Feminisation of PR and its consequences

Wednesday 27th February, 2008

Today's lecture was on feminisation of Public Relations and it was quite interesting as we had a debate on the topic " Women will always work in PR industry, But will never run it" and i had participated in the debate and my group was against the motion.

During my research I found that today women dominate PR industry: according to PR week, in 2007, 63% of PR practitioners were women, and their number increases every year.

Gruing et al said of the research participants for Women in PR - how gender influences practice(2001) "many believed that female practitioners could empower themselves by connecting with other women. One aspect of this empowerment, interviewee mentioned, was mentoring and role modelling other women. Several identified learning from those women who have "gone through the hard knocks".

The Problem is some of the most powerful and successful women in PR - don't always want to speak openly about 'knocks' or 'barriers' they experienced.

In class the debate was quite a success, both the teams had good and arguable points to say. though I was in the team against the motion i neither agree with the statement nor disagree. I just feel it all depends from time to time.

Before the debate Michaela had given us an exercise to do which was to write down some of the attributes of male and female and we concluded that females are refined, committed, adaptable and flexible where as males are competitive, straight forward and egoistic. But then she made us realise that these attributes can be in both males and females it is just the society's expectations about men and women.

She showed us some of the examples of women in advertising in the olden times where women is shown to be stupid and are dependent on men.

Even in terms of salary men get more salary than women, this is also an expectation of the society that women get paid lesser and the role played by women is also a technician role where as men play the managerial role.

I believe the role of women in PR is growing and they have gained a lot of power and recognition in the society.

In the debate some of the points put forth by by group was that we already have women running PR practices such as Jilly Forster and Naomi Dector, the Washington based partner pf Brunswick PR.

In the book Rethinking Public Relations by Kevin Moloney said that there are more women then men working in the PR industry.

Lastly I would just like to mention that in our class of about 31 students only 3 students are men learning public relations.

Sources: Michaela O'Brien's presentation, University of Westminster, Moloney, K. Rethinking Public Relations: The Spin and the Substance, 2000-Gruning and al Women in PR – how gender influences practice, 2001

Theories of Publics, Audiences and Stakeholders

Wednesday 13th February, 2008

'Theories, concepts and models of audiences, stakeholders or publics, public relations and communication are important because they help us understand and explain our public relations campaigns and the situations these campaigns address. They determine how we plan and conduct public relations. Thus the different theories we hold will lead to different ways of planning and practising public relations'. (Source: Exploring Public Relations by Ralph Tench and Liz Yeomans)

In this lecture we learnt the theories of Publics, Audiences and Stakeholders and in a situation it can be done in many ways. Firstly there is 9 ways to segment stakeholders which is a very useful and effective in many situations. They are Demographic, Psychographic, Geographic, Organisational memberships, Convert power, Role in decision making, Influencers, Opinion formers, Decision makers. Secondly there is the theory of Grunigs’ situational theory which includes Dynamics, changing publics, situational theory: non public, latent public, aware public and active public. Lastly there is the social marketing approach in which there is a table of people adapted from social change media: Advocates/sales force, Influencers and Decision makers.

During the lectures we always have an exercise session which helps us to look into the situation in a practical manner and this further helps us to understand the situation in an industry. This time we were given a campaign about healthy success for Manchester festival and we had to apply the theory of social marketing approach. In this kind of a situation this theory does not help too much as it does not apply to the main target groups and we cannot come to conclusions with this kind of method.

Can PR ever be Ethical?

Wednesday, 6th February, 2008

This lecture was on PR and ethics and it was very interesting as with some practical exercises and debates things got very exciting.
There were some of the theories that we touched upon that were ethical framework and those were some of Bentham and Kant theories. Bentham said, “The greatest good for the greatest number”. Kant said that notions of duty and moral “to do the right thing”.

Cognitive theory: states that objectives moral truths exist and there is one right decision to make. There are 2 branches of this theory: do you choose the right action or the right outcome?

We were made into groups and given practical dilemmas to do and debate on them. It was very interesting as the situation and arguments heated up. I remember one of the situations that we were given and that was ‘you work for a computer manufacturer, you sent some samples of super thin laptops to selected journalists for temporary loan for review. A journalist asks if she could keep the laptop permanently before the review is published’. What do you do?

In such a situation, I feel it’s ok to give the laptop to the journalist and would also give all the journalists the laptop as I feel it would be more ethical to give to all instead of only one.

There is a formula which we discussed in class and that was:
- To get the facts and define the situation
- Identify your values e.g. fairness, honesty, respect for privacy, etc.
- Select your principles e.g. PR code of conduct; ethical framework; legal duty; corporate vision.
- Choose your loyalties: which of the stakeholders affected will you favour?

PR, Propaganda and Persuasion

Wednesday 30th January, 2008

Propaganda has been described as ‘the deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions and direct behaviour to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist’ (Jowett and O’Donnell 1992: 4)

In this lecture we had learned about PR and propaganda and our first exercise was that we were paired in groups and our topic was ‘PR for Ministry of Defence of USA, advice them on strategies to deal with USA going to war with a country, baramundi (fictitious). The director should provide strategies and tactics as to how to handle the media during the war.We thought that we should create public support by bogeyman tactic. The exercise was quite helpful and useful as you get to think about the strategies what would you being doing in such situation.

After the break we were shown a film on war spin by BBC (www.bbc.co.uk/correspondant). The film was about events that took place during a war on Iraq and media spin. In the film there was a lot of tactics used to control media like use of embedded journalist was a good tactic as the objectivity was only to a point as military was clothing, feeding and protecting them, it’s a big change. Also it showed a truthful image and weapons of mass destruction.

Source: Exploring Public Relations by Ralph Tench and Liz Yeomans

Crisis Management

Wednesday 23rd January, 2008

This lecture was on crisis management and it was very interesting as we looked upon some of good examples in an organization. We started the lecture with what is crisis management and in mandarin language the symbols comprises of two words Danger and Opportunity.

What is crisis and we said that it a turning point, an events that affects the bottom line or reputation of an organization, and we also said that crisis attracts media attention.

We also said that it’s about the organizations ability to cope with the crisis. Some organizations major crisis maybe another’s everyday dealings. We also learnt about different types of crisis and how to tackle them, i.e. by increasing certainty, taking control, Resist attack and reduce isolation.

Later after a break we did a crisis management exercise which was very interesting and enjoyable. We were divided into teams and was given a situation that there are some children from a particular school in harrow who are falling ill due to a mysterious illness and we are the local education authority and what is our role during the crisis. We said that we would first and foremost empathize with the parents whose children are in the hospital and the best thing to do in such a situation would be to shut down the school for sometime till there is no proper investigation to how the children are falling ill.

I leant that it depends on the nature of the crisis and then the organization reacts accordingly. During the times of crisis the organizations sometimes have to issue a press release or call for a press conference if the crisis is too critical or the crisis demands for it. The organization should not panic, it should take the responsibility immediately for what has happened and this shows that the organization as being caring and wants to maintain its trust of its stakeholders.

There is an example of crisis that happened in India with the Cola companies, the pesticide controversy that Cola majors faced in 2003. It describes the New Delhi-based environmental group, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) report that put the entire soft drink industry in a bad light. The report claimed that its laboratory tests had discovered that most soft drinks sold in India were contaminated with large doses of pesticides like Lindane, DDT, Chlorpyrifos, and Malathion. But the Cola majors overcame this crisis through the use of various marketing communication tools.

Source:http://www.icmrindia.org/casestudies/catalogue/marketing%20management/CLMM003.htm

Public Communication and PR Issues

Wednesday 16th January, 2008

This was our first class after the christmas break, it was nice to see everyone back with a lot of excitement about the second semester which seems more interesting as we have to take up 2 optional modules of our own choice.

We were given all the handbooks of all our course subjects and was given an introduction about our core module which is Public Communication and PR Issues and we were also given an introduction to dissertation. During class we looked at last semester's assignments on our critical reports and PR pitch documents. There were some suggestions given about the critical report which I found very helpful. The whole assignment of a critical report helped me to learn my mistakes what I had made in my PR pitch document. Reading someone's pitch document and critically analyzing it made me feel that where I had gone wrong in my individual document and this I feel was very useful for me as I can improve on my mistakes.

The lecture on how to improve on the critical report and also on the PR pitch document was very useful and helpful.

Consequences of Celebrity PR propaganda

I was reading Rethinking Public Relations by Kevin Moloney and I just came across the consequences of celebrity PR propaganda it said

“This view of a future, reformed PR both includes and excludes the modern phenomenon of celebrity. The inclusion flows from public relations theorised as a communicative consequences of business, interest and cause group activity. Celebrities are often supporting role players for organizations and groups, offering testimonials of support by associations. In this way they can be seen as human resources available to the PR production of businesses and cause groups, and as being effective because of the links to popular culture and the phenomenon of fame. Sports, people, actors, entertainers and authors are often sponsors of mass-marketing businesses and cause groups, and there is then a transference effect of ‘being famous’ to their corporate brands. Such celebrities can be viewed as the human components of corporate brands. Others, however, are the human components of product brands, and so can be seen as mass-mediated, personal sales agents for goods and services, such as clothes and fashion accessories. This is the distinction between a member of the British royal family being a patron of charitable ‘good causes’, and a comedian promoting a credit card. The latter association is better understood through the social psychology of personality traits, and marketing theories of product endorsement and customer relationship, and is thus a non-PR activity.”

Source: Rethinking Public Relations by Kevin Moloney