arrived at a point where they are embarking on one-off international public relations exercises to explain their respective functions and attract investment to Malta.

PR practice in Malta

Notwithstanding the significant developments mentioned earlier, public relations in Malta has not developed in terms of quantity and, even more importantly, in terms of quality. The main reasons are:

• the nature of organisations: very few can afford to employ public relations practitioners or retain public relations consultants; these are government ministries, para-statal companies (enterprises in which the Maltese government is the biggest shareholder), government funded agencies and authorities and a very small number of the major commercial companies. These organisations still expect a public relations service for free from the respective marketing communications agency in return for their advertising budgets. The vast majority of organisations in Malta are small or micro-enterprises (employing less than 10 persons) that either do not understand the need for public relations activities (many of them confuse public relations with advertising, and even propaganda) or simply cannot afford it. As a result, only two marketing communication agencies have (small) public relations units (other agencies deal with public relations activities through their advertising account-handling teams) and this further perpetrates the consideration of public relations as subservient to advertising;
   
• this explains the lack of any substantial public relations budgets, and also explains why international public relations companies have not yet set up shop in Malta—although a couple of Maltese marcomms agencies work with these companies in the Maltese context where international campaigns are concerned;
   
• the background of in-house practitioners: there are no properly structured courses on public relations in Malta that go beyond an introductory level. One cannot equip oneself with the necessary practical and analytical skills for a professional career specifically in public relations, unless one has the necessary financial support to follow either a course with a university overseas. While lacking theoretical underpinnings in their approach, the present cadre of Maltese practitioners base their practice on empirical experience and on knowledge and insights gained from the process of regular dealings with their foreign counterparts;
   
• brain-drain / continuation problem: practitioners move out of the public relations field after a relatively short number of years (four to five years maximum). For the professionalisation process this presents both a brain-drain and a continuation problem, both of which need to be addressed,
   
• and therefore Maltese practitioners have not yet felt the need to embark on structured professionalisation process. Maltese public relations practitioners do not have their own national body. It is difficult to come up with an exact number of those practising public relations and with descriptions of their qualifications and their respective jobs;
   
• relations with journalists: it is not uncommon for journalists to interchange the words “public relations” and “propaganda”, and for newspaper and magazine editors to request advertising budgets to run a press release or cover an event. Some editors do not name event sponsors as they consider this as “free advertising”.

Public relations terminology

Due to the British neo-colonial heritage and an Anglo-American business marketing education, the Maltese term relazzjonijiet pubblici is rarely used in everyday practice. Instead its English version or its abbreviation (PR) are commonly used—even in Maltese conversation. The same happens in the case of key words, such as “publics” and “designations”—with the exception of Segretarju Informazzjoni, which is generally used in political party structures and by some NGOs.

In commercial organisations, public relations documents, as other written communications, are authored in English.

In recent years, however, there has been an increase in the use of the Maltese language, especially when communicating with external publics of organisations and in particular present and potential customers and shareholders. Two reasons may be behind this move: a re-found respect for an important aspect of the Maltese national identity, both by Maltese companies desiring to highlight their Maltese-ness as a differentiating factor and by international foreign companies seeking acceptance in the Maltese market.

Conclusion

In Malta, the main focus of the practice is still on press agentry/publicity and public information models of public relations (Grunig and Hunt 1984). It is no surprise, therefore, that the most characteristic services offered by Maltese practitioners are media relations and internal communications—both generally performed at present as a one-way, source to receiver, message production in which practitioners “seek to gain awareness of a client, perhaps to keep … turnstiles clicking” (Culberston and Jeffers 1992: 54).

A further and, possibly, more relevant reason for this state of affairs is the nature of the para-statal sector. This includes the “ ‘arterial’ economic enterprises supplying other sectors of the economy and still operates within a protected market system considered by some as [consisting of] ‘pure monopolies’ ” (Scicluna 1993). This sector appears to need the public relations function either to justify its present monopolistic position due to Malta’s small size (economies of scale) and to serve national developmental needs or, in other instances, to raise the overall corporate profile prior to partial or full privatisation.

Although the importance of public relations is recognised, Maltese practitioners are still far removed from the point where they can demand legally accredited recognition. To begin with, they do not have a public relations association that could co-ordinate such an effort.

Eventually, defining the field of public relations should be considered among the most pressing objectives for a public relations association for the advancement of public relations in Malta, as it would set the course toward social closure. This could be achieved by establishing and maintaining the independence of public relations from other disciplines and by emphasising the importance of education in contributing to the professionalisation of the field, as well as by an interactive approach towards professionalisation (l’Etang and Pieczka 1996: 3).

Education should be one of the logical objectives of a future national professional association as the organisation of education in public relations is another concern among practitioners. One of the hallmarks of a profession is establishing and maintaining a specialised body of knowledge (McElreath and Blamphin 1994). Empowerment of practitioners through “a formal education in which specialised skills are learned” (Lauzen 1992: 68) combined with expertise gained in the field, both of which significantly lessen individuals’ feelings of powerlessness, may present a solution to this problem.

Finally, there seems to be a growing need for the establishment of a code of ethics among Maltese practitioners. This would provide a framework for practitioners as part of a more general effort to avoid encroachment by others, and members would be able to claim jurisdiction and be perceived as professionals.

Carmel Bonello holds an M.Sc. degree in public relations from the University of Stirling in Scotland and is a member of the U.K. Institute of Public Relations. He is director of the Public Relations Unit at BPC International, Malta’s leading marketing communications agency, lectures on public relations at the University of Malta and is Malta’s national coordinator for the EBOK Project.

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