The Cost of Free

The digital revolution brought by internet and mobile phones has greatly changed communication, commerce and relations between people. Internet has become one of the most important tools in Public Relations As part of this digital revolution, social media has greatly facilitated the task of PR professional to target effectively their intended audience. In fact, social media has allowed the creation of communities; people with the same interests use the same platforms to communicate their thoughts and ideas. The creation of these communities has enabled corporations to create tailored advertising that will reach only individuals that might be interested on a specific good or service therefore increasing the chances of selling products.

The Virtual Revolution, a television documentary series that aired on BBC 2, looked at the impact internet has had on society over the past two decades. One of the episodes, the cost of free, examined how the web is transforming our notions of privacy and culture and the trades made online by users of the web as their share their thoughts, their preferences, their curiosities with the many search engines, services and media which appear to be delivering information online for free.

Here is the first part of the Cost of free:

PR and NGOs : Friends or Foes ?

NGOs and corporations have very different goals. NGOs try to raise awareness or change attitudes while corporations try to make profit.
The practice of public relations has often been associated with corporations. In fact, PR was perceived as a tool used for the promotion of corporations; which obviously makes PR part of the bad guys by opposition to NGOs being the good guys. This perception has lead NGO activists not to associate with PR professionals. However, whether this perception still exists or has started to fade, the tools NGOs use to communicate with their stakeholders to reach their goals are the same as the one used by PR people.
Whether it is to raise funds or awareness or to prevent something from happening, activists use events (demonstrations), celebrities and experts, social media etc.
Moreover there is more and more cooperation between NGOs and PR agencies.
As an example, Ogilvy and WWF have been working together since 1977.

Take a look at this video which was produced as part of the new WWF campaign:

WWF - We Are All Connected from Troublemakers.tv on Vimeo.

vidcast: social media

As part of my MA Public Relations, I had to do a vidcast from the perspective of a PR agency to introduce certain key aspects and issues regarding social media to clients.

Don’t shoot the messenger!

According to Kevin Moloney, the pluralistic society in which we live today has transformed PR into a powerful form of advocacy. In fact, today’s society is a competitive society: many voices want and need to be heard. The problem however is that media are saturated; people have therefore to compete and grab media’s attention to be heard.

Moloney point of view is valid; however it opens the door to political spin. In fact, if media are saturated with so many messages, who decides what message should be communicated?
So maybe it is better to embellish the truth to make the message more interesting, to make people want to listen to it. Then it is justified to spin if it is the only way to get a message heard.

But then again, there is not only one way to look at this problem. Political PR might be responsible for some spin but only because Political PR is responsible for the political communication. PR professionals do not rule countries, presidents and prime ministers do. Those are the people taking the important decisions; those are the people who make the choice to lie to their citizens. PR cannot be blamed for bad decision-making as it only communicates the message. If citizens do not trust their governments and politicians anymore maybe it means that politicians should try to do a better job and not blame it on bad PR.
And what happened to the fourth estate? What happened to journalists being the government’s watchdogs? What happened to the media being a forum in which all opinions can be expressed?

PR might have a part of responsibility in spin but it is definitely not the only one to blame.

Identifying and Prioritizing stakeholders

Identifying and prioritizing publics or stakeholders is very important for Public Relations practitioners especially for in-house PR. In fact, some groups of stakeholders can influence the way an organization acts. Some people will often support an organization such as shareholders others have to be won over or at least monitored to avoid a crisis such as consumers or pressure groups. It is therefore important to have a model that helps classifying stakeholders.

Correctly identifying and assessing the role and importance of each stakeholder can make the difference between a successful and a non-successful organization.

One tool that might help prioritizing stakeholders is the power interest matrix.

In fact, although a lot of different stakeholders may exist, some of them may have more importance than others: some of them might be affected by your organization, some of them might have the power to block you, and others might not care at all about what you do.

Minimal effort: stakeholders with low power and a low level of interest à no immediate action required but have to be monitored carefully in case their position in the matrix changes

Keep informed: Stakeholders with low power and a high level of interest à no immediate action required but have to be kept informed and monitored carefully in case their position in the matrix changes.

Keep satisfied: Stakeholders with high power but a low level of interest àmost challenging stakeholders to maintain relationship with: despite their lack of interest in general, they might exercise their power in reaction to a particular project or initiative.

Key players: stakeholders with high power and a high level of interest à these are the “key players”, their reaction towards the organization’s projects and initiatives must be given primary consideration.

When a headache could have killed them: Tylenol crisis management

In the fall of 1982, seven people in Chicago died mysteriously. After the autopsies the authorities determined that all the people that died has ingested capsules of Tylenol that were laced with cyanide. Someone had tampered with the Tylenol bottle once they were on store shelves. As the news spread, Johnson & Johnson’s nightmare began. Tylenol’s market share dropped from 32% to 7% and resulted in a loss of more than $ 100 million. The company had to immediately launch a Public Relations Program in order to limit the damage done to the product and to the company.

How did J&J manage the crisis?

Phase 1: Handling of the crisis

Costumers first: the company alerted via the media consumers across the US not to consume any type of Tylenol product until the extent of the tampering could be determined.

Recall of the product: the company also stopped the production of Tylenol as well as its advertising and recalled all Tylenol capsules from the market

Exchange: after recalling all Tylenol capsules, Johnson & Johnson also offered to exchange all the already purchased bottles of Tylenol capsules for Tylenol tablets.

Phase 2: Tylenol’s comeback

Less than 2 months after the incidents Tylenol capsules were re- introduced in the market baring a triple-seal tamper resistant packaging, making J&J the first company to comply with the Food and Drug Administration mandate of tamper-resistant packaging.

The company offered coupons and created a new discounted pricing program to make consumers buy Tylenol again. They also made presentations for the medical community.

Tylenol is now one of the classic examples of a well-handled crisis.

Although there is no template for crisis management, there are some dos and don’ts:

Here are some don’ts:

- Play ostrich: say nothing and hoping that no one will know about the problem

- Start working on a potential crisis situation after it is gone public

- Let your reputation speak for you

- Treat the media like the enemy

- Use language your audience does not understand

- Address only the issues without thinking about people’s feelings

- Make only written statements

Sources:

Making a crisis worse: The Biggest Mistakes in Crisis Communications

The Tylenol Crisis: How effective Public Relations Saved Johnson and Johnson

Public Relations in wartime: Perception management or Propaganda?

PR scholars and practitioners have been trying for decades now to show that Public Relations has earned the right to be seen as a real profession now rather than just a tool of persuasion and propaganda.

However, when governments hire PR agencies to help them convince the public that war is the only solution and that war is inevitable. Do the tactics used to rally the public appeal to the individuals rationality or is it mere propaganda?

On BBC two, a documentary called Correspondent: War spin looked at how the US and the UK dealt with media management before and during the war in Iraq and concluded that the military has been successful in controlling what the media had to say about the war by using the following technics:

- Embedding journalists which was one of “the most important public relations innovation of the Iraq War” (Hiebert, 2003). This kind of reporting allowed humanizing the war as it made soldiers look more sympathetic to the audience. It also allowed the military to provide the audiences with a lot images while keeping them out from the real issues. In fact, military were able to control to some extent what audiences would see.

- Centralized press briefings: all the press briefings were held in the US central command in Doha, Qatar which allowed the military to feed the journalists the information they wanted and to retain the information they did not want to share.

- Limited facts and contexts , spin and lies as in the case of Private Jessica Lynch

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/may2003/jess-m23.shtml

For more information about Spin in War, have a look at the following video: