As everyone knows, the new movie New Moon has just come out.  The first film in the series, Twilight, was a huge success with the public (especially teenage girls), so they decided to promote this film even more than the first.  One PR tactic that they did was a promotional event that was a tour of the cast around 15 different malls across the States in Nordstrom and Hot Topic stores.  Anyone who showed up to see the cast of the film would enjoy some good Q&A, live musical performances, and games.  The audience members would also have a chance to be invited to some VIP events with the cast.  You had to get there early to receive that great prize, though, because it was on first come first serve basis.

This is a great PR tactic.  It involves the public who sees the characters as their “friends.”  It involves the public that has the emotional attachments to the characters, and exposes the film to people who might not know about the film but happen to be at the vicinity the day of the tour.  Having a big prize for the audience (such as the 125 VIP passes) is a great promotional idea and PR tactic.  This is a great event to hype up the film and give it a good voice.  The big Hollywood actors are reaching out to the locals and giving them a taste of the music from the film.  It was like a sneak peek, and everyone was trying to get a little insider’s taste of what the new film was going to be like.

I give this PR event 2 thumbs up.

This PR tactic had great intention behind it.  I’ve never heard of such a great deal.  You can only buy half a can of beans for 23 cents, but this day a whole pizza could be yours for 23 cents.  Papa John’s seemed like the obvious choice and an amazing company.  This was their way of apologizing to the Cleveland basketball team for having some of the employees wear shirts that said “LeBron is a crybaby.”  All of the funds would go to the LeBron James Family Fund and the Cavaliers Youth Fund.  This is making a huge statement from Papa Johns.  They had to have lost a lot of money from this.

So, what’s bad about this?  The fact that the lines were a wait of a few hours and the fact that the Papa Johns stores were afraid of vandalism if the customers had to wait for much longer.  Cops were called in to 20 of the 40 Papa Johns locations around Cleveland and were asked to close.

Potentially this apology is great in theory.  It shows that the company cares sincerely for its community and how it is portrayed.  You have to be able to trust companies and their actions.  Their actions can usually show where their “heart” is and the t-shirt was a low blow to many of their stakeholders, so they took full responsibility for their actions.  Perhaps, they could come up with a new plan next time.  They could let everyone put their name and address on a form and then send out the day they could come in and pick up their pizza to avoid the “malicious” aspect of this apology tactic.

Lulu’s is an online vintage-indie clothing/accessories store.  They buy clothes from designers and put them on their website to sell.  The clothes they have are of a unique style.  Right now, they are also promoting a band with a contest.  First prize is two concert tickets to Needtobreathe’s concert tour, meet and greet with the band, and a $100 shopping spree on Lulus.com.  Second prize is a $50 shopping spree and an autographed CD.  Third prize is a $25 shopping spree and a signed poster. This is PR in two ways:

1. Recognition of the band and puts their name out there
2. Recognition of the online store, and gives their name a better and more well-known reputation

This is a primary example of a great PR campaign-the “Back to MAC Program.”  Women will always buy cosmetics.  We want to feel beautiful.  It’s natural.  But now, with the environment also at the top of a lot of people’s minds, packaging and throwing away the empty containers, so MAC gives you the alternative to send back in 6 empty MAC containers (which they will reuse), and you receive a free lipstick.  This keeps you buying their products with the notion of getting a reward by being a loyal customer. It’s also a simple process, which makes it great PR.  If something is too complicated to bother with, customers won’t do it for the most part.  Online, you select each of the six containers you’re sending back, and then select the color lipstick you want them to send back to you.

Customers love to feel appreciated by the company that they give their money to.  This is a great tactic by the MAC PR practitioners.  They are targeting one of their primary stakeholders-the women who love MAC. The PR practitioners are making sure that they keep the MAC consumers in mind and that they are holding their interests at heart-killing two birds with one stone essentially.  So, kudos to MAC.  Keep it up

• Look for in-house talent
• Redesign jobs
• Tap hidden talent
• Use marketing departments or firms
• Use technology
• Use recruiting and retention metrics
• Offer telecommuting and flexible work scheduling
• Leverage your benefits package
• Read resumes in teams
• Use behavioral based interviewing techniques
• Conduct background checks
• Become known as a great place to work

So, how does one make his/her company diverse.  What does a diversity program look like?  How do you implement these programs?  There are some guidelines to follow:

1. Link diversity to the bottom line.  When looking to ways to increase corporate profit, look to the new market or to partnering with your clients more strategically.
2. Walk the talk.  Make diversity evident at all organizational levels.
3. Broaden your efforts.  Apply the term diversity to more than ethnicity-branch out to religion, age, marital status, disabilities, etc.
4. Remove artificial barriers to success.  Certain types of interviews are not conducive to all ages or ethnicities.
5. Retain diversity at all levels.
6. Provide practical training.
7. Mentor with others at your company who do not know you well.
8. Measure your results.

Starbucks also is a great company with a sense of corporate social responsibility.  They have implemented fair trade coffee.  They know what their customers want, and many of them are concerned with the fair trade laws.  Granted there are also many customers who don’t know, but the loyal customers’ voices were heard.  Starbucks responded to their customers’ concerns and passions.  That is what corporate social responsibility is about.  Starbucks is also supporting the Rwandan farmers by buying the Fairtrade coffee.  This is about creating a global partnership between the farmers and customers all over the world.  Starbucks is offering the farmers a $9 million to help them learn to grow better coffee and sell the coffee in more places.  They are investing their money and time in these people.

Found in Starbucks’ annual report about their CSR, they have six Guiding Principles that help them measure the appropriateness of their decisions:

1. Provide a great environment and treat each other with respect and dignity.
2. Embrace diversity as an essential component in the way we do business.
3. Apply the highest standards of excellence to the purchasing, roasting, and fresh delivery of our coffee.
4. Develop enthusiastically satisfied customers all of the time.
5. Contribute positively to our communities and our environment.
6. Recognize that profitability is essential to our future success.

Corporate Social Responsibility is a very simple concept that is relatively new.  All of the organizations like Greenpeace and WWF are really cracking down on the larger corporations and the impact they have on the environment.  And corporations do not want to look like the bully within these relationships.  It is also how effectively the corporation manages their relationship with their stakeholders.  The Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide has developed an 8-step program that helps manage and better these relationships.  The 8 steps are as follows:

1. Identification: what issues could arise either because of the client’s industry or it’s scale?
2. Prioritization/Classification: which of these issues could cause significant damage to the client’s reputation?
3. Monitoring: how is this issue evolving on a monthly/daily/yearly basis?
4. Preparation: How can we anticipate the course of this evolution and devise an action plan?
5. Action to Influence the issue: what steps can we take to change the course of an issue’s actions?
6. Issue/Crisis Response: If the issue developed into a crisis that threatened the company’s ability to conduct business, how would we react?
7. Evaluation: did we respond effectively to the issue, preventing its emergence as a crisis? What lessons were learned?
8. Re-classification:  has the issue lessened in severity over time?Is it still a concern moving forward?

Here is a blog post about the differences between the USA and UK in business.  It highlights a reason that could be attributing to our financial crunch.  We come in with totally different attitudes to the workplace about how to find solutions and how we respond to people’s new ideas.  I’ve never thought about our enthusiasm and wanting to protect other’s feelings as a hinderance in the workplace.  But, just as in daily relationships, work relationships with colleagues need honesty.  We might not want to be the Debbie Downer on someone’s idea, but we do need to analyze every side to something new.

The UK and the US have many differences in every aspect of business, but even in every English speaking country, not all gestures and words have the same connotation.  This article shows a few of the inconsistencies within language, and also just gives very many general helpful hints to help with cross-cultural communication and how to integrate it into public relations.

I noticed how different cultures were from one another when I moved to France.  I was in complete culture shock for about two months, but once I realized that living in a different pattern and routine from my past 15 years of existence was fun and exciting, I dove right in the culture and learned everything I could.  I wanted to immerse myself with “la culture francaise.”  This is what we must do as public relations practitioners.  In order to make your company succeed, you have to:

• become aware
• commit your time to learning about the culture
• research
• bring people to work for your business that are from that culture
• be diverse in your employees
• test your ideas and plans on natives before bringing that to your real clientele
• evaluate the effectiveness of cross-cultural communication efforts
• have an advocate for the cross-cultural communication
• continue the education of cultures

That is just one of the many cases, but a study provided by Sweet & Maxwell, it is said that defamation cases have increased by a third over the past year.  They said it could be attributed to the economy and the rise of new media.  If a company wins a lawsuit it could bring in a lot of money for them, so it would be great to win a defamation court case in the time of economic crisis.  Companies have been much more on the defense about their reputations during this “credit crunch.”  But, in that defense, Jason Lewis says that companies have begun to make use of the libel courts as their overall PR strategy.  It is a way for a company’s name to be seen if the case is explosive enough.  New media, such as Twitter, have lead to the steady up-rise of new media defamation cases.

In the book it talks about how LPR is a practice in the courts these days.  An example used in this survey by Sweet & Maxwell talks about a defendant setting up a Facebook account that accuses the claimant of lying.  The company took him to court, because this was giving their company a reputation and was a lie.  This is important to remember, because the new media and social media provide a whole new list of ethics to take in or at least another set of responsibilities to have as a PR practitioner. David Meerman’s Social Media Guidelines are a good, short list of things to remember when using social media:

1. Transparency-don’t be someone you are not
2. Privacy-unless given permission, don’t blog about something that someone disclosed to you
3. Disclosure-disclose ANYTHING someone might consider a conflict of interest
4. Truthfulness- NEVER lie
5. Credit-give credit to bloggers (and other sources) whose material you use.