Ethical global pr: a case study

Pre-reading tasks

Have you heard about Clair Mascall PR Prize? Read the information in the Internet and prepare a short retelling:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Claire-Mascall-PR-Prize/138457944682?sk=info

http://www.leedsmet.ac.uk/fbl/DB40028B7EFF454784C47BE0B1A32B4C.htm

http://www.behindthespin.com/news/winner-of-the-claire-mascall-public-relations-prize-announced

http://www.clairemascallprprize.co.uk/

Helpful vocabulary:

1. To pay tribute to

2. To open the award

3. To continue inspiring future generations of PR professionals

4. The premise of the prize is

5. To share best practice

6. To keep the industry informed

7. To inspire lively debate

Reading

Read the text about the 2010 Clair Mascall PR prize winner and say why Christine Quigley won the prize

Ethical global pr: a case study

This year’s Claire Mascall prizewas won byChristine Quigley. Here’s an edited version of her essay on ethical global public relations, winner of the £1000 top prize.

Prize winners: Christine Quigley (centre) with Sophie Hall and Natalie Smith

Public Relations has a bad reputation when it comes to ethical practice. PR practitioners are often thought to be liars, manipulators and spin-doctors. However PR is an evolving global profession and has had to change and improve in order to meet the growing expectations and needs of stakeholders.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) or sustainability is now a specialist area of PR that is important to an organisation in order for it to be perceived as being ethical.

Ethical practice leads to trust, which helps to build and maintain an organisation-stakeholder relationship which is ultimately the purpose of the public relations function.

CSR has now become an aspect of PR that is increasingly being incorporated into corporate identity and is changing stakeholders’ perspectives of particular organisations.

I also believe in order to be ethical when practising global PR a centralised approach is not acceptable. A number of factors should be taken into consideration before, during and after global campaigns.

• Culture (customs and values)

• Language

• Environment

• Communication delivery systems

What may be considered unethical behaviour in a Western European country may be viewed as acceptable practice in parts of the developing world. So if not taken into consideration this could cause a communications crisis, brand confusion, loss of trust and credibility for an organisation or a brand.

Here are some examples of some campaigns/slogans that did not consider language differences when launching a global campaign and their messages got lost in translation:

• Coors slogan, “Turn it loose,” when translated to Spanish read as “Suffer from diarrhoea.”

• In Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan “finger-lickin’ good” came out as “eat your fingers off.”

Fortunately these mistakes did not do permanent damage to the brand yet they generated bad publicity and made the brands memorable for the wrong reason.