Handling crises from the third sector

This posts reflect on readings for week 10.

This week's reading introduces a new concept - the Third Sector. What is the third sector? There's the public sector (government), the private sector (businesses) and then there is the third sector - the activist public. While this third sector is hardly new, it has risen in prominence and influence in this age, with the advent of a more civic-minded society and the internet and other communication tools, which allow like-minded individuals to pool resources together.

What does the third sector have to do with PR? Engagement with the third sector can lead to positive results.

Apple is a positive example. Through its CEO Steve Jobs, Apple often positions itself at the forefront of the concerns of activists. When an issue was made about Apple's laptops and LCD displays containing environment-harming mercury, Jobs detailed how Apple has tried to keep its production practices environmentally friendly, and is actually in the process of rolling out mercury-free products. At a time when the major record labels were advocating placing restrictions on digital music, Jobs wrote an open letter appealing for the labels to distribute digital music with no restrictions. By consistently positioning itself to appeal to the third sector, Apple's products too gain appeal.

On the other hand, not engaging the third sector can lead to disasterous consequences - including PR crises. If an organization ignores or sidelines the concerns of the community or civic organizations, it can find itself or its projects quickly embroiled by protests, which turn public sentiment against the organization. This is especially true in the Internet age, where such community organizations are able to spread messages and mobilize themselves rapidly. PR practitioners must be mindful of these stakeholders and try to engage them to circumvent any outbreak of a crisis. In reserve, the PR practitioner should have a backup crisis management plan that includes engagement with the third sector in order to quickly restore confidence of all stakeholders in the organization.

Nuts and bolts

This post reflects on reading for week 9.

This week's reading is "A typical public relations program", written by Candy Tymson. It way more interesting and concise than the entirety of our prescribed textbook (Public Relations Theory and Practice 3rd edition, by Jane Johnston and Clara Zawawi). Tymson also appears to have covered everything that we've read in the past 2 months or so. I have no idea why they didn't ask us to read this first to give a broad overview of PR.

With that little protest out of the way, I must say that Tymson gives a much more hands on look at what PR is all about. Tymson gives a very practical view of why management invests in PR, and indeed, why PR has often been talked of as being a management function. She then goes on to describe the basics of a PR program and impresses upon the fact that the PR practitioner is in fact involved in a multi-disciplinary role: he or she does market research, comes up with a broad (or narrow) strategy, plans the logistics, calculates finances, monitors responses and reactions from stakeholders and the goes through the whole process again to improve, improve and improve.

Many practical nuggets of wisdom are included, such as not lobbying parliament when it's Christmas, or not getting your CEO to tour factories nationwide when there is not enough time. Pretty sagely. I admire Tymson for being able to illustrate and bring PR alive in a way that the textbook has failed.

Don't want to fail spectacularly? Research and evaluate!

This post reflects on readings for week 8.

Sponsorships and special events are mentioned as a high-profile aspect of public relations that focuses public attention on a place or issue intensely over the period of time it takes place. This can be a double-edged sword; the event can be a spectacular success, or an equally spectacular failure. To prevent catastrophy, proper research into stakeholder expectations and evaluation of previous efforts and outcomes of similar recent events should be conducted to ensure that any planned special event stays special.

The Living Heroes VP60 shows clearly how research into input, output and outcomes played a significant role in not only meeting public expectations of a good and fun event, but also in keeping activities relevant not only to veterans who fought in a war that took place more than half a century ago but also the general public who were not old enough to have experienced the war.

Another point I found interesting was that the Taronga Zoo case study illustrates how corporate social responsibility can have a tangible benefit for the organization. In exchange for corporate sponsorship, Taronga Zoo provides zoo membership and special zoo events to organizations, who then pass this on to top-level staff in the form of incentive or salary packages. This can be a crucial differentiating point when fighting to hire top talent in a crowded corporate world.

Overcoming skepticism

This post reflects on readings for week 7.

The Australian public, and perhaps the wider world, tends to view corporate sponsorship and purported acts of corporate social responsibility skeptically. Corporations are in the business of making cash -- lots of it. Why should they spend on anything that doesn't contribute to the bottomline?

These negative perceptions must be managed when planning for any corporate involvement in social and community work, regardless of how altruistic the intent. If the public wouldn't get close to what the organization is doing with a ten-foot pole, then nothing will get accomplished, or at least not efficiently.

In Vodaphone's case, an ingenious idea to give the Australia public a sense of ownership in the World of Difference Program was used. Instead of dumping a lump of hard cash to a random charity, WOD instead gave four Australians the chance to work for their favourite charity for a year, with their salaries and expenses to be fully paid for.

On top of an already innovative idea, WOD got the endorsement of Australian Women's Netball Team captain Liz Ellis, as well as the winners of previous years' WOD to give media interviews. By placing a public figure -- the choice of a sports celebrity over an entertainment celebrity was a good one -- and "everyday" people as the face of the WOD campaign, the publicity campaign was humanized and came across as being more grassroots oriented, rather than being pushed by an aloof, faceless corporation.

WOD was able to use previous winners to push a human-interest angle that otherwise would not have been present. These case studies of individuals working for charity for a year must have had generate huge media and public interest and no doubt helped to garner more publicity and support for WOD.

Often, challenges faced by PR campaigns do not come from competing businesses, events or products, but rather from inertia and perceptions already innate in the public. By tailoring campaigns to overcome this, CSR and philanthrophy objectives are easier to achieve.

A "military" approach to PR

This post reflects on readings for week 6.

Melanie James opens this week's readings (PR strategic planning, tactics and evaluation) with an interesting premise:

When you first encounter some of the language of public relations you might wonder whether you’ve mistakenly enrolled in military school. Words like strategy, tactic and target abound in public relations texts.

While the field of public relations and military operations are not so easily reconciled to each other, the similar language used in both activities reflects that there is a common concept shared between both public relations and military campaigns -- the concept of "contested space".

I have had trouble before differentiating between strategy and tactics as both seem to be two words for the same concept. Inspired by this military-themed introduction, I did a quick dictionary search using my Mac's dictionary widget (supplied by Oxford American Dictionaries) and got the follow definitions:

strategy

a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim

• the art of planning and directing overall military operations and movements in a war or battle. Often contrasted with TACTICS.

tactic

an action or strategy carefully planned to achieve a specific end

• the art of disposing armed forces in order of battle and of organizing operations, esp. during contact with an enemy. Often contrasted with STRATEGY.

• 
  

From these dictionary definitions it becomes clear that in PR, strategy refers to the overall plan, wheras tactic refers to a specific sub-plan that fits within the overall strategy.

At the strategic level, he or she needs to consider the objectives of the campaign (eg. increasing sales of a product), determine the total resources available ($$), then determine the individual efforts, or tactics, needed to move towards the eventual goal and finally allocate resources to these tactics.

The tactical level is more specific and interested in situation on the ground, as the phrase "during contact with an enemy" suggests. In terms of PR, when in the "contested space", contact with an enemy would not only include direct competitors, such as a rival organization, but also indirect barriers slowing progress to the goal, such as the attitudes and opinions of the public.

Here is one place where PR and conventional battles diverge. One cannot simply send in the air force to carpet bomb a company's clients into submission! Or at least not all the time. Instead, it is important to seek out and engage the organization's stakeholders, both within and without.

Sometimes, it is important that the managers of an organization view situations from a PR perspective. James discusses a case where a PR practitioner, attending an operational meeting of a large organization, manages to convince senior managers to cancel a disasterous customer service policy before it is implement. (Interestingly, this is known as a "pre-emptive strike" in military terms -- destroying the capability of a party to cause harm before they actually do.)

In terms of engaging external stakeholders, the textbook refers to a case study of the Mitchell Freeway extension in Joondalup City, Western Australia. Here, the construction company was able to successfully build the freeway extension by gradually converting the at-first partially-hostile community to become supporters of the project. The construction company went out of its way to customize noise walls at varying locales to heights preferred by local residents, saved significant greenery and wildlife from disruptiong by planning construction around them and educated the public on the advantages of the freeway extension. By showing that the company took the community's feedback seriously, the project was able to proceed smoothly and without disruption through the use of direct action and other means of frustration. (Interestingly, this is a close parallel to "softening the ground" in military terms!)

The "contested space" concept is useful to understand the role of strategy and tactics in public relations, while engagement with stakeholders both inside and outside of an organization is an integral part to PR strategies and campaigns.

Ethics, truth and consequence

This post reflects upon readings for week 5, on ethics.

Towards the end of the chapter, the concept of "ethical relativism" is introduced, whereby it is noted that some acts which are good in some circumstances or cultures may not be good in others. It ends up by saying there is a need to "consider the social environment in which the standards and actions exist, and the consequences of the action".

Consider the case of the Leeds Metropolitan University, as related by Philip Young. In the aftermath of the 7 July 2005 London bombings, an inquiry discovered that one of the perpertrators had studied at the University. The news of this broke during the graduation ceremony of that year's cohort. Lucy Laville, head of communications at the time, immediately withdrew all graduation videos and got all press inquiries to go through her, in order to prevent the graduation ceremony from becoming a media circus.

Here, it could be said that Laville's actions in withholding information was ethical because the hard truth would have a disproportionate effect not only on the image of the Univsersity, but would also negatively affect the memories of young adults who were supposed to go through one of the most important events of their lives, their university graduation. To have allowed the hard truth to go out unmitigated would have been unethical, not to mention unprofessional.

The 1982 Johnson & Johnson Tylenol recall serves as a useful contrast to the Leeds Met University incident. In this case, 7 people died after consuming the drug. Johnson & Johnson immediately recalled all of the drugs from stores and eventually discovered that the pills were laced with cyanide by an unknown person. The company eventually went on to create a tamper-proof packaging for their medicines.

In the Johnson & Johnson case, withholding information was NOT ethical, because the potential consequences of doing so were unacceptable. More members of the public could have been killed and the reputation of the company would have been severely damaged. This time round, allowing the hard truth to be disseminated clearly outweighed the consequences of withholding that information from the public.

So, the key thing to remember when considering the ethics of any particular situation and the contemplated actions, it is important to consider the consequences of any such action on the organization and its stakeholders before deciding on any course of action. What might work for one situation might not be the right solution for the next.

Case studies in media relations

This post reflects upon readings for week 4.

As I am currently taking a module in journalism, as well as being involved in the media, I found the readings from the textbook to be just a rehash of what I already know and learnt, just from the PR practitioner's point of view rather than the journalist's.

What really stood out for me, however, were the included case studies on the Sea Shepard Conservation Society and the SARS crisis in Singapore. These case studies provided a useful practical look into how theory is applied in two different real-life situations PR practitioners will no doubt find themselves in.

The Sea Shepards details how the non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization uses a clear and coherent strategy to gain media support for their activities. Through the use of various tactics, such as using symbols (baby animals, trees, plants, etc.) to present otherwise abstract ideas in a way that the general public will be able to relate to, getting celebrity endorsements and keeping the media well-fed with useful news and information, the Sea Shepards were able to build up rapport with the media, resulting in positive news coverage of their fourth anti-whaling expedition to Antartica.

The SARS crisis in Singapore demonstrated how the hospitals and the government used tactics which quickly reassured the public that everything was being done to contain the disease. Instead of putting an unknown hospital administrator in front of the cameras, the government sent the Health Minister, a recognizable and authoritative source, to speak on their behalf. And when healthcare workers were being stigmatized due to a number of them coming down with SARS, a campaign was launched through the media to educate and inform the public that they did not pose any threat to the public.

The key lesson to take away from these two different case studies is that the use of a clear and coherent media strategy builds up trust, respect and rapport with the media. This comes in handy when the organization makes the headlines for an event or when a crisis breaks out, as the media is more likely to see the organization in a more positive light, and passes on this view to its audience.

PR, journalism and blogging

I saw this article about what bloggers should know about PR from a Tweeter entry from Daniel Goh, creator of entrepreneurship blog Young Upstarts. Written by Pat Law, who is a member of Ogilvy PR's 360° Digital Influence team, it's a good read to gain some insight into the relationship between PR and journalism.

Pat was in turn inspired by these two articles written by Rohit Bhargava, a founding member of the 360º Digital Influence team: What All PR People Should Know About Journalists and What Journalists Should Know About PR People.

Do take a read. :)

Be SMART and SWOT

This post reflects upon readings for Week 3 -- Chapter 7.

Of all the strategy and planning frameworks covered in the text for this week's reading, two stand out in particular for me for their simplicity, elegance and opportunity for practical application in everyday life. They are:

• Setting SMART goals
• Performing a SWOT analysis

SMART is a framework to set reasonable goals/objectives for your PR campaign, and for practically anything else you want to do with life. The acronym stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Timeframed

For example, if you need to promote a product as part of a PR campaign, you want teenagers studying in Singapore Polytechnics (specific segment of consumers) to increase purchases by 20% (measurable) in next three months (timeframed). The goal of increasing sales by 20% must also not be too hard (achievable) or too easy (realistic).

Besides being a useful framework by which to check if goals set are appropriate, SMART goals are also instructional of the nature of PR. In the corporate context, PR is a results-oriented marketing and communications discipline. It is used to drive profitability and the bottom-line of companies, whether directly (by increasing sales) or indirectly (by positioning brands in a desirable light).

As the owner of GameSync, a web publication focusing on the video games community in Singapore, I can appreciate setting SMART goals. For example, last year I helped put together an online Team Fortress 2 tournament to attract the TF2 community to my website. Although ultimately successful in drawing more registrations from TF2 players and positioning GameSync as the go-to place for the community, defining a SMART goal would have helped to measure the positive impact of the event!

The SWOT analysis is used to identify key factors which will influence a brand or product. It stands for:

• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Threats

Listing all these key points of a brand or product helps to identify areas where the attention should be prioritized. It is helpful to understand the marketing and communications environment in which a product or brand lives in.

Once again taking GameSync as an simplified example, the TF2 community was identified as an opportunity as the game had just recently been launched. No other web publication had yet to actively court TF2 players (a clear lack of threat). GameSync had already established itself as a trusted brand in the competitive video gaming community (strength), although traditionally it was not a type of game that the core audience played (weakness). Clear synergy could be found here and so the decision to go ahead with the organization of a tournament was made.

This is of course a simplified example. In reality, for example, threats would include a much broader range, including other tournaments organized overseas and other general publications such as GameAxis and Playworks.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, SMART goals and SWOT analysis are useful not only in PR, but are also useful in marketing, business and even in your personal life. They're catchy and easy to remember, so try to use them as often as you can!

Out with the old shit

Blogs are fun to read when they have something useful to say, and when it is said with personality and with passion. Although this is an academic exercise, the fact that it has been moved from a closed environment (the University's Blackboard discussion board) to the open, public environment that is Blogspot and the wider Internet audience demands something different from what was originally intended.

So from today I will be doing the following:

• Start blogging and stop posting stuffy academic mini-essays
  
• Include more personal experience and opinion on the week's readings and lecture
• Link to interesting articles and opinion pieces related to PR

When I picked the name PR and You for the blog, I meant it. This is about PR, and this is a resource for You.

Have fun!

An introduction to PR

I think two key points to remember from this week's readings were:

1. The democratization of communications is quickly redefining how public relations is used
2. PR is a science, an art and a business

The readings made me think more about public relations theory/practice in that:

In the past, communicating with a mass audience was available only to corporations which had enough resources to afford to incur massive fees in pushing their messages through media channels required. In this corporate context, public relations was often said to "faciliate relationships and understanding between and organization and its publics" (McElreath in Johnston & Zawari, 2009).

However, the arrival and availability of affordable media recording and production tools and the Internet has resulted in the democratization of communications. Today, anyone with access to a mobile phone with built-in camera and the Internet is able to put out messages to a large audience.

Acknowledging this changed communication landscape, where messages are no longer propagated by organizations but can also be created and spread by its publics, Johnston and Zawari (2009) redefined PR as "the development and management of ethical strategies
using communications to build relationships with stakeholders or publics".

In order to develop and build relationships with its stakeholders (who always take an active interest in an organization or its actions) or its publics (who can be either active or passive in its interactions with an organization), the PR practitioner must be:

1. Systematic in constructing models and frameworks by which the audience can be understood (Science)
2. Creative in coming up with new and fresh ways of communicating with audiences (Art)
3. Prudent in achieving and creating the best possible value and end result with limited resources (Business)

Practicing PR requires the combination and synthesis of many disciplines.

This post refers to the readings for Week 2 -- Chapters 1, 2 &3.