Maggie Scruggs in Comm 355

The blog by Dave Fleet had some interesting points about disclosure of PR and organizations. He asked if average people really care about whether a PR company working with an organization tell the people they’re working together. I would answer no. He thought the same but also put in the importance of disclosure in his blog. He says that not disclosing workings with a PR firm can derail an organization’s message, cause problems with the industry’s reputation, and the ever-lasting question of ethics. I do not consider myself a person who is “in the fish bowl,” as Dave says, of the PR world. Therefore I do not think that disclosure of a PR firm in the marketings of other companies is important. Whether the message is being said by a person from the company or a person hired to say something from another company for that company, doesn’t matter to me. What matters is the message and the actual company’s activities. I think a lot of average people realize that people in commercials don’t actually work in the company of the product they’re advertising for. I think it’s a given that those people are hired by the company just like PR firms are hired by companies.

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The Dominos scandal was a big deal in our country. It is a good example of Crisis Communication. This is a link to the video: http://en.timeturk.com/video.php?id=45. It’s not the full video but I think it gets the message across. In the video Dominos workers were picking their noses and putting their findings in people’s food as well as other gross activities. Dominos had to deal with this video because a lot of people stopped eating there because of that video. Dominos responded by issuing public apologies and assuring people that this type of thing did not happen in every Dominos store. They also came up with a Twitter acount to gain more support and put the message out there that they did not condone this type of behavior. They had the people in the video fire, arrested and pressed criminal charges against them. This is a lesson in why monitoring social media is important and how companies deal with crises.

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Jim Rettew’s presentation on crisis communication was very interesting. I thought that he did a good job of explaining what crisis communication is and how important it is to have a crisis communication plan. He said that in a crisis communication plan you have to have situational awareness, a leader and plan in operations, a plan on how to develop a message, a victim management plan, and it must include how the organization can rebuild trust and credibility. The 11 things that he listed for a crisis plan were helpful and important to know. He also says that social media needs to be monitored because it can start a crisis, fuel a crisis, and inform people of a crisis. I agree with this because people put so many things on youtube and Facebook that could potentially cause a problem for an organization. He also gives a long list of the things that could happen to an organization. A lot of the things made sense as to why they would cause a problem but I was surprised by some of the things that I never thought of as being a problem. For example, the problem of a rape on your property. I understand that rape is a terrible thing that happens but I don’t really see how it would be a problem for a company unless someone from the company was the person who acted in the rape.

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One example of corporate social responsibility was the problem that AMCOR had with its employees and energy consumption. AMCOR wanted to save more energy by turning off the machines at the end of a shift. The problem was that the employees weren’t participating in the program. AMCOR wanted a way to get the employees involved in the plan without seeming too overbearing or ordering. So, AMCOR PR professionals came up with a play to get the employees involved. They made up training videos that dealt with environmental issues and how these issues affected the employees. They also told the employees the importance of turning off the machines and when and how to do it. This PR plan worked and AMCOR conserved a lot more energy through this “go green” plan. (http://www.ogilvypr.com/en/case-study/amcor)

     This example is corporate social responsibility because the organization was concerned with the environment and with its employees. It wanted to take some of the pressure off the environment by turning off the machines but they also wanted to make their employees feel like they were part of the decision to do so. This impacted the lives of the employees by showing them environmental problems that affected them and making them feel like they were a part of the solution. It also showed the the organization was concerened with hows its activities affected the environment and that they took responsibility for those effects.

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Corporate social responsibility is defined by the Sustainability Blog as a concept where organizations consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, employees, shareholder, communities, and the environment in their operations. (http://www.sustainabilityblog.org/2007/11/13/what-is-corporate-social-responsibility/)     From this definition, the PR practitioner has to think further in to how the organizations affects these important aspects of life. They have to concentrate on making sure the people have a better life and do not hurt the environment or community through their activities. The PR practitioner must be able to know what is at stake in every position the organization could be in, know what the society expects, and know how to show the company how to do business responsibly and ethically.

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