Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Week 8: The one where Terence managed PR effectively

While PR practioners might not be just a mouthpiece for organizations when it comes to addressing their publics ad stakeholders anymore,they still play an important role in helping to manage the organization/client's, well, Public Relations...for the lack of an alternative word.

As such, gone are the days when companies can just make decisions and expect their publics to go along with it. Today, it is more likely the publics calling the stakes on the organizations rather than the other way around.

Public opinion is essentially the lifeblood of a company. Failure to maintain and improve on current impression can lead to a fatal end for the organization. This week's readings introduced a very good way of facilitating relaions between the organization and their publics - the Systems Theory

Originally developed from the study of biological systems, the Systems Theory has a few variations to it but point back to the same logic all the time - that the need to rely on constant interaction and exchanges between environments and organizations is vital, in order to facilitate the achieving of objectives and targets that will benefit the organization and ultimately, benefit the environments surrounding the organization too.

There are many forms of opinion exchanges organizations must take note of, particularly:

  • Corporate Social Responsibility
  • Community Engagement
Corporate Social Responsibility, more commonly known as CSR, is the set of obligations an organisation has to abide by and upkeep the society in which it functions. The public usually carry the "you made this mess, you clean it up" mentality as they feel that organizations are the advocates of problems in society. As such, since they're the perpetrators, the organizations will have to "clean up their own mess" by helping to solve this problem. It is good for the companies to engage in CSR as good PR like this helps to drive profits up. Making apparent contributions to society helps to either create or enlarge, in some cases even both, market share for their products and services. That aside, it helps to drum up an impression better than the one the public has on the organization right now.

Community Engagement will probably be best applied with an example from football. The main fanbase of football clubs are usually the citizens who're staying in the city that the clubs "represent" - bearing the name of the cities in their names and having their deep history steeped within the city. An example will be my favourite football club, Newcastle United, who has seen its fair share of PR disasters in the past year.

Newcastle United were an established Premier League club back in 2007 when Mike Ashley bought over the club from its previous owners. The Magpies, as the football club are affectionately known, is the pride and joy of the city. On matchday Saturdays, the whole city will literally slow down as thousands of fans make its way down to St. James Park to watch Newcastle's home games.

Such was the support for the Magpies that Ashley, when he just bought the club, made an effort to go down to the ground level and interact with the fans at pubs and watering holes on matchdays to curry favours and establish good relations.

All was looking rosy until 2009 when the manager of Newcastle United, Kevin Keegan, left the club, citing broken promises from the board of directors. As Keegan was a fan favourite, the fans and city took unkindly towards Ashley's silence. For reasons unknown, Ashley remained tight-lipped about this entire saga even though fans were clamouring for an answer. Unable to face the pressure, he went on to put the club for sale claiming that "I didn't mean for all this to happen".

Fast forward to 2010 and Newcastle has been mismanaged by Ashley and his regime while also suffering relegation from the Premier League. Even though Ashley has taken off the club for sale due to the lack of serious interest from outside, he's still disliked, to say the least, by the citizens and fans of Newcastle simply due to his mismanagement, lack of PR skills and for throwing the club into the mess it's in right now.

If he had come out immediately after the Keegan saga to explain their position (for additional info, Keegan went on to sue the club for breach of contract and through the court hearings, explicit details about the scandal was revealed, showing Ashley and co to be in the wrong), Mike Ashley would probably not have had to put the club for sale and withdraw funds from the club totally, potentially allowing the caretake manage to strengthen the football team and maybe even avoiding relegation.

Because of a simple factor - lack of communication and engagement with the community - Ashley has incurred the wrath of fans who even sent death threats and forced him to not attend games at St. James Park anymore.

Hah, ok that might have been a long story (even longer for non-football fans) but that, I feel, is the best case study to emphasize Community Engagement

On to the next reading then..

Terence....OUT!

2 comments:

  1. Yes, instead of organisations making decisions for the public, it is now the public's turn to decide if he/she wants to help the company or destroy the company's image by writing bad comments, reviews on the World Wide Web. This is quite a good change as it is no longer as one-sided as it was and I feel that by having more people to write their opinions or give their comments, it is actually more credible.

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  2. Though the job nature of PR goes beyond that of mouth piece to the organisation, many still percieve that brand marketing falls into the job scope of Marketing. As such, it's nature for PR to draw sceptical and cynical perception. Therefore, there is a need to educate the public on the job scope of PR to be able to better comprehen the field of job =)

    Cheers

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