Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility is becoming a global mega trend. Corporations are trying to become sustainable in order to change the world or help with fighting the crisis of climate change. I was shocked when I learned that 10, 000 liters of water goes into making burger, fries and coke meal while thousands of kids die needlessly in Africa from dirty water. CSR is a global opportunity for companies to operate a responsible business. Many people ask why does it matter, what are the benefits for the company?  Well, I think that it enhances brand’s reputation, and organisations will be recognized for what they do. Furthermore, by being more efficient, it helps not only the environment but also company can save money in a long run.

I believe that CSR is a way to go however many companies are doing this merely to keep up with their competitors hence ruining the legacy of CSR.  The CSR Fashion Show picture says it all. Role of PR in CSR is important but it shouldn’t be owed by PR. It really should be everyone’s responsibility (e.g. all departments not only CSR one and even customers). What future holds for Corporate Social Responsibility? I believe that soon it will be embedded in all of the companies’ strategy worldwide.

Symmetric vs. Asymmetric Model and the Use of CSR

According to the theory of the two-way symmetrical model, ‘policies should be changed to better serve the public interest’ and ‘both management and publics will change somewhat after a public relations effort’.  I believe that this idea is unfortunately rather unrealistic and idealistic. Organisations hire public relations professionals to prioritize their interests over the publics’. According to the symmetrical model, PR professionals listen to the concerns of both clients and key publics and help them adjust to one another. Could this be a utopian model? I found out that in the symmetrical model, persuasion must replace understanding as the major goal of communication. Codes of ethics and transparency has become a very important element of PR practice, hence following these symmetrical model would be ideal. In reality organisations don’t want to waste time and money hence the asymmetrical model is more applicable.

The authors were right when stating that large businesses will want to use the two-way symmetrical model to help maintain the social responsibility required by government regulators. This observation is quite timeless as nowadays CSR and green PR is becoming lot more practised by the big corporations in order to differentiate themselves from competitors. 

I believe that asymmetrical model fits society of 21^st century better than the idealistic, but ethically correct symmetrical model. Today’s profit-driven business environment does not give the two-way symmetrical model much of a chance. It makes it difficult to justify shareholder greed and big bonuses when one have to worry about fairness, balance and ethics. Some might even argue that whoever pays, expects loyalty in return. There is a risk of conflict of interests unless all parties agree to share the benefits that derive from productive business transactions. Once again, is this even possible in capitalism? Although some companies try to use CSR policies to serve in favour of the public and its environment, majority of organisations are and will follow the asymmetrical model due to high competition especially when selling consumer products.

For this post I used: Grunig, James. E and Todd Hunt (1984) Managing Public Relations. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Wilson.

Social Marketing aka the Moral Marketing

Social marketing as a discipline was found  in the 1970s, when Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman published "Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change" in the Journal of Marketing. However, there is evidence of earlier social marketing used as a tool for birth control in India, where legislative approach was substituted with persuasion based approach. 

There are many definitions of Social Marketing but to summarize them: Social Marketing uses behaviour goals in order to influence social behaviours and to benefit the target audience and to promote society's well being as a whole. 

This technique has been used in various programms for example, for contraceptives, encouraging condom use, anti-tobacco campaigns, reducing cigarette smoking in public areas, campaign against skin cancer, asking public to use seat belts and follow speed limits. 

Social Marketing can have even more difficult goals: to make potentially a long-term behavioral change in target populations. 

The main difference between commercial and social marketing is that the primary aim of social marketing is social good, while in commercial marketing the aim is primarily financial.

I rememeber, in our campiagn class we had to create a social change campaigns. But what is the definition of it? According to Philip Kotler and Ned Roberto: "A social change campaign is an organized effort conducted by one group (the change agent) which attempts to persuade others (the target adopters) to accept, modify, or abandon certain ideas, attitudes, practices or behavior."

I beleive that the success of Social Marketing depends largly on effective use of media channels. Social marketers have to have a realistic expectations too. The result of such campaign can be sometimes seen only in the long-term, even as long as 5-7 years. I remember that it was very challenging coming up with the right campaign ideas, however it is very rewarding and I hope to be part of a real social change campaign one day.

I was very interested when in January 2009 the Department of Health launched Change4Life - England’s first ever national social marketing campaign - with the aim of reducing obesity. The focus of the campaign was prevention and set out to change the behaviours and circumstances that lead to weight gain by urging the public to 'Eat well, Move more and Live longer'.

After the official launch of Change4Life the challenge was to help people recognise their family may be at risk and encourage the target audience to complete a 'How are the kids?' questionnaire.

Overall, radio proved to be highly effective in terms of changing attitudes and positively affecting behaviour, crucial for this initial phase of the campaign.

The relevance of the campaign improved with 10% more people strongly agreeing that Change4Life is "for someone like me" after being exposed to the campaign.

Furthermore, there was an 18% increase in the overall numbers of people intending to make changes to their lifestyle in the next month.

This is a chart on behaviour change of the target audience

The Cost of ''Free Web'' Google is watching you!

There is a dilemma whether web is free. In my opinion the answers is no. I was always very fascinated by Google. It has highly targeted advertising. It monitors what we search and targets us with relevant products or advertisement.This way we are giving away information on what we like and what interests us. Although it is a long-term goal, Google will eventually make money of individual because it makes attachment to an individual by providing ‘free’ service. Although we think we have power by using web, we are being manipulated. As you can see on the picture, the minute you enter e.g. online banking into the search, relevant advertisement pops out. The World Wide Web seemed like new democracy however in 1994, web was open for business, which created new opportunities for commerce to make profit. I was a bit shocked when I found out that my email account is being scanned in order to find things I like and then sending me a relevant advertisement. So it made me think, is this system sufficient? I could have done an assignment on cars however I have no intention whatsoever to buy one. But never the less they know that on a long run I will purchase something online.  

Example of Google's Advertisement

Is there any privacy in 21^st century? Well, I guess there isn't, as all my searches are being recorded and closely monitored.  There will always be so called digital fingerprint. We trade our privacy for surfing the net. I believe that ‘free web’ is alternating privacy, personal space and who we are!

Political Communication and the Role of PR

  PR or Propaganda?

One form of political communication is propaganda. Various academics associate propaganda with public relations due to the founder of modern PR, Edward Bernays. He used mass psychology as a social control technique and later praised propaganda in his book called Propaganda (1928).

Walter Lippmann, the most influential theorist of propaganda-managed democracy and Bernays believed that propaganda and democracy go hand in hand (Miller and Dinam, 2008).  

After reading Moloney (2006) it was clear that people believed that propaganda is used to manipulate public opinion in favour of ideas, values and policies of the political or economic elites, as well as using a one-way communications flow which is low in facts, yet high in emotional content.  

In my opinion, PR is far from being the sole way in which people can be persuaded. Advertising and other marketing techniques evidently play their part. Almost every approach used by the PR industry can be claimed by other disciplines, anywhere where the human senses can be engaged in a way that enables people to influence others; for example music, religion or fashion. Some authors even believe that, unlike propaganda, PR is not about persuasion, but in its ideal form, about mutual understanding. They both serve different causes. I believe that PR science still has a long way to go until practitioners will be able to explicitly respond to the allegations of PR being another form of propaganda.

Political Communication and the Role of PR

In the past, people would express their opinions by standing on he soapbox, which could be considered an effective way of talking with out mediations. I think that government communication differs to the political one. For starters it is information driven model and should be spin free. It informs people what they need to know. So on one hand gov’t communication should be more ethical however on the other hand someone has still decided on what information to deliver hence its selective. 

According to Brian McNair, there are 4 types of PR activity. 1) media management, 2) image management, 3) internal communications and 4) information management. I would like to talk more about the image management. As we all know, in political PR it is all about developing someone’s image and identity in order to get more votes. I was closely following Obama’s campaign, which was the golden standard. It was interesting to see the transformation in order to make him even more popular.  

What was interesting to see is a picture of Obama taken with facial expression of a guy that has a vision and of course with US colours in the background. The picture had the ability of making people see ideas and messages such as “yes we can” with out being told. PR was very clever by enabling people to purchase merchandise such as mugs, hats, T-shirts. This has shown the identification with the “Obama brand” that people have spread by purchasing these items. 

They have also been reaching audience via social media networks by using celebrity endorsement, which is becoming an increasing trend in politics. I am including a video that went around the world and has spread the message to support Obama in the elections.

The Smartphone Trend

In the near future people will be using their mobile phones and searching for information not on the web, but on the social media sites via the specific applications on their smartphones. As the mobile technology is growing so rapidly, PR has to evolve around it and use it accordingly to achieve great results. Watch my podcast to find out more about the subject of Smartphone Trend and PR. Enjoy!

Thanks for watching. I look forward to your comments.

The Spin

In the class, I have learnt that in public relations, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through providing an interpretation of an event or campaign to persuade public opinion in favour or against a certain organization or public figure. There have been many debates that PR should be more transparent exactly due to this bad reputation. 

It is well known that politicians are often accused by their opponents of claiming to be honest and seek the truth while using spin tactics to manipulate public opinion and their actions. Historically Public Relations in Slovakia has been perceived as propaganda produced by government, businesses and other dominant interests to maintain communist ideology in the country.  Personally i would be really interested whether an experience of being propagandised produced a culture of suspicion and mistrust in PR, hence a generated low reputation.

Edward Bernays has been called the "Father of Spin". In his book he describes situations where tobacco and alcohol companies used techniques to make certain behaviours more socially acceptable. Bernays was proud of his work as a propagandist although many PR professionals disapprove his tactics due to breaking the so called code of conduct/ethics. So the million dollar question remains, serve the client or the public??? I think this is for every individual to decide.

Stuart Ewen said that "The history of PR is… a history of a battle for what is reality and how people will see and understand reality." This exactly gives a true picture of Slovakia being under communist regime. Just imagine that just after the Chernobyl disaster, my in that time 1 year old brother was still playing outside and was exposed to nuclear waste simply because government didn’t want to weaken the ideology that anything coming from Russia our communist ‘brothers’ is in any way less than perfect! Here it is a crystal clear example of how spin and propaganda can work really well for over a 30 years without people realising that they are being simply manipulated by spin and pure propaganda.

NGO’s activism and PR

Non-governmental organisation is there to lobby (try to change laws) or advocate for someone who has no voice or cannot be heard wit out their help. It could be argued that NGOs can easily become a threat to corporate organisations (e.g. PETA) but on the other hand can be a friend when a company practice CSR to e.g. improve community work. 

A great example of a situation when NGO becomes a threat is for instance a movie called Supersize Me which has raised a social issue of McDonald’s corporation causing health problems and obesity amongst population and kids. McDonald’s has become a target for several NGOs. It can be argued that the PR/ media communication person did not handle well the threats that were about to face McDonald’s after revealing this film. One can ask why that was. Was she maybe not heard from people above or was she simply too ignorant and did not consider the film to be a potential threat to McDonald’s reputation. 

NGO has various goals and functions. It is not only about corporate attack. NGO can deliver a service e.g. RNIB (a charity supporting blind and partially sighted people) or it can campaign for a change such as Greenpeace. It can also advocate or give voice to children or animals that could not be heard otherwise. 

NGO is seeing outside the sphere of influence, hence organisations and corporate PR is seen in the centre and sphere of influence. We need to ask a question, why so often there is a silence between activists and PR. Activists ignore PR and PR industry ignores practices of activists. This could be the result of PR being small and new body of knowledge hence some organisations are unorganised and unprofessional (so called cottage industry). It is necessary to create public debates to make corporate bodies to change e.g. laws hence, NGOs have very important role in order to keep a balance in the fierce corporate world.

Contemporary Theory and Issues

There are different models and theories for the company’s communication channels and audiences. 

It can be argued that Bernstein’s wheel is not PR specific. In his theory, one can spin the wheel to use any combination, necessary for the organisation. However, this model is out of date and does not take internet into consideration. It can be considered one way form of communication. It also does not differentiate amongst stakeholders meaning that one might be more important to the organisation’s survival than other. 

Esman’s Linkages theory is on the other hand two-way relationship, however does not include tools, its only nature of relationship. It overlaps with Grunig’s model when it comes to public segmentation. The organisation is still in the centre of everything according to this model e.g. government has power hence becomes high priority to the organisation. On the other hand general public have no immediate impact hence organisation needs to only keep an eye on them. 

Grunig’s situational theory is not static, it is very operational model. Unlike the previous models, this one does not categorize where customers and employees are. There are no compartments, they can be placed anywhere. According to Grunig, publics can actually be higher thread to organisation (e.g. via social networks) hence are as important as government sector. 

 
Power-interest matrix has no checklist or general strategic. It does not segment and list stakeholders. Different aspects can be applied and groups are not predefined. This model allows quality thinking on how stakeholders can be used or prioritized in order to maximize profit. Similarly to Grunig’s model, groups move around which means that the model is not static but flexible.

Crisis Management

Crisis is a major event that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders, or the general public and this element of surprise requires short decision time. In some cultures (e.g. Chinese) risk management represents danger and opportunity. The opportunity comes when PR practitioners get to demonstrate their skills. It is essential that PR practitioners know what people are thinking/saying about the organisation from the outside. Furthermore, crisis shows value of PR and the need of them. Crisis raises the profile, status and PR’s role in the company. It is interesting to see different perception of risk in various cultures. Some cultures such as US have risk zero tolerance. There is so much suing happening for various minor incidents. 

It could be argued that perception of risk is important in PR world and the science behind it not as much. For instance, when Toyota faced the braking problem crisis either their PR people did very poor job or were not heard by the people on the top. Engineers claimed that no mistake occurred from their side which made customers the idiots that can’t step on the breaks. Whatever Toyota says now, and however well it acts, there is a sense that it ignored the problem until it was forced to take action. Interesting was that in Japan, the lower you bow the more sorry you are. However, the CEO of Toyota did not bow low enough indicating that he is not sorry which pointed a negative light on Toyota’s image. It’s fascinating how every culture is different and a lot can be read from body language.

The War Spin

Isn’t it interesting how bad story gets turned into a good one so that Bush and Blair can get the ‘right’ story out! Like the one about saving Private Lynch. Pentagon has released a 5 minute video about the mission to save comrade which is just enough to get the picture but nothing more. Nobody gets any details or any prove of this operation. This was a great plan to look good in the eyes of the public. The American strategy was to ensure the right television footage by using embedded reporters and images from their own cameras, editing the film themselves. Doesn’t it come handy that she has no recollection of the whole episode and probably never will?

To send message to the public that US presence in Iraq is essential and that the regime is crumbling, they put on a little theatre where Iraqis came out on the street with white flags. It is all about maximum imaginary and minimum insight. Just like all reporters sitting in the office, sipping on coffee in Doha, far from the danger of battle fields yet still writing stories about the war in Iraq. They would watch Fox news and then write about it to newspapers.  What kind of journalism is that? And is that a quality material they are feeding us because we all know that the real information is away from cameras. This war is all about controlling the message. There are no dialogues or debates, only controlled message that gets to the public. So yes, war has always been and will always be one big spin!

Here is a video of Private Lynch story, make up your own mind!