Disclosure and Ethics in PR

I think Dave Fleet's article about disclosure made some very good points. Yeah, for a lot of people, they don't know that someone else is doing the campaign and, subsequently, they don't care. But I believe that if people understood that a lot of the time PR agencies are creating the messages, they would care. With social media becoming one of the primary ways of communicating, more and more "average" people are becoming aware of issues that usually required some college courses or just an unhealthy affinity for a particular topic. Now, the "average" citizen can learn about issues like disclosure by reading just a few hundred words on a blog, like Dave Fleet's. I think one of the comments on this post really says it all:
John Carson said:

"I think if the campaign goes well, and everyone involved is a hero, then people don’t care about disclosure.

But, if the sh*t hits the fan, then people search for accountability and look back — ruefully — with hindsight about the disclosure issue.

By then, of course, it’s too late!"

That really sums it up for me. This emphasizes the importance of disclosure from the beginning. While, of course, everyone plans their PR strategies to go well but that is not how it always happens. If something goes wrong, which Murphy's Law teaches us that it always will, no disclosure means a much bigger mess than if you just tell the truth (i.e. not lie through omitting) from the beginning.

That said, as another commenter pointed out, giving disclosure on social media like Twitter where you have a limited space can be difficult. Paid tweets are becoming a big deal and the FTC is stepping in. One of the solutions that many PR practitioners are coming up with is some sort of indicator in the tweet that lets the reader know it's a paid or sponsored tweet. Stowe Boyd of microsyntax.com suggests putting "AD" at the beginning of the tweet. Brian Carter of TweetROI takes it a step further and makes the distinction between a paid tweet and a sponsored tweet. Paid tweets, where the company dictates the content, would be indicated by "AD," while a sponsored tweet, where the company does not decide the content, would be indicated by "SP." There are even more elaborate idea such as color-coding and different fonts for different types of tweets. No matter which way will eventually win out, the main goal of all of these ideas is to provide disclosure and keep Twitter-marketing ethical.

Is this PR? - Levi's Go Forth campaign

I decided to start off my "Is this PR?" presentations with Levi's Go Forth campaign because 1. I, personally, think it is an awesome campaign and 2. I am writing an original criticism on it for another communication class!

Here is one of the print ads for the campaign.

To give a basic overview of the campaign, I'll start by explaining where the title "Go Forth" came from. As the narrative goes, it stands for Grayson Ozias IV, a family friend of Levi Strauss' nephew, who went exploring one day in the West (back when it was uncharted territory) and disappeared with $100,000. The company found his treasure (using wax cylinders he left behind). Now they are creating a virtual treasure hunt that ends with one person being able to do a real treasure hunt and find Ozias' fortune. "Go Forth" also connotes the freedom and revolution that Levi's is trying to create with this campaign. In addition to the "treasure hunt," they also have print advertisements and commercials which feature Walt Whitman poems like "America" and "Pioneers! O'Pioneers!" The entire campaign is trying to take people back to the pioneering age of America, when Levi's was started. Levi's uses other ideas like "The New Declaration" where they invite people to rewrite the Constitution or write their own.

As I stated before, I really like the campaign. However, among others, it has had mixed receptions. And I understand the thoughts of those who oppose it. There have been some blogs that think this campaign is beautiful yet ultimately will not reach its goal of selling jeans but rather alienate postmodern consumers. If you read the comments though, not everyone agrees with this. Others think the use of Walt Whitman poems is an interesting choice. Using poetry to promote a company is controversial because it is using art (something usually seen as not consumerist) to sell something; however, as others note, it's getting people to discover poetry and, really, Walt Whitman wrote reviews for his own poetry so it is kind of fitting that he would be used to promote jeans. I think Rick Mathieson does a good job at summing up the opposing views towards the campaign in his article. To answer some of the questions he poses, yes I do think this can "reset the brand" for today's generation. Just because it is obviously advertising jeans doesn't not mean it is trying to "brainwash" today's generation. It's true; people are pessimistic these days and, while they are not going to believe that buying jeans will change the world, the message Levi's could become associated with through this campaign, could.

In the end, I believe this campaign is good and I believe this campaign is PR. It is striking up conversations about Levi's and it is using social media to the fullest. The interactive element of this campaign puts it in this century, while the message brings back the past. This is a response to their recent financial failures to compete with designer brands, like Sevens and True Religion. Levi's listened to what their publics were saying and realized they could not compete in the same arena as designer brands so they decided to go an alternative route, back to their roots.

That said, I would love to hear other opinions about this campaign because, as I have seen, the views towards the Go Forth campaign have been quite varied.

Crisis Communications in action

To help myself better understand crisis communications and the most appropriate methods to use (and how to figure out which are the most appropriate methods), I decided to look up a few examples of crisis communications in action. Of course, as I found out when researching for my previous blog post, being prepared seems to be one of the most crucial aspects of good crisis communications. What about if you are not prepared?

Lo and behold, I found an article talking about just that. While it is specifically discussing European firms, I think some of these things apply to American firms too (and actually, I don't mind the European aspect; I hope to work for an international organization). The exact statistics given in this article are that "although 60% of the business decision makers polled have experienced a crisis and more than half of these have experienced one in the past year, only 53 percent currently have a crisis plan in place." Now, I have learned from my statistics class to be skeptical of the veracity of statistics, for illustrative sake, I'll take these as is. This survey was led by Burson-Marsteller, a global public relations and communications consultancy (that description is word-for-word from the article except for the word "leading" which I remember is one of those means-nothing words). Basically the article discusses the consequences of not having a crisis plan ready, one of the more detrimental being that companies without a crisis plan usually have longer recovery period (they cite 9 months, rather than 7). Some other consequences they discuss:

• bigger loss of revenue and layoffs
• falling share prices
• loss of corporate reputation
• loss of media and/or public trust
• law suits by individuals or groups

All of these I believe are quite true and quite important. They even give an example of this by mentioning British Airways.
...which leads me to the blog post I found specifically talking about why airlines usually have such bad PR.
As noted in the blog post, airline PR practitioners must have one of the most difficult and stressful PR jobs ever. When people are flying, they want a perfect, uneventful trip which seems to rarely happen. This article specifically talks about United Airways. The event discussed was about a Canadian musician, Dave Carroll, who flew United and subsequently had his expensive guitar broken by the baggage handlers. When he received no sympathy from United employees, not only did he blog about it, he even wrote a song and made a video (posted in this article). This has got to be a nightmare for United; musicians are obviously not the ones to cross. United suffered. However, these types of situations are not left just United Airways. All airlines are notorious for losing luggage, delayed flights, bad customer service, and, apparently, breaking customers' personal possessions. It seems to be unavoidable, so the only way an airline can keep its customers happy is with good customer service and good communications, largely the responsibility of public relations practitioners. It also discusses airline attempts (and fails) to use social media to help with customer service and complaints. I think this is partially due to the fact that many problems with airlines are seen as very serious and many people might expect something more formal than social media which is still seen sometimes as young and solely for entertainment. However, if airlines could figure out how to use social media to their advantage, it could be incredibly beneficial (that said, they may just have to wait it out for social media to obtain a more serious reputation).

Crisis Communication - thoughts on the exercises

Ok so personally I find crisis communication to be difficult and a little terrifying. As much as I, and probably others, would love for public relations to be all campaigns and accepting awards, it's not. I can see this as being where public relations jobs get stressful. The exercises given by Professor Vargas really woke me up to this crucial type of communication for public relations practitioners. I really thought hard about my answers, yet I am still unsure of them. I hope this kind of thing becomes easier with practice.
So I decided to do a little more research on the subject (even using my new-found blog search source, blogpulse!).

"Like the good Boy Scout – a good motto for the crisis manager is 'Be Prepared'."

This is the last line in a blog post of Mike Love's about crisis management/communications. While I'm not sure what kind of actual experience Love has (though the first paragraph of the post seems to suggest a lot), I feel that his advice given in the post is very well said and quite correct. He reminds us that crises happen anywhere and at any time, so being prepared is essential. He mentioned several things like keeping copies of the crisis plan in other places, having alternate office spaces, and having alternate ways to communicate with the necessary people. Another idea that I really liked of Love's is his thought that the "Communicator" sometimes has to be the Devil's Advocate. I think this is true. The "Communicator", or what I am assigning to be the public relations practitioner, needs to be able to find the faults in the company/organization to be able to fix them and/or respond to outside accusations of these faults. If you don't think there is a problem, it won't get fixed.

Crises cannot usually be handled solely by the PR director of a company. Often, the company is too big, there are too many publics, and/or the situation is too much to handle for one person. Therein lies the importance of a crisis communications team, all of whom need to be trained in whatever their role in the team is. In an article written by PR Ideas, the role of the team members is discussed. The tips given in this article are interesting and are very pertinent for crisis communications. Basically, it reinforces what I have been reading in all of these articles and in the slideshow presentation from class.

Also, in my search on the blogosphere, I found an event that pertains exactly to what we are learning that's actually going on at this very point. Here's the link for the Social Media for Crisis Communications in Government.

Chapter 11 - Cyber-Relations in the Digital Age

This has got to be one of the most interesting chapters for me to read thus far. It's funny how interested I am in social media and digital media because I'm really not that into it personally. I can't seem to keep up with more than networking site at a time and despite serving as webmaster for my sorority's website for an entire year, I still don't really know how to work HTML and other web site jargon. That said, I get excited to understand more about these types of media and the influence they have on society (and PR!).
One of the first terms the book recognizes is Web 2.0., stating in the last sentence of the section that "the reality of Web 2.0 comes down to this: It is all about you". To expand on this, when I saw this youtube video about web 2.0, made by Dr. Michael Wesch of Kansas State University, I absolutely loved it and the way it conveyed the unique relationship between the internet and its users. Here's Dr. Wesch's reaction to the explosion of hits his video received in just the first few days it was released (on youtube).
Another term this chapter talks about is convergence of media. This is another concept I find really interesting. Media converge more and more in the 21st century to form a more homogeneous channel, yet the messages sent on this channel are more and more diverse.
One of the more shocking things I read in this chapter is the "Social Ramifications" section. I never realized all of the consequences of social and digital media. I think the one consequence mentioned in this chapter that surprised me the most was the "mergers of media companies". I realized that several conglomerates owned a lot of the media companies; I learned about that in mass communication theory. The point that hit the hardest was the "loss of journalistic independence". I now better understand the potential loss for independent thought being published.

Week 6 - PR 2.0 & Storytelling

This week we read articles and blog posts about "PR 2.0" and storytelling used in PR.

PR 2.0 refers to the revolution that PR has experienced. With things like social media and the need to have a plan for PR campaigns, public relations is becoming more integrated with marketing, as discussed on the discussion board this week. Having goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics separate and defining them well is key to a good PR campaign. It is important to know the difference between each of these parts of a PR plan and how exactly to arrive at them. The first blog post we read, Outputs, Outtakes, Outcomes…Oh, my!, explained this very clearly. It is also better to have some sort of measurable unit to make "success" easier to "measure." This comes in during the objectives part of a PR plan. Having a measurable unit also helps the company succeed by having something more concrete to aim for.

In the Public Relations Princess blog, the author mentions what she believes is the "PR student's online bible," so of course I decided I should check it out. This took me to a blog by a PR professor at George Southern called Public Relations Matters. It's a pretty interesting blog basically covering whatever this professor is covering in her class (and sometimes a little extra). And, of course, the most recent post just happens to be about Facebook and Twitter.

Like comments on blogs, having customer feedback is a great PR approach to websites. Things like reviews give a personal touch to the ratings of a company which increases the credibility and trust in a company. It also allows companies to hear what customers really think (though usually it is only strongly opinionated, good or bad, that reply), making it a cheap and relatively effective way for companies to hear how to improve their goods or services and for potential customers to hear about the goods or services. Stories, however, are even better. In many ways they can be more effective than reviews because stories are more likely to stick in your mind. Stories can also turn into something big. This is seen with the Jared campaign for Subway. Subway took one story about a guy who lost weight eating its sandwiches and turned it into a huge years-long campaign. The website alone includes his story, his statistics, the diet he followed, press releases, and "friends of Jared," or other people who were inspired by Jared to lose weight with Subway sandwiches. I personally am not even sure if I had even heard of Subway (or at least, considered it a viable choice for fast food) before this campaign. So, as personal experience goes, I'd say it was pretty effective.

I also found the part about a company as a community very interesting---and completely true. I know, and I'm sure everyone has felt this way before, that when I feel as if I am part of a group, I will work harder to improve the group. An example that fits me personally is Clemson University. People who feel they are part of the "Clemson Family" are more likely to want to improve the university and are more likely to stick around and finish all four years here. It's why there are so many campaigns, like One Clemson, aimed toward freshmen and transfers so they feel as if they belong at Clemson. A university without programs like these would probably not have as high of a retention rate. "Family" spirit is essential in other types of organizations too.

Chapter 9

Chapter 9 discusses the different tactics public relations practitioners use. This chapter was very thorough in covering the basics for the several different traditional publics. The examples they gave at the end of the chapter were particularly interesting to me. Even though both of these campaigns happened relevantly recently, I do not remember either. That said, I was not the most observant teenager. After reading about them, I am really surprised I did not hear about them at all.
I also never realized how many different ways there are to communicate with a particular public. I also never realized how difficult it is to get a news release published and am now glad that I took a journalism class to improve my writing skills. Reading about the different tactics reminds me that there are so many ways to reach a certain public, you can always find the right one.
The three types of channels are special events, controlled media, and uncontrolled media. Each of these channels are important to understand for good public relations tactics. The idea of "pseudoevent" is very interesting and I think that I agree with the book when they say that whether or not it's a "real" event or just a publicity stunt, if it makes the news, who cares?
In the book, the authors mention the PR firm Edelman when discussing social media news releases. I decided to go to this site to see what the difference was between these and traditional news releases. This site is pretty great because not only to they have several social media news releases on their site, they also have the traditional news release so comparing the two was easy. It's obvious to me now the difference. While the examples on this website did not contain any videos, they were obviously shorter, giving only the most important information of the news story.
As someone who wants to get into nonprofit organizations, I found the section on public service announcements, the only section that specifically mentioned nonprofits, pretty interesting. I decided to go onto the Ad Council website and see what it was all about. When reading about them, I came across some of their most famous slogans, some that I never realized they came up with like "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk." The amount of famous slogans they have coined is truly impressive as many of these (including the one above) have been reused in society and other ad campaigns countless times. While this organization focuses on just one aspect of public relations, it is still impressive.