Is Corporate Social Responsibility heartfelt?

"Corporate Social Responsibility is a company's sense of responsibility towards the community and environment (both ecological and social) in which it operates. Companies express this citizenship through their waste and pollution reduction processes, by contributing to educational and social programs, and by earning adequate returns on the employed resources," (Business Dictionary.com).

Experts says that good corporate citizenship is not just something that differentiates a company from its competitors but today it is something that is a requirement to remain competitive in almost any industry. In spite of this requirement many companies do not have a budget for their CSR missions (Greene, B. 2014).

If a company does not have large funds to spend on giving back to society with big events, it can at least empower its employees to be CSR ambassadors. This helps employees give back to their communities and make a difference.

For example big companies like Walmart and McDonalds are doing their business by making sure that their production is not harming the environment. Microsoft has committed itself to helping nonprofits by doing work with communities. These are great examples of real CSR initiatives.

But the question is, are CSR initiatives become another way to gain publicity? The main purpose for any company to take up a CSR initiative must be to bring about social change. So when a company brags about its CSR initiatives, should we believe it for bringing about change in the community or is it simply a publicity stunt. Experts say that when employers engage their employees in their CSR initiatives, they genuinely want to make a difference (Mahesha, N. 2013).

Therefore to really believe a company when it launches its CSR initiative, we need to understand whether it wants to make any social change and whether it involves its employees with that initiative. If there is no ambition to bring a social change, we can blindly assume that the company is merely looking for publicity.

Dr. Bradley Googins, Executive Director of Corporate Citizenship at Boston College says Corporate Social Responsibility is no longer used as a publicity generator or as a tax exemption technique by organizations. CSR initiatives taken up by organizations are actually making a big difference. It is helping societies all over the world (CB Bureau, 2010).

Reference list

CB Bureau (2010). Corporate social responsibility no more a publicity generator. Cause Because. Retrieved from website link

Corporate Social Responsibility. BusinessDictionary.com. Retrieved from website link

Greene, B. (2014). 10 Steps to Launching a Successful CSR Program. PR News. Retrieved from website link

Mahesha, N. (2013). Does CSR come from a good place or just another way to gain publicity? Retrieved from website link

To-Do list of PR professionals

Sure Public Relations has changed over the years, and more so during the social media boom. Traditional media seems to be getting busted by new media. The importance of blogs and social media is getting bigger. So there is a new to-do list that PR professionals ought to do today.

The traditional skills and attributes that PR professionals needed to have were writing, good communication skills, media relations, proactiveness, and good work ethic. But in the new age of digital media, there are a few more attributes and skills that is added to that list, including blogging, microblogging, social networking tools, SEO, Coding, RSS, RSS readers, blogger relations, and social media ethics (Fleet, D., 2009).

Arik Hanson writes on the PR Daily site that by 2020 PR professionals will have to add a few more skills to be competitive and survive in the ever growing public relations world. The few skills that they would need are (Hanson, A. 2012).

1.      Advertising copywriting

2.      Video editing/ production

3.      Mobile

4.      Social content creation/ curation

5.      Analytics

6.      Search Engine Optimization

7.      Speed to information

8.      Programming skills

9.      Managing virtual teams

10.  Blogger outreach

PRO's today have to monitor content on Twitter, Facebook and online communities, and at the same time update these sites on a continuous basis to stay abreast with the new media world. Online communications and social media are the real growth areas at the moment. But overall this is an opportunity for PR professionals. They have more channels through which they can speak with the customers in a short period of time.

So a PR professional, a job seeker, a business should welcome social media in their lives and stay up-to-date with the online medium. Being well versed with social media is very important for people looking for a career as a PR professional. A business owner needs to hire a PR company and/or hire staff to take care of their social media and make sure they stay updated with the online world. PR professionals already know that they got to do social media but they need to innovate and attend social media workshops to make sure that they stay up-to-date (Krautstrunk, M. 2011).

Reference List

Fleet, D. (2009). 14 Key Skills & Attributes For New Public Relations Professionals. Dave Fleet.com website. Retrieved from website link

Hanson, A. (2012). 10 skills PR professionals will need in 2020. PR Daily. Retrieved from website link

Krautstrunk, M. (2011). PR Job Descriptions: Professional Social Media Experience Now Necessary? PR breakfast club. Retrieved from website link

Another crisis management

So is it the end of General Motors or only the end of the 2004 manufactured Chevrolet Cobalt car that was responsible for taking the lives of so many innocent General Motors customers. Everything seemed faulty in this car model. There were power steering failures, locks inexplicably opening and closing, doors jammed and shut in the rain, ignition defect and much more. The worst to this crisis is that even after knowing about the defects, General Motors did nothing to fix the problems on the grounds that it was too expensive to recall all cars and rectify the problem.

It's one thing when you didn't know of the major problem and hence didn't do anything to rectify it. General Motors knew about the car defects way back in 2001. The problems were again highlighted in 2004, but nothing was done by the GM management to rectify the situation. Thirteen people have died in accidents as a result of faulty ignition and about 140 died in accidents involving the Cobalt in which the cause is unknown (Nocera, J. 2014).

Surely this is a big crisis and from the public relations point-of-view. The General Motors management is doing everything it can do to protect its public image. The company has hired a crisis management advisor Jeff Eller to help it come out of this crisis situation. Now Eller is the same man who had represented the Clinton administration. But will the public pardon such lethal mistakes? Even if G.M. has the best person roped in to reverse the damage, can the damage really be reduced? (Vlasic, B. 2014).

At the center of this crisis is General Motors CEO Mary Barra. In a letter to employees, Barra assures employees that the company's reputation won't be affected by the ongoing recall of 1.6 million vehicles with potentially fatal ignition problems, but rather on how it addresses the problem. Only time will tell whether GM will be able to keep its reputation like it was before or whether it is all over for this huge company. However reputation experts say that the first rules of reputation management is to be proactive and not reactive. And that GM should have acted way back in 2001 when the first faulty complaint was brought to its notice (McCarthy, M. 2014).

 

Reference List

McCarthy, M. (2014). How GM Can Steer Through Crisis of Ignition-Switch Recall. Ad Age. Retrieved from website link

Nocera, J. (2014). G.M.’s Cobalt Crisis. New York Times. Retrieved from website link

Vlasic, B. (2014). G.M. Turns to Experienced Crisis Experts. New York Times. Retrieved from website link

Marketing or Public Relations?

It was not Public Relations that broke the story about David Letterman's retirement from Late Night. All it took was a 140-character tweet on social media to break the story to the world. There was no press release, there was no speech, and there was no reportage. A tweet is all it took.

 So with the new trend of breaking news from social media, is there a need for public relations? Are Public relation officers today doing the jobs of marketing professionals? And how is public relations different from marketing?

Public relations, marketing and advertising are all about communicating a story to the public. All three areas are involved with getting customers, moving products and driving revenue (Chima, C. 2013). So then what sets them apart?

Wikipedia defines Public Relations as a practice that manages the spread of information between an individual or an organization and the public. The main objective of public relations it says is for a company to be able to persuade the public, investor, partners, employees, and other stakeholders to maintain a point of view about it, its leadership, products, or of political decisions.

So with all the interchangeable roles of marketing, public relations and advertising, experts say that the future is of integrated marketing and public relations. Everyone should be able to do a little of everything. For instance marketing teams should be able to buy advertisements and pitch stories to reporters and advertising agencies should be able to whip some compelling content.

Besides a good press release can grow brand awareness by getting a company's name out in the market. But to get the name out, we need to have the distribution channel that will reach out to the target audience. And hence Marketing and PR go hand-in-hand. PR Newswire's research shows that there's a lot of potential for PR opportunities when content marketing is used effectively. Bylines can lead to blog posts, blog posts to bylines, and press releases can lead to bylines and blog posts (Cohen, H., 2012).

Both marketing and public relations went through an evolution in the twentieth century. Some business historians called this period the teenage years for public relations and marketing. As marketing and public relations expanded, their activities became more aggressive, sometimes considered to be interchangeable. In his book Public Relations: Concepts and Practices, Ray Simon wrote:

"Marketing and public relations ... both are major external functions of the firm and both share a common ground in regard to product publicity and consumer relations. At the same time, however, they operate on different levels and from different perspectives and perceptions.

The traditional view ... is that marketing exists to sense, serve, and satisfy customer needs at a profit.

Public relations exists to produce goodwill in the company's various publics so that the publics do not interfere in the firm's profit-making ability."

In fact majority of public relations practitioners and marketers think alike. They say that marketing's measure of success is the number of sales and/or the revenue it generates, whereas public relations' measure of success is expressed public opinion or other evidence of public support (Turney, M., 2001)

Reference List

Chima, C. (2013). What Is The Difference Between Public Relations And Marketing? PR Tips for Startups. Retrieved from website link

Cohen, H. (2012). 11 Communications Experts On Marketing, PR & MarCom. Heidi Cohen website. Retrieved from website link

Turney, M. (2001). Public relations and marketing were initially distinct. On-line Readings in Public Relations website. Retrieved from website link