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.