Wrap-Up

So it’s the end of my PR 107- Campaigns class. I really enjoyed working with Operation Homefront-NY/NJ and the class as a whole. Operation Homefront is a great organization and I’m grateful for the opportunity to help them increase their awareness on Long Island and I hope it only continues to grow in the future.

It has been interesting to look at this experience and try to think about how it will match up after graduation. With only one week left, the real world is creeping in. This class definitely gave me some good lessons about how things work “on the outside.”

My job application process has been tedious, but I there are plenty of PR openings that I’ve seen that I felt qualified for, and I think that partial comes from these real-world introductions in the class. There are real lessons with lessened consequences, which allows for more experimentation, something that is always needed.

Ultimately, I’m ready to see where I’ll end up and how I’ll be putting my PR skills to use. I’m also excited and interested to see where my fellow graduates, both in this class and in the department, end up too.

Bad PR from Burson-Marsteller

It was revealed on May 12 that Facebook hired the PR firm Burson-Marsteller “to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in outlets like The Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post.”

“The plot backfired when the blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the emails that Burson had sent him” BusinessInsider.com wrote. “It got worse when USA Today broke a story accusing Burson of spreading a “whisper campaign” about Google “on behalf of an unnamed client.”

Burson-Marsteller released a statement saying:

“Whatever the rationale, this was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies, and the assignment on those terms should have been declined. When talking to the media, we need to adhere to strict standards of transparency about clients, and this incident underscores the absolute importance of that principle.”

These are the types of things that give PR people and the profession in general a bad name. It makes it appear that we are just there to bend the truth to fit our own ends, which Burson-Marsteller was doing for Facebook.

Their statement shows that they know what they did was bad PR, but it’s a little late for that. They’ve already taken the client and added to negative image that PR can sometimes get. They talk about treating media respectfully, but they did the exact opposite of that for their client before being caught.

Toyota Helps Community; Good PR Move

As a result of the March 11 earthquake in Japan the Toyota Tundra plant in San Antonio, Texas has a parts shortage, which means that the plant won’t be able to run at full capacity. There are 2,800 employees at the plant that would normally be faced with hard times because of this development, but Toyota is, instead, using their employees’ downtime to help the community.

Toyota announced that one of the options available to employees is to work to build homes with Habitat for Humanity, which will allow them to still collect a full paycheck. Employees also have the option of signing up for training or taking unpaid leave.

This seems like a great idea from Toyota. There could have been stories about them having to cut employees’ pay or hours because of the slowed production, but they managed to find a way to improve their community and gain good publicity from it, while also keeping their employees working and invigorated.

More companies need to look into ways of getting involved in their communities, from a PR perspective, but also from a social responsibility perspective, and create incentives for their employees to want to participate in them. Actions like this create a lasting impression on communities and can create loyalty to a brand.

When customers can relate to a company or brand in a greater way than just a product (as a community activist or volunteer, for example) then there is a meaningful connection between that customer and the company. For a company, this is harder to ear, but it will also last longer than a quick deal or some other gimmick.