Publicist

When it comes to public relations, the duty of a publicist is to create and manage publicity on behalf of an organisation or public figure – particularly one who is well-known, as in the case of celebrities – as well as for an artistic product such as a book, film, or record. Instead of representing a whole company or business, publicists are public relations experts whose job is to preserve and represent the image of a person rather than an entire corporation or business. They are also used by celebrities who want to preserve or defend their public image. Publicists help their clients build their brands by obtaining publicity in magazines, on television, in newspapers, and on the internet. The majority of top-level publicists operate in private practise, managing a large number of clients.

During the late nineteenth century, the legal scholar Francis Lieber created the word "publicist" to characterise the internationalists' public-facing function, which was like to that of journalists. Publicists are often referred to as flacks, a term that dates back to Gene Flack, a well-known cinema publicist in the 1930s who popularised the term.