Successful Public Relation (PR)

Public relations is the opposite of advertising. In advertising, you have to pay to placed you message in a newspaper. PR is the article that features your company is not paid for. The reporter (whether they broadcast or print, write about or films) about your company as a result of information he or she received and researched.

Definition – efforts to establish and maintain a company’s / organization’s image with the public.

How to tell corporate story effectively;

1. The starting point – a simple, recognizable truth. E.g; Nike’s slogan “Just do it”

2. The point of view must leave a space for the listener – good stories fire the listener’s imagination. They draw people in and include them in the story telling process.

3. The storyteller – author Mark Helprin believes that every good company requires a strong personality and a credible narrator whom people will want to listen to. Helprin asserts that a good storyteller “can’t help himself”. The passion comes through. He or she becomes a vessel in which an urgent story wells up and must be told. One person who exemplifies this is Steve Jobs.

**Steve Jobs – Steven Paul Jobs, he’s a co-founder and chief executive officer of apple Inc. he has contributed greatly to the myths of the idiosyncratic, individualistic Silicon Valley entrepreneur where by he emphasizing the importance of design and understanding the crucial role aesthetics play in public appeal. His work driving forward the development of products that are both fractional and elegant has earned him a devoted following.

** Silicon Valley – situated in southern part of San Francisco where the large number of silicon chip investors and manufacturer is there. Now it eventually comes to refer to all the high tech business (some kind leader high-tech hub) because it’s large number of engineers and venture capitalists.

How can PR boost my business?

1. Increase sales – by targeting a pool of potential buyers, you can build visibility and thus grow your client base. Each time people read your company name and associate it with something positive, it will reinforce their awareness of your firm and help them differentiate your company from your competitors.

2. Build credibility – business start ups often need to build their credibility quickly to compete with more establish rivals. By positioning yourself as an expert in your filed, you can attract media attention and serve as a quoted source in published articles.

3. Forge a customer relationships – emerging-growth entrepreneurs will tell you that its not enough to win a new customer. You need to convince a new comer to come back and buy more. By aligning your PR campaign with your goal of attracting repeat business, you can build consumer confidence and trust. E.g; profiling some of your best customers on the web, you send a message that you value your customer and share a stake in their success.

4. Penetrate new market – when you enter a new market or launch a new product or services, you need to alert potential buyers that you have open for business. Effective PR can draw them in and educate them about what you offer.

9 PR tools

1. Press release – short document details about what’s new, different or exciting about your business. Press releases make it easy for journalist to understand how their audience might benefit by learning more.

2. Press kit – often includes in press release along with background information and your business card all packed neatly in a snazzy, eye-catching folder. Folder might also include photos, product info sheets, articles from other publication, customer testimonials, list of FAQ.

3. Newsletters – provide short articles and practical info that interest your target audience.

4. Bylined articles – the advantages of writing articles about your area of expertise and persuading editors to publish your submission for your name, phone no, websites and a few sentences about your business to appear at the end of the piece.

5. Awards – applying for industry or local awards provides great visibility if you win or earn recognition as a finalist. Many trade journals, government agencies and professionals association sponsor annual best of awards programs for entrepreneurs.

6. Outline outreach – smart, media-savvy entrepreneurs use chat rooms, their own websites and other internet based tools to launch awareness-building campaigns.

7. Special events – examples include fund-raises, contest and drawing, public celebrations of your company milestones such as your firm’s anniversary, book signing and client parties.

8. Trade shows / conferences – to maximize your presence at a large event, you may want to pay for a centrally-located booth that’s guaranteed heavy ‘foot traffic’. Or you can save money and strategically prowl the aisles to spread the message, perhaps by introducing yourself to key contacts on participating in ‘breakout’ sessions that relate to your business.

9. Speech – deliver a speech on your business to community groups, local schools, or nonprofit agencies.

Keys to successful PR

1. Blog – it is unlikely that you will get a positive response by directly blogging about your service and products. Selling yourself too directly is a turn off rather than a turn on. However companies are finding success from courting popular bloggers, sending them samples and invites them to launch parties in return for an endorsement. By gaining the support of popular bloggers, your company can reach a growing market that is taking over traditional forms of media. Why bloggers? Bloggers are seen as real people with no motive, not an organization trying to manipulate us into something we (organization) do not want. Bloggers have their own core audience and you can use this to seduce the authors into advertising your products. E.g: Redmummy is one of the famous blogger in Malaysia and organizations like MAS, Brands Singapore, Nippon Paint, Nestle, etc. Visit her website for more info.

2. Do not point finger – don’t blame anyone else or don’t point out the mistakes of your competitors just to launch your own product because it will not win you any supporters. PR is all about positivity. Don’t tend to do something so that other company will look bad. Focus on positive aspects and features of your product – uniqueness, good quality and value for money.

3. Get people talking about you – we know the power of advertisement through “word of mouth” a catchy phrase or the use of a well known song can get people talking and when a friend recommends a product to us, we will give it more credibility than if a stranger on the tv says we should buy it.

4. Be sociable – the rise of social networking sites has been immense with everyone. The most popular social networking sites have over 200 million members with half of these members logging on at least once a day. Internets with huge percentage of users have memberships to one or more social networking sites and they are proving successful way to target potential customers. Creating a positive way of your organization and keeping your followers up to date with promotions and new products is tried and tested PR activity.

5. Maintain good relations – successful PR campaign do not start and end with the launch of product. If your initial campaign was successful and your products or services were bought, so your next aim should be retain those customers and keeping them with exclusive offers and promotions.

** Long term commitment – send message (story telling on corporate story), launch of new product. When people love it and bought the product with a good customer service and maintain your product and service.

** Short term fix – e.g; Colgate toothpaste, halal or haram? Colgate toothpaste displaying the Halal seal because of consumer confusion, Colgate petitioned for and was granted, special approval to place the seal on the pack. So after 50 years of being Halal in Malaysia, Colgate now displays the seal.

Ethics and Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility – form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. Business would embrace responsibility for the impact of their activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. Furthermore, business would proactively promote the public interest by encouraging community growth and development, and voluntarily eliminating practices that the sphere, regardless of legality.

Business ethics – form of applied ethics that examines ethical principles and moral on ethical problems that arise in a business conduct and is relevant to conduct of individuals and business organizations as a whole. Applied ethics is a field of ethics that deals with ethical questions in many fields such as medical, technical, legal and business ethics.

E.g; Multinationals company take advantage of international differences such as outsourcing production and services to law-wage countries.

E.g; Foreign countries often use dumping as a competitive threat, selling products at prices lower than their value. This can lead to problems in domestic markets. It becomes difficult for this market to compete with the pricing set by foreign market. It seen as unethical because large companies are taking advantage of other less economically advanced companies.

E.g; Issue of child labor in India and other developing countries – its ethical to do but here in Malaysia and US, it is unethical.

Ethical issues can arise when companies must comply with multiple and sometimes conflicting legal on cultural standards as in the case of multinational companies that operate in countries with varying practices.

E.g; US law forbids companies from paying bribes either domestically or overseas. However, in other parts of the world, bribery is a customary accepted way of doing business.

** Wages – foreign companies like to hired labor from developing countries because its cheap.

** Misuse of the intellectual property systems to stifle competition, patent misuse, copy right misuse, patent troll. E.g; McDonald’s losses court battle against McCurry – the issue of local Indian food outlet, McCurry Restaurant to use ‘Mc’ in its business signage. McCurry signboard carried the words “Restoran McCurry” while McDonalds logo as a whole, consists of a distinctive golden arched “M” and using red color. While McCurry using white (lettering) and grey color. McDonalds accused McCurry copied their name and use it as a brand name / logo. But unfortunately, McDonald’s loss the case and McCurry continued using the name on their signboard.

What skills or competencies would be required for a Corporate Social Responsibility role? – it is vary according to the company / organizations:

1. Environmental responsibilities
2. PR oriented
3. Business skills, impact and vision – decision making, leadership, commercial awareness, IT, innovation, strategic awareness, problem solving
4. Communication, influencing and people skills – political awareness, building teams, open minded.
5. Professional and technical skills – technical expertise, understanding impacts, internal consultant, selling the business case, understanding human rights and society and understanding sustainability.

- Every private or public sector, international and non-profit concerns all need to consider corporate social responsibility. United Nation for example, launched the Global Impact as an initiative to convince international companies to commit to universal principles regarding protection of human rights, labor rights and the environment.

Some examples / cases that related to corporate social responsibility;

1. Shell Sustainability Report 2008 – committed to contribute sustainable development. For them, it means helping to meet the world’s growing need for energy in economically, socially and environmentally responsible way.
2. McDonald’s 2009 Global Best of Green – listed a few McDonalds outlet for people to vote as the best outlet who have done a great social responsibility. ( http://crmcdonalds.com ).
3. Nike – the ultimate resources for business side of Nike is considered design and environment. The purposes are to; (i) reduce waste generated across their entire supply chain, (ii) reduce CO2 emissions, (iii) use chemistry and design innovation to eliminate toxins and waste, (iv) design themselves into ultimate, aspiration goal of creating closed-loop products and business models (products that can be reused and recycled).