CSR Makes Sense

The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has gained increased importance in society. Famed management guru Michael Porter recently published an article on Shared Value, stating that CSR and corporate success would be integral in the future. Decision-making process in the corporate environment are now more often directly linked to values, respect for people, community and the environment. The main and expected role played by organizations is to be supportive of society; being aware of their needs and applying its efforts to “transform the world into a better place” through actions and strategy.

However some companies still don’t see CSR as a process of changing and transformation society and environment and the only purpose for these companies on its application is merely publicity and self-advertising. BP it’s one of the companies that misused the CSR’s concept. In 2002 the company spent over $200 million in PR and advertising to greenwash its brand, it even revamped its logo.  

However the company had to deal with several environmental disasters during its communication campaign. During a speech to shareholders in 2001, BP’s Chief Executive John Browne said “When we launched the brand we used the phrase Beyond Petroleum. Some people thought that meant we were giving up oil and gas. I’m sorry to disappoint our competitors. Beyond Petroleum means that what we’re giving up the old mind set – the old thinking which assumed that oil companies had to be dirty and secretive and arrogant. I don’t believe we should be any of these things.”

However according to a study published by Greenpeace in 2009 reported that BP “allocated 93 percent ($20 billion) of its total investment fund for the development and extraction of oil, gas and other fossil fuels.  In contrast, solar power was allocated just 1.39 percent and wind a paltry 2.79 percent.” There was huge backlash against BP new slogan Beyond Petroleum to the point where it was ridiculed by everyone including industry insiders.

CSR is not about managing an image over the short term it’s about building trust with society and being seen to authentically give back to it. Porter has cited many examples where this is already happening for example with the Toyota Prius vehicle or Whole Foods the organic and fair trade groceries. How can a company like BP or other Oil and Gas companies or resource extraction companies do this? I think Porter idea of Shared Value is really propagating that everyone benefit from the profiting of companies. In the extraction business jobs are the best way to give back to society many of the societies that have extraction industries, such as Angola, Nigeria, Brazil, Iran etc… jobs are needed.

Companies should not just invest in schools and hospitals as a part of their CSR they should invest in the full value chain, provide opportunities for families to raise children all the way from childhood to adulthood to get good education and jobs. Many of these resource extraction companies are ready to make long term investments in their business, large oil and gas fields and mine are economic 15 to 30 year so long term CSR investments should fit that model.   CSR is a long term process and organizations that don’t directly and properly make efforts and create strategies to help transform society will lose credibility and big opportunities to engage their stakeholders. I keep hearing that access opportunities for resource companies are harder to come by so it’s even more important that they embrace Porter Shared Value concept and CSR.

Political Communication. It's all about strategy.

More and more we discuss new paradigms in political communication and its impact on society, particularly during public office elections. President Obama’s journey from near obscurity to the President of the United States in 2008 was an example where communication strategy played a huge role. His achievement, primarily a result of the Internet, and more specifically social networking vehicles, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, how important a tool it was in the arsenal of PR professionals. PR practitioners and communication specialists where granted a new found importance with this coup.

As always in the PR environment, it’s all about strategy and positioning.  Social media tools are definitely changing the dynamics of political communication and that’s only the beginning. The U.S. Presidential election gave us a good demonstration of what we can expect in future election campaigns. Available social media tools have been demonstrated effective and have proven to have a powerful impact in American society. The 2008 elections have proven an important case study for and a milestone in political campaign strategies. 

However it’s always important to take into consideration our audience. The group of people we aim to reach because it is a basis for the strategy we chose. The audience’s behaviour will define the campaign’s strategy. So what’s the impact of a political campaign based on social media tools if the majority of the population don’t even have access to the web? I’m talking about underdeveloped countries where most of the population do not have any access to the internet.

 In addition we also need to understand our audience and their main perspectives. For example making a comparison between North and South American online users’ behaviour we will notice North Americans use the web most for gathering information while South Americans seek entertainment on the web. So the positive and decisive impact that social media had on Obama’s campaign in U.S. probably wouldn’t have had the same impact in public office elections in South America countries. Therefore knowing the behaviour and expectations of the audience will help achieve successful results and influence the impact and final results of political campaigns based on social media tools.

Be aware of the big advantages and impact that social media tools can bring into political communication. Social media brings changes the dynamics and adds a new perspectives and innovative ways of dialogue and feedback. However social media platforms should be used as a strategic channel, and not just used because of its popularity. Knowing the audience and applying strategic communications are the best and most effective way to achieve success. 

Social Media Campaign

As a requirement to the PR and New Media class I had to come up with a Social Media Viral Campaign. My client was British Airways and the campaign I called "Learn to Fly". The target audience is people afraid of flying, problem more common than the people think. I've decided, among other actions, to make a viral video and uploaded it on YouTube. Hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoying doing! :) 

The illusion of control in the web

The changes and advantages that internet brought into our lives is undeniable. With the internet we have some facilities and tools that are now so embedded in our daily lives that we couldn’t imagine our lives without them. I always question how we managed to survive without them for so long. Today we have at our disposal numerous channels of information and services, and social platforms that enable us to make easier interaction with each other and everything with a low cost, right? No, the costs are high, but they aren’t totally transparent. The costs are high and the challenge is that we can’t estimate an accurate value for it. How much would you estimate the worth of your personal information? Would you put a price on it?

Well, we actually “sell” this information in a daily basis through the web platforms and believe it or not, we do it all for free! During an interview in 2010 2010 Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, questioned about the privacy of users in the internet said the people are getting more open and comfortable with sharing their own information on the web. A statement I disagree with. I am not sure it’s a question of comfort but I think it’s a lack of consumer understanding.  It seems that most users aren’t completely aware that their personal information no longer remains private.

Companies are selling this information to advertising agencies and services companies that use it mainly for marketing approaches. For instance AOL in 2006 published a database with observations of browsing behaviour of 658,000 members over a three month period. The information was so detailed and extensive that a couple of journalists from New York Times where able to derive the name of “4417749” of the users published in the AOL document. 

In an interview with Google's CEO Eric Schmidt  he affirmed that "privacy is incredibly important. It's very important that Google and everyone else respect people's privacy. People have a right to privacy; it's natural; it's normal. It's the right way to do things”. Is it or isn’t?! If it is why are these companies profiteering from understanding, controlling, managing and selling vast amounts of user’s data collect on the web? I believe it’s time companies and users define their roles with transparency with respect to their virtual activities. Companies must stop with the dishonest communications about privacy and users must to stop pretending they actually believe it and take responsibility for their personal information. 

The ethical dilemmas in social marketing

When we discuss social marketing we must take into consideration differences between traditional and social marketing. Social Marketing is the application of specific tools in order to achieve social changes. Different to marketing which focuses on selling products and services, social marketing sells ideas and behaviour to promote and influence the audience to social change. It was first started being used for health issues but rapidly expanded to education, energy, philanthropy, environment, and corporate social responsibility.

In a society that increasingly prioritizes social issues, organizations that want to be competitive need to understand this change to engage publics in an effective manner. The communication between organization and publics should be based in cultural context; organizations must apply effort to understand the society it wants to reach.  It’s important to have specific dialogue which would be appealing and impactful to society, helping improve the relationship between organization and publics and building the companies social reputation.

Influencing an audience to change their behaviour, also called intelligent influence, has its challenges. Behavioural changes based on voluntary actions rather than legal, economic or coercive forms of influence are difficult to achieve because you require the audiences accept. Society needs to believe the efforts applied for the change will be beneficial in a long term. The process of change in society occurs when:

-          Accept a new behaviour,

-          Reject a potential behaviour,

-          Modify a current behaviour,

-          Abandon an old behaviour.

The main problem is that sometimes organizations slightly distort facts with the purpose of having greater impact and increasing persuasion in society. These methods of persuasion are usually “forgiven” since they are being used for a noble cause. For instance campaigns aimed the reduction of energy consumption. Usually these campaigns are directed to the consumer, making them believe that their individual’s efforts can actually make a difference, when in the reality they cannot! 

Furthermore we face ethical dilemmas dealing with services and products that are controversial and not well understood.  For instance creating a blood donation campaign in the era of AIDS could be challenging in the sense other values ​​and beliefs must be demystified for to achieve an effective campaign.

Organizations and agencies working with social marketing should be aware and constantly self-critical of their role in society and what they want to achieve, their purposes. The balance between ethics and effectiveness, being honest and at the same time powerful, is the important boundary that should be taken into consideration in any social marketing campaigns. 

How some PRs still don’t get it? Spin can easily destroy your reputation.

In my last posts I talked about the importance of trust in the PR industry and how companies can achieve it through engagement, transparency and shared value approaches. In this post, unlike the previous ones, I’ll discuss how some PR practitioners haven’t yet understood the importance of trust in our industry and unfortunately keep practicing and reinforcing unethical behavior.

Spin is a term used in the PR industry that describes communication’s strategies heavily used through actions or events in order to boost its clients’ public image. It means controlling the news agenda to suit client’s needs, even if it becomes necessary to distort the truth. “Spin doctors”, is the term used to describe PR professionals or specialists that spin situations. The practices have been used so widely that the PR industries credibility is now suffering as a result.

It is usually associated with politics and political issues and as examples I can cite among others professionals: Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson and Karl Rove. For instance Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s ex-spokesman who worked for the British Government during the Iraq war was responsible for distributing “fabricated documents” related to the invasion of Iraq in order to gain public support. Some practicioners justify these practices by stating that customer satisfaction is most important.

Unfortunately this practice isn’t exclusive in the political arena and has been rapidly spreading to other segments as well. Some organizations have been implementing actions to make their publics believe in their products & services or their context no matter what it takes. During crisis management we can see many examples of companies spinning stories to help them mislead the media and publics’ attention. However manipulating media and public opinion is a false notion of power. In the era of digital media PR professionals and agencies are taking big risks by taking these types of approaches. As Edelman said, “Thanks to robust mainstream and social media, there is immediate damage inflicted to the reputation and the license-to-operate of any company, brand or PR firm folly enough to distort the truth.”

Some PR practitioners state we are advocates of our clients, so it’s our job to defend their statements and actions no matter what. I agree! That’s why I believe that propagating and reinforcing the truth we aren’t exposing their reputation and credibility in the future. Good PR professionals are always thinking in a long term. Our main purposes are protecting and guarantee our client’s reputation and honesty is the best policy for it.

Let me know what you think, don’t be shy J

See you next time!

How NGOs build credibility

In my last post I talked about the importance of public’s trust in an organization and why observing NGOs practices can be a helpful guide to achieve a high level of trust. As mentioned in my last post companies should work with NGOs as partners and understand better their practices to gain the trust of society. Below I am going to talk about how these practices are used by NGOs and how business organizations can apply them to their business model.

NGOs usually achieve a high degree of public trust, which is essential to any kind of business today driven to delivery on their goals. The value motive is the guide for NGOs. An NGO main goal is to help society better understand the transformations that are taking places nowadays. The purpose of an NGO isn’t to sell products; they promote what’s called “industries of conscience”. Meaning they get involved in policy and social issues in order to influence transformation in society. Their business’ purpose is always transparent and clear in relation to what they intend on achieving.

According to the annual  Trust Barometer report by Edelman in 2011 the Trust Architecture Factors changed. The report is a summary of what societies in 23 countries considers main requisites for trusting a corporation. The report among other interesting finds mapped the main attributes that make a business reliable in the eyes of society.

As we see the old trust architecture was replaced by a new model. The new model has a requisite of trust that NGOs implement well on a daily basis:  performance with purpose. Allowing its publics to be aware of its shared value is essential to bridge the gap between the organizations intent and societies perception of it. Align profit and purpose for a social benefit, also referred to as social purpose, is the new and most important feature that companies must apply in their business, followed by transparency and engagement.

 It means generate profit to further social and/or environmental goals. NGOs despite not been driven by profit, understand pretty well the importance of pursuing some sort of public interest rather than individual or commercial interests. In my next post I will discuss unenthical PR practices.

What we can learn from NGOs

The approval, respect and credibility of its publics are the main goal of any business. If the services your company provides affects society in a positive way the chances your business achieves success are much higher. Respect and credibility in the business environment can be translated into trust. Being a reliable organization is the boundary line that divides companies that are developing and growing and the ones that are only surviving.

As PR professionals our scope of work is defined and constantly pursued through the meaning of this simply but powerful word: trust. How to gain the trust of society? Is there any guide or instructions for it? And most important, how to maintain it after we achieve? Questions that can appear difficult to answer but if we take a closer look at our surroundings we observe the answer pretty quickly. There are organizations that have been applying these principles for decades and as a result have been able to garner the public’s trust: Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

These organizations are also called Third Sector and are mainly driven by a value motive. They embrace different sectors of society: charities, social welfare, religion, and foundations among others. The limited resources surrounding these organizations don’t affect them in becoming powerful agents of change in society. According to Richard Edelman, President and CEO of Edelman, NGOs are the most trusted institution in nearly every market.

PR practitioners are constantly seeking to build relationship with their publics. However a long term relationship can only be strong enough to survive through an essential element: trust. Therefore instead of perceiving NGOs as a threat to your business, PR should perceive and engage these organizations as helpful partners. I believe when we start to create alliances and try and understand their “business model” great changes and developments will take place in our field. Thus we have lots to learn from NGOs! In my next post I plant to discuss how NGOs gain trust from society. If you have any thoughts please comment below or write me an email. See you next time!

The key role of any PR campaign

An important concept for PR campaigns and strategies is the importance of understanding and defining publics and stakeholders.  Our strategies of communication should be related to our target audience. Know your public and understand their expectations are the first step to achieving a good communication campaign plan. As a result different segments should also have differentiated communication strategies. To help identify and understand different groups that are relate to the company I’ll explain them through the stakeholder and situational theory of publics.

First of all let’s understand the definition of audience. Mass communication is intended towards a general audience. Traditional mass communication has been targeted towards a large number of unorganized, anonymous and isolated groups. First this source of media was seen as a source of manipulation and targeting of ideas and information. The receiver wouldn’t challenge or critically think about the message being transmitted. The information was only to sell and disseminate ideas. At this time Edward Bernays, considered the “father” of public relations, started to use communication as a form of control and manipulation of public opinion. Some of Freud’s techniques of subconscious notions were applied. Bernay believed that giving the power of decision to the public was dangerous to society. So Bernay would make the public think that their decision was due to their individual needs, when in fact it was the result of a manipulation and control of their desires.

The century of the self by Adam Curtis. BBC

John Reith, the first Director-General of the BBC, declared: “It’s occasionally indicated to us that we are setting out to give the public what we think they need – and not what they want – but very few people know what they want and very few what they need”. The expression articulate very well the perception mass media had of their audience at the time.

However nowadays society has sustained important changes and the concept of active audiences has gained increasing strength. Opposite of passive, the active audience take responsibility for their choices. They decide what to consume, where and how. Today companies need to adapt their business and communication towards their audiences’ particular needs. According to the Reception Analysis study the public is also the creator of the messages meaning. They discuss together with the organization the meaning that the message should have. 

For PR professionals these audiences are mainly based in stakeholders and publics. The different concepts between both aren’t sharp and some theorists in the field still mix them up. The organizations’ stakeholder, a term originated in political theory, are the group of individuals that influence or are influenced by the company. Publics are stakeholders that faced a problem or issue related to the company. If the PR department know and understand the different stakeholders the company relates with, these stakeholders might never become publics. The mapping of stakeholders is essential to cement a communication strategy and it’s primarily based on the power and interest of the stakeholders towards the organization. If the stakeholders have high level of power and interest they are key in the organization survival and should be seen as essential by the company. If they have power but the interest is low, the organization should try to keep them satisfied and it shouldn’t require too much effort. However if the stakeholders have little power but there interest is high the organization should keep them informed.

Stakeholder theory

If the relationship between companies and stakeholders are manageable the company wouldn’t have to worry about them becoming publics, which could result in them organizing themselves against the organization. The situational theory of publics elaborated by Grunig and Hunt (1984) predicts some actions that can help strengthen the relationship between publics and organizations. According to Grunig and Hunt the publics are divided in latent, aware and active. The latent publics are the groups that have an issue/problem against the company’s action but they haven’t recognized it yet. When the group recognize the problem exists they are known as aware publics and when they start to organize to discuss and act against the problem/issue they are called actives.

Understand different concepts of audiences, stakeholders and publics are essential to create an influential PR campaign. As I said before, without knowing who you’re talking to, the strategies can’t be defined and efficiently implemented. However it’s important to make clear that in today society these concepts are much more complicated. It’s harder to frame in pre-set concepts. However it’s our job as PR professionals or academics to adapt the changes and reformulate theories in terms of today’s society. Always seeking to understand the role that different groups have in organizations plays an important role in defining our campaigns. 

Use social media and come out of the dark

Social Media as a strategic communication platform for organizations

This week was the 3rd time Social Media Week took place. This year the event happened simultaneously in 9 big cities: New York, San Francisco, Rome, Paris, Toronto, Sao Paulo, London, Hong Kong and Istanbul. The main objective of the event was to disseminate and share ideas and information about emergent and online platforms in social media (for more information see: http://socialmediaweek.org/about/).

I’ve joined some of the debates in London and they’ve reinforced the importance and impact of online and mobile platforms of communication such as sites like twitter, facebook, youtube and corporative blogs who are gaining increasing recognition in our society. That’s mainly because social media is a powerful two-way communication media; it gives a voice to the public providing interaction between them and the organization. Nowadays only share and transmit information isn’t enough. It could have had worked in the past where consumers were loyal to brands and satisfied by just getting information and news from companies. These one way communication models have become a thing of the past and now with consumers more engaged and aware of their role in society they are demanding to be listened and heard.

Companies that are seeking excellence in service and loyalty of consumers need to understand the public/stakeholder they are communicating with. They need to know their needs and expectations and then create efficient strategies of communication. There’s no better way to do that than using social media. Creating campaigns and channels of communications without understanding your public can be a waste of money and time, consequently affecting the bottom line.

Social media allows interaction and provides the company with the opportunity to get quick feedback from the public. It also enables companies to measure the feedback. This way they can improve or modify strategies or campaigns that aren’t effective. This is different to traditional media which requires a long period of time before it can be measured. Social media channels can give instantaneous feedback. Consequently decreasing the time companies spend implementing ineffective campaigns. In addition social media campaigns are relatively low cost.

The only necessary requirement is to constantly monitor. Companies who already realize the importance of implementing social media in theirs channels of communication also need to look at social media as a strategic platform of communication. Consumer feedback needs to be quickly responded to, otherwise the network losses it best feature: interactivity. When companies start to perceive social media as a part of their strategy and include it as a tool in there communication strategy, it will reinforce the interactivity between organizations and publics making their relationship much healthier, open and based on the dialogue.

How crisis affects company’s reputation

Today I’m going to talk about a subject I’ve especial interest in: crisis communication management. Organizations are usually implementing their communications’ strategy in stable environments, where the communication process can be easily monitored and constantly observed. Unfortunately environments aren’t always stable. What can happen when organizations have to face an unexpected event which destabilizes the environment that they are in? Are companies prepared to adapt and efficiently communicate to society in transparent yet measured manner in such critical scenarios?

The importance of strong and prepared risk communication in volatile environments is a key to a company’s survival. It’s an important tool of strategic communication and should be implemented in every single organization, no matter the segment or size. No company is immune to going through unexpected obstacles or disasters. Companies should think the unexpected and prepare for it. However, if the company doesn’t prepare to respond quickly and with agility, years of a good reputation can be damaged in a matter of seconds with only a few words. In the global and digital market today, quick feedback is required. As soon as an event occurs, misinformation or lack of information can easily destroy a company’s positive reputation.

For example BP’s oil spill in Gulf of Mexico in 2010, known as the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. The oil spill occurred in April and a few months later the company was still struggling to survive and maintain a healthy reputation at the global market. At the time BP clearly showed it wasn’t prepared to face a crisis situation and as a result its image was negatively impacted.

In addition every company should be able to “read between the lines”. I mean, very often, before facing the crisis the company faces rumours, alerting something is going wrong. Usually those rumours/emerging feedbacks should be treated as early warnings to possible crisis and not being treated as insignificance and ignored by the companies until they get big. Therefore, being able to listening and interpret the signals early are crucial for companies to treat and control issues when they are still manageable. For instance BP received several early “alerts” from employees stating the company was facing problems concerning safety. (more information see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-spill/).

 Eventually BP faced two serious accidents, the Texas Refinery explosion in 2005 killing 15 workers and injuring over 170 more and one year later the oil spill in Alaska. Despite its history of safety issues the company didn’t create robust systems and culture capable of capturing early warnings to prevent possibly future accidents. As a result a few years later it faced the worst accident in U.S. history and its image got severely damaged.

 ex-BP CEO Tony Hayward answers questions from the media on an oil-stained beach

Therefore it’s important that crisis communication management isn’t only a plan for when the things going wrong but is systematized and part of the organizations’ culture. The company as a whole needs to understand and practice at the daily basis the importance of a crisis communication management. It should be part of the company’s value providing lots of training and information necessary to employees. This way the company will decrease frequency of crisis scenario since the rumours/ feedback will be addressed at early stages. Furthermore the whole company is going to be prepare to deal and face crisis when and if comes.  

PR, Propaganda and war

In PR there are basic (although indispensable!) practices that we must ensure we apply in order to have an ideal communication environment. Transparency is one of them. There is no reputation that will survive in an environment where words don’t match actions, credibility is essential. We see organizations trying to maintain a communication excellence with its publics primarily based on truth. That way companies’ reputation is being build and relationships strengthened.

We all know it very well; it’s part of our main goals as public relations: build strong and long-term relationships.  Transparency is one of the indispensable tools to achieve it. Surprisingly though when we think about PR and war we face many contradictions and innumerable mistakes that make us think – how PR professionals could make so many heinous and basic mistakes?

Please don’t get me wrong, I’ve no doubts of the capabilities and dignity of our professionals.  We are used to face crisis and challenges in our environment (and we kind of like it!). It makes us stronger and able to show our diversity and flexibility to solve problems. Public Relations means constantly moving and innovating and we are so prepared for that.

 I believe that the problem is at the context that war has been inserted. Lately in the events surrounding war we could see actions towards the audience that cannot be described as public relations. Instead of information we saw persuasion. The war was seen as a product and the propaganda was used to sell and promote it. For instance, the Iraq war in 2003, where the emotional took place of the rational and every sentimental appeal was used to achieve the goal: sell the idea trough propaganda tactics no matter what.

One perfect example of this is the American soldier Jessica Lynch. She was captured by Iraqi forces and recovered by U.S. forces a few days later. The U.S. government is accused of creating a story as part of its propaganda effort. Despite the fact that she had been at the Iraqi hospital free to leave as soon as she recovered from her injuries, the American government said that she was taken hostage by Iraqi forces. Her rescue was massively publicized in the media. Demonizing the “enemy” is definitely a propaganda tactic in an attempt to gain popular mobilization and media support that the war is for the benefit of everyone.

This is a fragile and dangerous way to communicate with publics – the foundation can break anytime. Relationships can be extremely damaged requiring a long period of time to be rebuilt again. Sometimes they can’t be recovered anymore. Our goal as PR professionals is to build and maintain long-term relationships, and not putting them at risk. As I said before, transparency should be our main principle, and we should fight for it in on a daily basis.

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." — Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister during World War II