CSR: Be responsible without bragging

Today even more voices have been raised and loudly demand from companies to pay greater attention to CSR and to behave as good corporate citizens. Corporate social responsibility is about sustainability and corporate integrity and for that reason it should be a core component of the corporate strategy. Gaining people’s trust protects corporate reputation and trusted companies are more likely to survive a potential crisis. However CSR shouldn’t be used as a public relations or marketing tool, because in that case it might backfire. Quite a few companies have been accused of ‘green-washing’ after promoting their CSR activities to enhance and exaggerate their ethical virtues. If companies want CSR to be effective in the long-term, then they shouldn’t brag about being decent.

Some might wonder then what is the point of being a good corporate citizen if no one knows about it? PR practitioners are at this point the key to help companies communicate the changes in an organisation’s policies concerning ethical issues that surround the business, in an effective way. Making people aware of a company’s CSR policies and implemented activities is necessary and completely acceptable; however it should be done without exaggerations and bragging, otherwise being responsible will be critisised and perceived as being driven by self-serving motives. It is true that CSR activities most of the times take time to show actual results, but letting these actions talk for themselves can be more appealing to peoples’ minds. The public will think positively about you and they will be the unbiased messengers of your business. Besides ‘word of mouth’ publicity is even more valuable in these situations.

Political Branding

Branding in politics is not a completely new phenomenon; by contrast in its wider sense branding has been present for a long time in this field. Some branding techniques such as slogans and visuals played an important role already in the past in establishing strong branded identities for politicians and their political parties. More recently some other tools like celebrity endorsement, merchandising and internet were used to contribute to this kind of  brand building.

In the last elections in the US, in 2008, Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign changed the landscape concerning the use of internet in politics as well as the fund raising. The public’s support to the ‘Obama’ brand was not translated only in votes but also in dollars. In total, $650m of funds were raised to cover the expenses of his campaign, which is considered to have been the most successful political campaign in recent times. Obama relied not only on big donations but also on thousands of small contributions by people that were engaged to this purpose primarily through social media. Obama just as many big brands do nowadays embraced new technology. He was present in social media and engaged a lot of people there especially young Americans. In depth research, constant monitoring and feedback evaluation were useful in order to give the target audience back what they desired and needed, meaning hope and a vision towards change. Losing a bit of control was not a big issue because his messages were strong and clearly articulated and eventually were spread by his online supporters quite effectively. He was consistent and repeated those messages in every occasion online and offline. He was there to defend what was good about his ‘product’. Obviously media training was also part of his campaign preparation. Each time he was speaking in public he looked confident and relaxed, something that added to his image a much more trustworthy aspect than that of his opponents.

Obama did not just happen to be the right person in the right place. What helped him stand out was the effective use of political communications and branding techniques. However when the ‘product’-in that case the candidate-promoted has quite a few strong points, then success is more likely to come.

Social Media and the chance for a real 'two-way communication'

The introduction of online media has changed communication fundamentally. People today go themselves in websites looking for specific information they need, so internet can be characterized  as a medium where information is being ‘pulled’. By contrast, traditional media are ‘pushing’ information to their audience, who will receive it independently whether they want it, need it or not. According to the traditional way, information between an organisation and its publics travels in one direction, but now social media have brought a revolution in the information flow between companies and their stakeholders. In traditional media the agenda is set by the organisations and the media themselves; however now with social media the online audiences have the ability and power to create their own content and influence the organisation towards change. Companies are also benefited by this process because through this conversation with the audience, they gain information and data about what their customers prefer, need or desire and accordingly they can customize their services or products.

Content providers on behalf of the organisations nowadays need to carry on in a more competitive marketplace. They need to be more creative, improve the quality of the message and not care just about the quantity anymore. In order for an organisation to survive opposite an audience that constantly challenges the received messages and has the power to scrutinize them, it is necessary to be authentic and transparent. Only through open conversation one can be part of the online community. If practitioners use social media in the same way they use traditional media then they will lose the opportunity of developing a two-way communication with their stakeholders and benefit the organisation by bringing in useful information for the decision making.  Although the term ‘two-way communication’ could be interpreted differently- either as conversation, as interaction or even persuasion by others-as Grunig and Hunt (1984) argue when this communication is symmetrical, then it is all about mutual adjustment and behaviour change. It relates to exchanging culture rather than just giving away information.

However when using social media there is some loss of control, since comments and conversation are open to everybody. Consequently the organisation is vulnerable to potential bigger scrutiny. This loss of control, if not handled properly, will simply lead to shifting power from the organisation to various stakeholders; so in this case we won’t be able to talk about a real two-way (symmetrical) communication anymore but for changing of dynamics.

Social Media: "The Real Cost"

Has anyone ever thought that, if Facebook was really for free, then how come that in 2008 his inventor, Mark Zuckerberg, was declared the world’s youngest billionaire?

“The Cost of Free” , the BBC documentary presented by Alex Krotoski, reveals that online life in reality is a big trade. The title of the documentary might be oxymoronic, but it is was not chosen randomly. There is the perception that when we go online to look for something on the familiar to everybody ‘search engine machine’ of Google or when we are using Facebook, we are not paying anything. Though what happens in reality is that each time we use the online ‘free’ services, there is something that we are giving away and this is nothing else but personal information. Our personal identity is formed by our online habits and is translated to something that the market is familiar with.

Every user owns a special code which tracks and exposes his interests and desires. This helps companies identify their audiences and the channels that they use inside the cyber space, which helps them come back with more targeted advertisements and influential content. The illusion that online services are free of charge has increased the public’s attachment to these networks; however that curiosity is converted to profit making for these online service providers, since even more companies choose to advertise their products through this online space.

Even if the majority of people becomes aware of that, is it going to stop using online services? I guess not! I think we will continue to reveal our personal preferences with our own consent. Besides, one might think, that this is a fair exchange, isn’t it? These networks allow you to have access in all that useful information fast and just by clicking on your computer, so I guess it seems quite reasonable that there should be something out there for them  as well. What we should wonder though is what could the long-term implications of giving away all these data be and for what purpose they could be used in the future. We should start thinking about where the borderline between our personal rights as users and the profit making are and who is the one that is going to set these boundaries.

Source of Image: Google

If you are interested in watching the BBC documentary 'The Cost of Free', you can find it in youtube. Just follow this link for the first part and go on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNAfnfcergc

‘Behold’ Social Marketing

Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman were the first to refer to the term and develop the concept of ‘social marketing’ in 1971. Social marketing is considered the application of commercial marketing techniques and principles to non-commercial transactions. It is used to serve social causes and to provoke social change, which consequently most of the times leads to legislation changes as well.  

The 5 ‘Ps’ used in commercial marketing practices, now apply also in social marketing; however as mentioned by Tench R. and Yeomans L. (2006) in their book Exploring Public Relations they are interpreted in a different way, as shown below:

·      Price represents intangible or tangible ‘sacrifices’ on behalf of the target group in order to gain some other benefits by this programme.

·      Product is an idea that represents what the programme aims to change.

·      Promotion represents the ways that will persuade the target audience to change behaviour.

·      Place interprets the channels used to reach the target audience.

·      Positioning is the already established perception of the target audience over the idea that the programme aims to promote.

The way that the marketing mix applies in social marketing seems to coincide with the steps followed in a communications campaign emphasizing in behaviour change, such as research and analysis of the problem/issue, audience segmentation, strategy development, implementation and programme evaluation.

Whether an organisation will use public relations or social marketing to deliver a public communications campaign, I guess it depends on the social issues that needs to be dealt with each time and on the organisation itself, its resources and the experience and education of its staff. The use of social marketing to deliver a communications campaign consequently influences the role of Public Relations within organisations, since marketers seem to expand in a field that once was dominated by public relations practitioners. 

Important Note:
The article of Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman was published in the Journal of Marketing, (volume 35, pp. 3-12) in 1971 under the tiltle “Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change”.

Has Power in Politics changed hands?

The penetration of the PR practitioners in political world was a result of the implementation of marketing techniques in politics. In democracies saturated by the media and in societies dominated by the image, communication consultants became necessary for the career evolution of politicians. Although professional marketing in politics is not something new, this is not completely approved by everyone. Many people nowadays seem to believe that PR in politics-often called as ‘spin’-has transferred  power from politicians to their communication experts. But how much does this perception reflects reality?

This week I attended a debate organised by Trevor Morris, our visiting professor of Public Relations in the University of Westminster. The motion discussed in the debate was that ‘PR and spin have undermined trust in politics’. The attendees were challenged to decide, whether political PR has caused distrust in politics or if it is just the PR critics’ fault, who unfairly target the messengers. Some interesting opinions were heard by the participants of the debate for and against this motion and I must admit that although before the debate I was somehow prejudged that ‘spin’ was to blame for the public’s distrust in politics, at the end I was feeling quite confused. Several thoughts crossed my mind while I was listening to the speakers from both sides. So far, it seemed I had more proofs that spin indeed had harmed politics, but this perception was challenged in my mind.

Were the communication experts responsible for the political actions? Clearly, the messengers of each government are not the ones to make the political decisions, like financial cuts or going to war. Political communicators are responsible of how these messages, that the government needs to communicate, will be delivered to the public. We cannot blame communication consultants for trying to build their news agenda in such a way so that they are being proactive instead of reactive. After all, that is their job; what they were hired for.

 



Source of the image: Google



On the other hand, it is true that some practitioners involved in political PR, use manipulative techniques in order to prevent criticism for those they represent or to persuade people in favour of political actions. However, these  techniques are being consciously supported by politicians themselves. Aren’t they aware of what their spin-doctors suggest? Of course they are; as it is also those who promised people to govern fairly and not their communication consultants. Yet politicians themselves use spin as well in their public speeches. I cannot simply accept that they are just puppets or preys in the hands of spin-doctors.

In some countries it also happens that journalists and corporate or state media allow news stories that are favourable to the government, while avoid serious criticisms against it. This proves that spin exists in every profession and this distrust in politics is the result of a chain reaction from a series of factors. Spin appears in many aspects of our everyday lives; many individuals choose to give their own perspective of things, using sometimes unfair techniques to convince their interlocutor in favour or against an opinion. It seems that it is up to each individual’s morality how he will act in his personal and professional relations. The point is how acceptable this behaviour will be by various stakeholders. Transparency in politics needs to come first from the top, meaning the politicians and the public needs to challenge the information that receives from each side and not simply digest whatever is served to them.

New Trend: Social Media PR Campaigns

Public Relations have been placed at the forefront of marketing and communication strategies to build awareness of your business to existing and potential customers. The new trend in Consumer Public Relations is social media PR campaigns.

PR practitioners, when carrying out a PR campaign, use several communication channels to deliver the company’s messages. During the last years, there has been a wide use of social media. Globalisation has changed the ways of communication and people do not want to be passive receivers of messages anymore. They want to be part of the plot. ‘Word of mouth’ publicity seems to be very influential nowadays and social media platforms offer the opportunity for that to happen massively.
To achieve a greater impact, it is necessary to follow the new tendencies in audience’s communication habits and adjust as soon as possible.

A social media PR campaign is the key to achieve brand loyalty. You interact and build personal relationships with existing or potential customers because the brand immediately acquires a human substance behind the computer screen. Direct connection with your target audience results to improve awareness over the brand and its products or services. Subsequently this leads to an attitude and behaviour change, which facilitates the path to purchase.

Using social media to deliver a PR campaign helps maintain control of what is published about your company, by taking out the middlemen like journalists, that inevitably exist when delivering a PR campaign through traditional media. Social networks allows you to be your own media, publish your own content and communicate directly with your customers.

The interaction with the public by using social media platforms is a two-way communication between a brand and its consumers. It offers the opportunity of getting feedback on your targeted consumer. By identifying what they need, want or don’t want, it can save you loads of money, time and effort. You are going to know exactly what the public is looking for and you will be there to provide it to them.

When you open an online conversation with everyone, while delivering a PR campaign, it is possible to receive negative criticism. Be prepared to deal with it by attending the communication channels on a daily basis. Remove any trolling or spam feedback and respond to negative comments in a coordination with the company. Showing that customers are first priority, a potential issue can turn into an opportunity for the brand.

Take advantage of this new trend in the industry to make your brand stand out in the market. Let it be that the others follow you and not the other way around.

This video was produced for the purposes of an assignment for the course MA Public Relations in University of Westminster, London, UK.

Source of all images used in this video is Google.

Activism & NGOs in the PR sphere

Environmental and consumer issues, that arose in the recent era, and the high skepticism as a characteristic of the post-modern societies has led to the formation of activists groups. Of course freedom of expression as one of the democratic values has offered a fruitful environment for the development of activism as well. These groups are formed by people who have become aware of an issue or problem and are being organised to do something about it, trying at the same time to influence with their actions other publics.

Corporations and NGOs have both welcomed a growth during the last years partly because of the globalisation; however these organizations are of a very different type and have different agendas. The conflicting dynamic interactions between them shape partly the society we live in.

One of the greatest challenges that PR practitioners working in corporations face nowadays, is the reconciliation between the corporation’s interests and the demands by pressure groups.

On the other hand, let’s not forget that many PR practitioners are employed by activist organizations as well. PR practitioners working in NGOs have a clear vision and it is more simple for them to define objectives than their colleagues working in corporations. They deliver campaigns to force corporations meet legal requirements and social expectations. When the legitimacy of a corporation is undermined, the name of the brand and its market value could be harmed or it could even have a negative impact on its relationships with key stakeholders, such as employees or customers. The impact of pressure groups’ activity can be greater on the corporation when government and the media are involved.

The Edelman Trust Barometer for 2011 showed that people trusted NGOs by 5% more than they trusted business. Corporations have realized that for the wellbeing of their business it is necessary to monitor these publics and their perceptions towards the corporation. Corporate PR started being more proactive than reactive. Consequently issues management has become very important.

Corporations and NGOs have started to develop collaborations, under the assumption that this would be beneficial to both organizations. However there are some issues that occur from that collaboration such as transparency and integrity. Providing to NGOs sensitive corporate information could be quite risky for the wellbeing of a corporation and that raises the question in what extent the corporation is willing to reveal such information. On the other hand media coverage over this collaboration could harm the legitimacy of the NGO and people might start doubting for the integrity of its members. Before implementing an NGO-Corporation collaboration as a tactic to resolve conflicts, PR practitioners from both sides should rethink the consequences that this could have on their organisation and consider that it might backfire.

Stakeholders or Publics?

The job of a PR practitioner is to facilitate the relationship between an organisation and its publics...or is it stakeholders?!…or maybe both…let me think…!

The distinction between these two terms requires further explanation. I remember in the first essay I wrote for my masters degree, I used both terms interchangeably, believing that the meaning was equal. Was it because I hadn’t done enough reading on the topic or because it is difficult to distinguish the difference?

According to Freeman (1984) a stakeholder is someone who has an interest or is affected by the organisation. The stakeholders of an organisation would include its customers, shareholders, employees, suppliers, media, local community and national government. The number of stakeholders that each organisation has, can vary; however not all of these groups or individuals are active towards the organisation, despite the fact that they seem to hold a stake on it. Grunig and Hunt (1984) defined publics as these individuals or groups that eventually will become active towards an organisation when a problem or issue comes up. That means that each stakeholder can be a potential public. This could happen for example when a company’s employees organise a protest against the organisation at the loss of their jobs. Immediately they turn from a group of stakeholders to being a public.

A PR practitioner’s job is to scan and categorise the stakeholder groups of the organisation, according to their power, needs, expectations and influence. There are many ways to segment the organisations’ stakeholders  and publics; it can be done by geographic, demographic,  psychographic orientation or by group membership, overt and covert power, or even according to their role in the decision making.

The Power-Interest Matrix can help categorise stakeholders according to how interested they are in the organisation or how influential they can be on it. This model is used to plan the engagement strategies based on the position that these groups hold in the matrix. It is possible that from time to time some groups might need to be repositioned from one segment to another depending on the situation, meaning interest or power change. Based for example on Grunig and Hunt’s (1984)  theory about stakeholders and publics as mentioned above, it is necessary when an issue occurs and a stakeholders’ group turns into a public, to reposition them within the power/interest matrix.

Some of the stakeholders might belong to more than one groups at the same time. The challenging task for a PR practitioner is to identify in advance the conflicts that may occur between the different stakeholder groups, within an environment that is constantly changing and coordinate public relations activity in such way to prevent these conflicts.

Communicating during a corporate crisis

There is no recipe that can guarantee success when a company faces a crisis situation; however there are some key elements that can really help a corporation turn crises into an opportunity. It is important initially to define the problem (awareness) and take into consideration all stakeholders. A company should be prepared to deal with the worst cases scenario, centralize the information flow and communicate effectively.

Standing against the media during crisis can be a big misstep; the battle will be lost. Media need a ‘cause and effect’ story to which their audience will feel related and a corporate crisis is always newsworthy. Being combative at time of crisis can really destroy corporate reputation. Any irrational response or wrong statement, when loosing control, can give media a good story, which most probably will have a negative impact on the brand. The way a company chooses to communicate with the media might determine the outcome of a crisis. It is necessary to select a spokesperson to represent the brand with confidence, showing true concern about the situation that has occurred and consideration towards the people affected. Since the beginning of the crisis the company should send clear messages to all of  its stakeholders, demonstrate competence and maintain control of the situation when talking to the media.
Evidently, good communication skills during crisis can support a company's reputation, whereas poor communication or complete lack of it can damage the company's business.

This is the proposed 5Cs model that is being introduced in Tench R. and Yeomans L.’s book ‘Exploring Public Relations’ (2006, 2nd edition). This model is based on the experience of senior crisis managers, who believe that it can be effective during corporate crisis.

BP’s communication missteps

Last spring the “green” profile, that BP was launching over the last years, collapsed on account of a disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the company’s own omissions on safety measures, followed also by big communication transgressions. The company was left looking so unprepared and unable to deal with a corporate crisis and obviously lacked of a communication strategy. It seems that BP was swallowed by its own reputation. The company’s green logo has since become synonymous to the biggest environmental disaster in petroleum history.

But what went so wrong with BP’s communication strategy?

The company’s CEO Tony Hayward, that was BP's spokesperson at the time of the crisis, seemed totally unprepared to deal with the situation, since he proceeded in making some provocative statements. The company lost control of what was being said or written in the media about its role in this tragic incident. Let’s not forget that a corporate crisis with such big environmental and financial dimensions is always newsworthy to the media, which as third party endorsers influence public opinion.

Instead, in a period of crisis the spokesperson should constantly be present in the media and deal with the interviews in a way that the company can send clearly the right messages to the audience. Therefore, it is essential for companies to identify potential  scenarios of corporate crisis in advance and have a rehearsed plan on what to say in the first place.

Public outrage kept growing when BP did not seem able to manage with people’s expectations. The company should immediately proceed in every possible action to reduce the oil spill consequences on the environment and the local residents that were strongly affected. Unfortunately, BP failed to prevent the oil spill promptly and did very little to clean and revitalize the affected area. Useful communication channels with the public were also foolishly cut down. Instead of listening to the audience’s thoughts and expectations through social media and respond to them, BP tried to shut down a parody profile that was created in twitter for the company, while at the same time was buying Internet search terms that were related to the disaster by the oil spill.

Will it ever be possible for BP to regain its reputation? There are people saying that it is never too late to admit your mistakes and implement an effective communication strategy, while others believe that even if BP financially survives, it will never be trusted again. With a big trial for this disastrous oil spill ahead pending, I guess this is something we will find out in the future.

Don’t shoot propaganda!

Propaganda has been used in wartimes throughout the history in order to win people’s devotion towards a certain cause. Public Communications professionals working in that field are aware that their job is ‘dirty’. They are known with the pejorative term ‘spin doctors’ because of their ability to use manipulative PR tactics, such as selectively presented facts, in an efficient way to serve their purposes.

A type of a very deceitful propaganda was used in the last decade in Iraq war, where the US government resorted to fabrication concerning Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaida and the Iraqi nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Obviously, transparency cannot be expected in a war where its real purposes must not be revealed to the public.

As we live in a digital era, the power of image has become much stronger and technology helps people with a lot of creativity, to kind of release their talent. ’Homemade’ produced videos by the US army itself, Photoshop to change images to serve a certain purpose and embedded journalists were some of the techniques that permitted the US government to ‘cook’ the information released in the US media. It seems that in democratic countries, where there is supposed to be free press, it is much easier to camouflage propaganda by using third party endorsement to convince the public for the accuracy of the information.

The US government might has won the propaganda war in their own country but in the rest of the world people were more skeptical about what was being projected in the media. They did not trust the American political statements and the ‘action movie like’ videos. They were also doubting the real purposes of this war, believing that the real reason was control of the oil and profit making. Some of them even dared to say that the US Government was aware of the 9/11 attacks before it even occurred.

All that created a negative image of the country in general and the credibility of the US politicians was ruined. That makes me wonder, whether these PR techniques that were used back in the Second World War to propagate the public and justify war should be used even today. Of course if we need Public Relations in the political arena to achieve short-term purposes without caring for a country’s long-term reputation, then I guess keep propaganda alive!

Spread your message through social media

Social media offer the opportunity to interact with people worldwide, analyse important issues of the Public Relations Industry, share opinions and of course get people to know who you are. Watch the video to listen to what two students of our Uni believe about social media!