Your business depends on your stakeholders In this class we agreed that a stakeholder is anyone with some form of interest in an organisation, anyone affecting it or affected by it. And according to my own researches, I would also say that on them depends business’ legitimacy and sustainability, where sustainability means not compromising future generations’ needs: in the social, environmental, economic areas.
And it appears that PR has the responsibility to manage all this: the reputation and perception of the business or organisation, and the establishment of good relationships with stakeholders. We’ve also learnt that nowadays organisations have a more active vision about this mission: stakeholders have replaced target audiences, probably because there is more and more interactivity in businesses, and that people are more educated so less passive. I’ve also learnt, from my insights about crisis management (see my first post!), that at a corporate level PR is now more proactive than reactive: the relationships with stakeholders are more planned and thought through. This can even lead to an instrumental stakeholder perspective, which is basically how to proceed to make money.
So in order to manage an organisation’s reputation with all stakeholders, I’ve understood from further reading that we have to define first the organisation’s identity, inside the business, and then its image, outside the business: of course there is usually more than one image for one organisation, and when it’s not consistent enough it affects the organisation’s reputation. That is why an organisation needs to engage with a wide variety of stakeholders in order to minimize issues that may develop into problems. This is when PR comes: PR job is to make match the identity (inner reality) and the image (perceptions of it). That means that all communication activities should be “passed through” a “PR filter”, in order to provide a consistent message for all stakeholders, through adapted communication tools. That is why we today talk about integrated communications, which needs this “PR filter”, and where the hub would be the brand: see this approach above with Coca-cola.
Who are my stakeholders? But before properly engaging with your stakeholders, you have of course to define them: who are they, where are they? This requires an environmental scanning, and this can be done through Integrated Marketing Communications. Indeed, one of the major issues facing today’s reputation managers is the increasing reliance of consumers and prospects on perceptions rather than facts when they make buying decisions; we now live in an age of “sound bite” decision making. According to Schultz, Tannenbaum and Lauterborn in Integrated Marketing Communications, “This increasing reliance on perceptions or the gathering of small bits of information about products and services, will be a growing challenge to marketers. (…) This new “sound bite” approach to gathering marketing information demands that a marketer’s statement must be clear, consistent and comprehensible. In this fast-paced, information-overload marketplace, integrated marketing communications (IMC) will be vital.” So we can agree that communications is a vital ingredient of marketing and the tools required are collectively referred to as the communications mix. A lot of companies have traditionally separated the various elements of the communications mix, in some cases to such an extent that advertising, PR, direct marketing and sales promotion were totally separate departments. But as channels for delivering corporate messages continue to grow and techniques for relationship marketing become more and more advanced, integrating the different elements of the communications mix produces results that are more efficient, measurable, and above all, consistent. That is the main IMC’s aim: consistent messages; and this requires putting the customer at the centre of the business (this idea started to be developed in the 90’s). So basically, IMC represent all forms of brand messages (employee com, corporate culture etc), in order to look the same way as customers. And as a consistent message builds trust and prevents from ambiguity, IMC makes both economic and communication sense.
This is particularly vital when launching a campaign: in class we came across 3 tools that help defining an organisation’s stakeholders, especially useful in a communication campaign context. The first tool was going through 9 segments of the population, 9 ways of defining them: demographic, psychographic, geographic, organisational membership, and 5 different ways of how influential people can be: covert power (like lobbies and NGO), role in decision making, influencers (role models), opinion formers (journalists, doctors etc) and decision makers. The second tool helped to define stakeholders according to what public think about your organisation; this is Grunning’s theory: there is the non public, the latent public, the aware public and the active public. The ones to target are the 2 in the middle, as there is no really point to target those whose minds are already made, or those who won’t care about what you are going to tell. The third tool was defining stakeholders according to their influence and interest: see map. With this tool the most important ones are those in the top right: people with a high influence and a high interest in your organisation. I think that for a campaign the most useful tool would be the first one, as it helps to make a very wide environmental scanning. I think the second one is useful for a consumer targeted communication, whereas the third one would be more adapted to communicate on people more directly involved in the business.
Britvic: a stakeholder management case study In October-December 2005, the soft drink company Britvic launched the Project Helium: in Autumn 2005, Britvic’s four shareholders decided to list the company on the LSE by the end of the year. They planned to be admitted to the LSE in mid-December, and therefore launched a communication campaign in October. The communication team was divided into 4 groups, under the Corporate Affairs’ one: Media Communications, Employee Communications, Public Affairs and Events, in order to engage with all stakeholders needed, and to keep the messages consistent. The main objectives were to drive favourable coverage about the company, in the consumer press but also in the city news section, to also engage at company director level audiences, and to court and provide information to analysts and third party commentators. The main messages were “Britvic is a good company to invest in”, “Britvic is a leading soft drinks company”, “Britvic is innovative” etc. The team was operating in a press office throughout the process, with a constant media monitoring and co-ordination with external agencies. The results were very positive: 362 press articles in total, of which 98% favourable and 40% strongly so. The total audience reached almost 181 million, and coverage volume peaks were seen on each of the four “spike days”. I guess this success was due to a good management of well-defined key stakeholders, while monitoring the communication process throughout the campaign. Also, the co-ordination between different communication departments may have helped them having an integrated campaign with consistent messages towards these stakeholders. So in the light of this example and of what I’ve said above, my personal conclusion about stakeholder management would be 3 key words: planning, accuracy and organisation!
Sources: -Michaela O’Brien and Pam William’s 13th February 2008 presentation, University of Westminster -John Dalton’s 16th October 2006 presentation, London School of Public Relations - Schultz, Tannenbaum and Lauterborn Integrated Marketing Communications, NTC Contemporary publishing Group, 1998
Facing a dilemma For this issue we had a very interesting first exercise in class, as we’ve been put in front of a hard dilemma: we had to imagine having the power to divert a fast train, going to kill 5 people, to another direction where it would kill “only” our mum or our best friend… So would you divert the train?? Only 2 people answered in class, proudly saying that they would prefer to kill 1 person than 5, so would divert the train. According to the teacher most of people would say they are unable to make this choice… Well I said it was a hard one, but actually a very quick and instinctive decision came to me: I would protect my mum or my friend!! So does that mean I’m a bad and selfish person? I would say that my attachment to people is probably more important to me than the life of anonymous people, and I think that is a human reaction… If the first thing you see is that you need to protect the people you care about, is that selfish? Anyway, I think in the situations where you have to decide quickly you don’t have time to think about what is good or bad, but just follow your instinct. So my answer to this exercise doesn’t mean that I’ll always blindly protect my clients in my future professional life (if ever I work in a PR agency): first, I’ll have more time to take my decisions when I’ll have to face ethical problems; secondly, I guess I won’t have the same attachment to my clients as for my mum or my best friend… Then, we had another exercise: we had to decide if we would accept to work in a PR campaign promoting a tobacco company in Mexico, where it’s legal but where heart and lung diseases are very highly spread… First I was ready to go on, while trying to adapt the campaign to only existing smokers; and I thought “well, if I don’t take it someone else will, so it’s better if I have some control on it”… But control on what? With or without me the campaign was going to encourage people, old or not, to smoke anyway, and I have no power to change this. So if I’m not agreeing with the campaign, I’d better leave it; and anyway if you’re not enthusiastic about a communication job can you really work well on it? I also thought that I could feel remorse after having participated in a “killing campaign”… It’s sometimes very difficult to define your own moral standards and limits, and the conclusion I came to was that business decisions have to be thought through and adapted to each case, in order not to regret it too much later.
A “two-way communication” is utopian This leads us to the ethical problem of conflicts of interest: when the public interest doesn’t match the organisation interest. In the PR week’s Ethics Debate organised in February 2007, some argued for a PR which has sometimes to lie, and some for a PR which should never lie. But those last ones (George Pitcher, Founder of Luther Pendragon and curate of St Bride, and Simon Lewis, Group Corporate affairs Director of Vodafone) didn’t show moral motivations in their arguments: they basically said that if the news is not out, it will be in someone else’s blog…So their arguments were aimed at their own benefit, not the public benefit. That’s why I think that having a 100% ethical speech, using reasoned persuasion and telling all the truth, is utopian. Indeed, PR is a “hemispheric communication”, as Jensen said (1997): it’s aimed to the interest of the organisation that makes it, even if the public interest can be beneficial to the organisation. But I’m not saying that PR should be totally unethical! There are actually different “ethical degrees” in PR, if we believe what Gruning and Hunt wrote in 1984: the less ethical one would be false information transmitted to a passive and ignorant audience, and the "ideal-utopian" one a two-way communication between negotiating equals. But there are 2 other degrees in the middle, which are very likely to be the most used in the industry.
Reason vs emotion Another ethical problem in PR is manipulation: how far can we go in order to persuade our audience? Being totally ethical would be persuading people through reason, by explaining and defending arguments. That’s what Kevin Moloney suggests in his book Rethinking Public Relations: The Spin and the Substance (2000). So why PR practitioners so often prefer playing with our emotions in order to get their messages across? I think it’s simply because it’s more efficient: it’s quicker, and for sure in some cases people would be less convinced if they were thinking with reasoned arguments… And as PR is a business, people have to choose the most efficient way to make it, as if they don’t someone else will…
Indirect PR regulation as the most efficient So this makes me think of how we can regulate this manipulation, forgetting about an utopian idealistic PR: I think that we still can use a few direct regulations, like organising company’s PR audits in order to test its social and community impact, and which would be published in media companies’ annual reports, or having journalistic versions of official reports… But I think the limit of a direct regulation is that PR is not only commercial, like advertising, so we can't have an authoritative control on it: what if the journalist writing an article from a press release really believes what he’s writing? Can we still flag up his copy as “advertorial”? As PR is a more subtle practice, I think it should be regulated in a more subtle way: indirectly. I think this can be possible thanks to pluralism, which exists in our modern democracies: pressure groups like consumerists, environmentalists and trade-unionists can counter-balance PR manipulation. But the limit is that if we allow everyone to speak we’ll always have irresponsible media, saying false or manipulative information. And if we want to forbid them with an authoritative control on the media, we loose pluralism… That’s why I think the best solution against PR manipulation is citizens’ education: “Society would be best served if people were trained in the skills necessary to recognize manipulative use of rhetoric”, said Stauber and Rampton (1995). Indeed, I believe that the best way not to be a victim of our society's manipulation is to learn how this society and its members work: PR awareness and understanding could be the key to bringing a more ethical PR.
Sources: -Michaela O’Brien and Pam Williams' 6th February 2008 presentation, University of Westminster -Crush P. “PRWeek Ethic Debate: the truth hurts”, PRWeek, February 2007 -Moloney K. Rethinking Public Relations: The Spin and the Substance, Routledge, 2000 -Curran J. and Seaton J. Power Without Responsibility, Routledge, 2003
We love listening to stories For our second class on PR issues, we watched a documentary on war spin: it was showing how the US government “sold” the war in Iraq to the public, how they used the media in order to persuade American citizens that this war was necessary. For example, they showed us the fuss made in the American media about the saving operation of an American soldier, “detained” in an Iraqi hospital: the story, supported by the government, was that brave American soldiers came to save their friend, prisoner from the building; the operation was even filmed, and we could see how they bravely got the soldier from the hospital, with guns and a helicopter… Then, we could hear the Iraqi version, from the hospital’s staff: the soldier was injured so they took care of her, like for any other patient, and some were even ready to help her to go to the US embassy. So they were very surprised to see all these soldiers storming in with guns, and taking her from the bed to the helicopter, followed by a camera… One guy from the staff said: “it was like in a Rambo movie…” …And here we are: fiction became reality for the public, witness of how brave and strong their soldiers were, fighting for the freedom of their friend… And it’s so tempting to believe the story, isn’t it? We all would like to be the goodies, fighting against the baddies, and maybe that’s why Hollywood movies are so successful, no? It’s simple, it just shows us what we want to see, avoiding you to ask yourself too many questions. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against Hollywood movies; but I just think they are dangerous when we show them as if it was the reality, which is usually more complex… I’ve actually always been amazed to see how the American values are so strongly conveyed in their media, movies and politicians’ speeches: democracy, freedom, liberalism… I think the country really succeeds in building this dream society, at least in the public’s mind; and that definitely gives a strong power to the government, who can uses these messages and symbols in order to mobilise the public. And this works so well that they use the same messages for every war. That’s what shows another documentary called “Spin, The Art of Selling War”, attached in this post: it’s made by Josh Rushing, an ex-American soldier, and was released on the TV channel Al Jazeera English. Josh Rushing explains how the messages from the army are prepared and tailored for the media, as he used to be an army spokesperson. He summarizes in this documentary the 4 main messages conveyed to justify the war, and common to all the US wars: 1)Demonizing the enemy, 2)Protect the US Citizens, 3)If we don’t fight them there, we’ll have to fight them here, 4)We fight humanely. Of course, the documentary also proves how these affirmations have been false many times… His ideas are supported by Norman Salomon, who wrote the book War made easy, and who has been interviewed for the documentary. I think he said something very resounding: when Josh asked him if, actually, what explains war propaganda from government is that war is so complex that the public won’t understand, so it justifies giving a simplified version, Norman replies: “I think government’s fear is not that the public won’t understand, but that they will”. So that means that war propaganda is manipulating the truth until its total misunderstanding. Maybe here is the difference between PR and propaganda?
The French exception While I was watching the documentary in class, I got to think: it’s so funny to see this vision of the war in Iraq, as in France at the same time all the media were trying to prove that this war was a wrong idea. For example, during the debate in the UN before the war, the national French news clearly showed a strong scepticism about these photos from the US government, supposed to be a proof of the existence of mass destruction arms in Iraq. Then, France became a kind of leader for all the countries against this war, after the bright speech of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs of the time, Dominique de Villepin. But then, in class I was also thinking: well we thought we were all smarter than the Americans for not going to war, but actually have we been too influenced by a counter propaganda against war in Iraq??... I don’t think I can talk about propaganda though, but surely about some manipulations: for example there is a TV program in France called “Arret sur Image” (“Pause on Image”), that deciphers some of the images showed on TV, tracking for manipulation. And in this program, they showed us how another French TV channel had cut a speech from George Bush, in order to show him very embarrassed while answering a question about the war in Iraq, to a journalist asking for the reasons of the war. Then, the program showed the whole speech from Bush, and that gave us a totally different impression: his answer was clear, the president was controlling his speech… But I’d say that in France the most efficient way to persuade the public that this war was bad was humour, by mocking Bush and his only aim in the war: getting oil. For example, in a TV show with moppets representing different politicians (called “Les Guignols de l’info”), they made a little movie showing the long tradition, for not saying obsession, of attacking Iraq in the Bush family and for the US presidents: it was showing, time after time, the president of the time doing exactly the same thing: in a meeting, pointing Iraq on the world map and saying: “I want to attack Iraq!”… And the sentence was repeated again and again, until George W. Bush said it, apparently not even remembering why he wanted to attack Iraq… That was really funny, and also surely helped to convince a lot of French that this war had bad purposes!
War gave birth to PR After having read some books about the link between PR and war, I’ve realised that in a way war had created PR, or at least justified and accelerated its creation. That’s what shows the 1st World War history, when the “4 minutes men” have been created. These men were recruited by the government among local community leaders thorough all the country, to give prepared speeches about the war to the communities: the themes were “Why are we fighting”, “Unmasking German propaganda”, “The Danger to Democracy” etc. Indeed, the Wilson government needed to convince the public about going to war, as the antiwar movements were very strong. That’s why was created the Committee on Public Information (CPI), that was in fact a propaganda bureau, and the government mobilised the skills of a number of artists, intellectuals and journalists in order to promote the war. They used all kinds of means in order to touch people, like for example strong symbols on posters, showing the Germans as devils threatening American democracy. Most of techniques aimed at heart, and played with fear. There were 2 main consequences from this experience: the first was a raise in using unreason, not well known until then: the unconscious triggers that might be pulled to activate public passions have been discovered as more efficient in order to persuade than the “naïve faith in reason”. Secondly, with the “4 minutes men” the world of mouth’s power, or “third part endorsement”, has also been discovered as very useful, infiltrating in relaxed conversations with people we trust… that’s why we can say that PR is born with the 1st World War. And these precious tools have been of course used later on, in the following wars, especially during the cold war. For example, in the fifties the launch of the war against Guatemala was the result of a very well prepared propaganda work, showing the country, so close to the US territory, dangerously becoming communist… Actually, nowadays most of historians agree that Arbenz (the Guatemala leader of the time) and its followers were liberal, radical and nationalistic but not, in those early stages, pro-Communist. What happened is that the US Company “United Fruit” had a very successful business in banana trade in this country, and this new government was threatening this business. So Edward Bernays, who was doing the PR for “United Fruit”, managed to make a lot of journalists write and warn about this communist danger. He has succeeded thanks to his influence towards journalists (and also because he had friends in the Eisenhower administration and in the Congress). Also, some journalists were actually happy to be able to fill in their columns, and didn’t seem to question too much the truth as long as they had facts that they could transform into stories… This reminds me of a Belgian film called “C'est arrivé près de chez vous” (the English title is “Man Bites Dog”), directed by Rémy Belvaux and André Bonzel in 1992. The movie is about a camera crew following a serial killer/thief around as he exercises his craft; it’s a black comedy. The film’s aim was to criticise modern societies’ media for using anything in order to show a story: the more unusual and shocking the story is, the better it is, as it will catch the public’s attention. So this logic can lead to very sordid consequences… Maybe that’s why war is so linked to PR: isn’t war the archetype of a story, with a plot, with action and a denouement, with a beginning and an end, and with good people and bad people? And isn’t part of PR job to create stories?
Sources: -Ewen, S. PR! A Social History of Spin, Basic Books, 1996 -Tye, Larry The Father of Spin: Edward C Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations, Crown, 1998 -Documentary from Josh Rushing Spin, The Art of Selling War, for Al Jazeerah English, 2004
This blog is an assignment for my Master in Public Communication and Public Relations: it aims to give my personal feedbacks and thoughts about the issues tackled in a module called "Public Communication and PR issuses". So, from what I've learnt in class, from what I've read or seen and from my own experience, I will try to clearly tell what I've retained, and what I think is essential about each "PR issue".
I’m now studying for a MA in Public Communication and Public Relations in the University of Westminster, London. I also studied in France: International History in La Sorbonne, and English and Russian languages. I’ve finally decided to study and work in the PR industry as this is involving all that I like doing most: meeting new people, adapting to new point of views and find a way to understand the others, conveying a message.
I’ve travelled a lot (Brazil, Maghreb, Italy, Turkey, Armenia, Russia, Tanzania, Singapore, USA), and I’ve always been very interested in international relations and cultural exchanges.
Moloney, K. Rethinking Public Relations: The Spin and the Substance, Routledge, 2000
This is a very interesting reading if you are interested in ethical issues for the PR industry. It is a very useful source for understanding the history of PR, and the dilemmas the industry has to face. It also suggest a number of solutions on how improving the health of PR industry, and therefore make it more recognized by the society.
Tulder, van R. and Zwart, van der A. International Business – Society Management: Linking Corporate Responsibility and Globalization, Routledge, 2006
This book gave me very interesting insights about Corporate Social Responsibility, and in a broad perspective, as it explains well nowadays’ internationalized context for businesses, and how CSR is therefore linked with globalization. The authors use a large number of references from various sources: economic, politic and cultural, and give a clear statement about what is CSR, as well as findings about its future.
Rampton, S. and Stauber, J. Trust us, we are experts. How industry manipulates science and gambles with your future, Tarcher/Putnam, 2001
This book really helped me to write my essay about my dissertation topic, which is about the communicating on scientific issues, through the example of climate change. The authors show a solid argumentation, through numerous examples, aiming to prove that science can never be totally objective when scientific findings are presented to the public, given the complex links between scientists, the media and various organizations having some interest in science.
Senges, A. Ethnik! Le marketing de la différence, Autrement, 2003
This book is in French, but I still wanted to talk about it in this blog, for whoever is interested in ethnic marketing and PR, and therefore would be tempted to read in English from this writer: Anne Senges is correspondent in the USA for the magazine CB News, the weekly magazine of communication and business. In this book she compares American and French approach to ethnic communities. Her main idea is that being American today is sharing a culture and consuming habits more than a skin colour or an ethnic origin. Therefore, France’s challenge is to display its multi cultural country with pride without becoming too politically correct.
Tye, Larry The Father of Spin: Edward C Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations, Crown, 1998
This is about the wonderful story of Edward Bernays, one of the most famous PR practitioners. This book is an impressive compilation of anecdotes and stories about people spinning and being spinned, and can interest you if you are looking for examples of successful PR campaigns. However, I felt that the book was sometimes a bit partial about his “hero”, as if a spin effort had been made in order to present Bernays always in his best light…
nderstood from further reading that we have to define first the organisation’s identity, inside the business, and then its image, outside the business: of course there is usually more than one image for one organisation, and when it’s not consistent enough it affects the organisation’s reputation. That is why an organisation needs to engage with a wide variety of stakeholders in order to minimize issues that may develop into problems. This is when PR comes: PR job is to make match the identity (inner reality) and the image (perceptions of it). That means that all communication activities should be “passed through” a “PR filter”, in order to provide a consistent message for all stakeholders, through adapted communication tools. That is why we today talk about integrated communications, which needs this “PR filter”, and where the hub would be the brand: see this approach above with Coca-cola.
ly point to target those whose minds are already made, or those who won’t care about what you are going to tell.
eholder management case study
