Business Ethics: Where Do You Draw the Line?

As an independent contractor, my company, PRMR Inc., has the opportunity to work in a variety of industries with diverse groups of clients, including for-profit, not-for-profit, entrepreneurial, regional and international businesses.

In carrying out our business, we are often faced with ethical decisions that may clash with the demands of clients or affect the services that we are expected to deliver. For example, we may be building a website for a client who expects us to use images that have been taken from another site without that site’s permission. After telling the client that we are not willing to do so and explaining why, we are told that other companies that they have worked with had no problem with it. The client implies that in acting ethically, we are inept and unresourceful.  Read More

PR for Public Relations

In Barbados, in secondary school we are required to select subjects early; know and stick to a particular career path, all at the tender age of 13 or 14 despite having no world experience and certainly as the old people would say ‘never even seen a star pitch.’ For students like I was, who were unsure what they wanted to do but felt uncompelled to follow a traditional career as a lawyer, doctor or accountant; this decision probably did not come until late.  Read More

Public Relations Defined

The Public Relations Society of America has launched a project to have its members and others submit definitions for Public Relations.  I read a number of stories surrounding this project and felt as if all of them were mine.  Especially Rosanne Fiske’s story on your family not understanding what you do.  When I worked at the Nation Newspaper as it Corporate Communications Manager, my mother was fine with that because she understood the concept of working for a reputable organization no matter the job.  When I set up my own PR Agency  she was however very worried for me because she could not fathom how I would make money and what service I was truly offering.
The PRSA 1982 National Assembly formally adopted a definition of public relations, which remains widely accepted and used today: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics 
adapt mutually to each other.”READ MORE

Green Public Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility The Way to Go

Over the past decade, businesses around the world have been focusing on creating products and services, which have very little impact on the environment.

Several international companies such as S. C. Johnson, TESCO and Honda have implemented environmental management systems, which go beyond what the law requires to operate in an environmentally responsible way.

Many businesses recognise that being environmentally responsible can translate into sales.  Consumers understand more than ever the importance of environmental conservation.  Even more important is that with this increased knowledge; consumers are choosing to boycott businesses that have not made the decision to go ‘green.’

This has caused several businesses to utilise greening as simply a PR tool to attract consumers and increase sales. However, several international certifications exist which can assist customers in deciphering between these ‘green washed’ businesses and those businesses which have invested in ensuring they reduce their impact on the environment.

Environmental certification programs are useful for identifying environmentally preferred goods and services. They are typically run by third party organizations that establish environmental standards for goods and services and then certify supplier offerings against them. These certifications include (among others) GreenSeal, EcoLogo, ISO standards of certification and Green Globe.
Read More 

PR In the Headlines

Not quite a sitting duck, but well, these are larger fish

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/rupert-murdoch-calls-pr-guru-212334  The Rupert Murdock saga continues and PR gets the headline.  Perception is reality and from this Hollywood Reporter headline the appearance to me is that Steven Rubenstein will be doing some dirty work. Do you get that?  The PR professional sharing the same prominence as the lawyer.  At least we are getting some attention and prominence if for the wrong reason.  A school of thought says all publicity is good.  Maybe Rubenstein will have the Johnnie Cochran effect and come up with his own cool slogan. "if the glove don't fit..."

PR Practioners Don't Think Up Stories: My Response to Mail Online Story

I read the Mail Online story “Insider reveals: PR men would think up a story and Rebekah’s Sun and News of the World would run it word for word. Some were complete fiction” (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013046/Rebekah-Brooks-Sun-News-World-run-fictional-stories-insider-claims.html) and was pretty much disgusted as a former journalism student and more so as a seasoned PR practitioner.

Clearly the story was fired with the passion of a disgruntled employee but despite this fact I took issue with the salacious depiction of the field of public relations.  I take issue with the suggestion that we in the profession ‘think up’ stories.  Yes writing is a big part of what we do, but to say we sit and dream up stories for clients shows a total disregard and lack of respect for the profession.  Professional Code of Ethics governs the way the majority of professionals work on a daily basis.  Both PRSA (http://www.prsa.org/aboutprsa/ethics/) and IABC (http://www.iabc.com/about/code.htm) have these codes prominent on their websites. READ FULL STORY

Disengaged employees costing companies dearly

Many companies today are operating at one-third of their people potential because the remaining two-thirds of their employees are not engaged, says an internationally respected specialist in employee engagement and internal communication.

And according to Ken Milloy, President of Ken Milloy Management Consulting Inc. those disengaged employees are costing their companies dearly through lower productivity and profits and by chasing away potentially loyal customers.

“The collective capability of a company’s workforce is a source of competitive advantage – a unique characteristic of the business that cannot be copied,” he told human resources and corporate communications professionals at a recent workshop hosted by the International Association of Business Communicators, Barbados Chapter. “But that competitive advantage cannot be tapped unless employees are truly engaged.”

Milloy said engaged employees are those who feel a “heightened emotional connection” towards the organisation that influences them to exert greater discretionary effort.

“Discretionary effort is that extra effort that employees can give or withhold – it’s their choice,” he explained.

The Vancouver-based management consultant said engaged employees can be recognized by the passion that drives them to build and innovate and to find new and more effective ways to accomplish their roles.

“They will take less than half as many sick days off as the average employee, and they are 87% less likely to leave the company,” he added.

Milloy identified several “core drivers” of employee engagement, including how well managers “walk the talk”, how well employees understand how their work contributes to the company’s performance, and whether the company makes an effort to develop its employees’ skills.

But the most important of all, he stressed, is the nature of the relationship between employees and their managers and supervisors.

“If employees don’t have a strong relationship with managers who set clear expectations, knows them, trusts them and invests in them, they are less likely to perform or stay,” he said.

(An IABC Barbados Release)

IABC Barbados Host Its First Panel Discussion

IABC Barbados is gathering momentum. Members are trickling in and the organisation will host its first event since its launch this September.

It will be a panel discussion on What Is PR's real function and Who should it report to. Yours truly is on the panel which also features Sara Odle of Cable and Wireless, Debra King of First Caribbean International Bank and Greg Hoyos of GHA DDB.

My take on the matter is that PR is a strategic function which informs organisations decision making process with regards to its relationships. It therefore must report to the most senior executive if it is to be effective. Of course a lot of organisations devalues or undervalues relationships as they cannot or refuse to see the correlation between the relationships they have with their various stakeholders and their success.

Not having a pr strategy is like having cancer. You go along oblivious thinking that everything is fine and then a serious crisis come along and your dead.

Come to the Panel Discussion and here more on this, or check out my paper on the topic later on this blog.

IABC Barbados Launch

The Barbados Chapter of IABC was formally launched last Thursday at Herbert House, the home of the Cricket Legends of Barbados .

The majestic old building, beautifully renovated was an auspicious setting for the occasion. The ceremony was simple. Vice President Development, Richard Thomas was the Master of Ceremonies and he provided the forty plus audience with enough humor mixed with the business at hand to keep this session lively and excited.

President of the Association Christal Mc Intosh gave an address which listed the five main goals of the Association as:
1. To create meaningful opportunities for networking while bringing an end to the isolation in which professionals currently work;

2. To create genuine opportunities for professional development;

3. To create a local community of professionals whose members are committed to a single code of ethics;

4. To create a platform in which business communications speak with a single united, credible voice; and

5. To demonstrate to business leaders how public relations and corporate communications practiced professionally, can enhanced all those desirables such as corporate reputation, stakeholder trust, productivity and profits.

The featured speaker was the Corporate Communications and Marketing Manager of the Barbados Light and Power, Stephen Worme. Stephen took an unusual route towards heading the communications area at Barbados' monopoly power company. An engineer by profession, he has become respected as a honest voice for all the island's power crisis. Stephen gave an excellent speech about his experience, his relationship with the media, and his dream for the profession locally.


A delightful wine and cheese cocktail followed the speeches.

Barbados - IABC's Newest Developmental Chapter

Christal Mc Intosh, president of the Barbados Public Relations sent the following note to members this weekend:

Hi everyone,

We've done it!

The IABC international board has formally approved our application to set up a Barbados Chapter.

We have achieved this in the unbelievably short time of about four weeks. I believe it's because of the large number of people who showed up for our initial meeting on May 8 and expressed their interest and support. On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Barbados Chapter, I want to thank you for being there.

For the next two years, IABC Barbados will enjoy "developmental status". This means the IABC appreciates that we are on a learning curve and will give us some time to find our wings. We have to use that time to prove our commitment to becoming a fully-fledged chapter.

You can help us do that by becoming an IABC member now. Membership in this association will be one of the best investments you will ever make as a communications professional. And that membership is yours to keep no matter where you end up living and working.

At this early stage, I want to stress that being a member of BPRA will not automatically entitle you to membership of IABC Barbados with all of its privileges. The two are not interchangeable, and only a paid up membership will admit you to IABC Barbados (iabc.com/join/).

DOWN IN THE TRENCHES

While we were awaiting formal chapter approval, the board of directors you elected has not been idle. We have been meeting every Thursday evening for several hours to come to grips with our various responsibilities and to scope out what we have to do quickly to get up and running.

We have also put together a tentative schedule for professional development and networking opportunities over 12 months, starting this August. However, we haven't got every topic and event nailed down, because we want to hear from you rather than making all decisions on our own.

This is why we have also developed a short survey that you will find attached and in the online forum for download. It will provide us with much needed demographic profiles of our target market and how best to cater to their needs.

Please complete it and return it by e-mail to our co-Vice President of Professional Development, Vicki Olton: vicki.olton@gmail.com. It will help us enormously.

We are also working on how best to market the IABC and to whom. We know that there are many more communication professionals out there besides all of you who showed up for our first meeting.

And there are lots of people in allied professions – such as HR, printing, photography and graphic design – who are valid potential members. We are digging to uncover them, in both the corporate and public sectors and we would appreciate any leads you can provide us.

We plan to hold our inaugural meeting as a registered IABC chapter on July 3 at 6:00 p.m. at Herbert House on Fontabelle. By then, I trust that many more of you will have become IABC members. We will keep you posted about the format and content of that meeting, as soon as we have finalized the details.

Again, thank you for your support. And if you haven't already joined up, do it now!

Membership Fees

Membership in this association, which has been set at US $231 if you include the one-time $40 application fee, will be one of the best investments you will ever make as a communications professional. And that membership is yours to keep no matter where you end up living and working.

The Press Release and The Press Conference- Tools and Tactics

You know the saying the more things change, the more they remain the same. Well I was at a gathering of pr professionals recently and a number of issues came up. None of them were new, which was no surprise. But what did surprise me was that the topics that received the most attention were not new media and social networks on the web, what received the most dialog were the century old press release and press conference.

I was blessed to be a pr professional working at a media house for a very long time so I understand intimately the stance and motivation of the journalist versus that of the pr professional. And all the professionals that thought that I had it easy… well, yes the journalist and I did have the same organisation at heart which was our bread and butter, but each editor had different motivations, tolerance levels, deadlines and egos that had to be pandered to, to get releases in the papers. In other words I had to do some pitching like any other pr professional working on the outside.

Early in the game I studied the newspaper’s style of writing and matched it as best as I could, because I came to understand and appreciate the long hard hours that journalists work and how taxing it is to produce an informative, educational, entertaining, error free publication everyday. Editors are usually working on tight deadlines and a well written story already in their style is more likely to be placed immediately than one that they had to try to interpret and doctor to suit the paper’s style. I have seen a number of press releases that came to the paper and wondered where exactly is this person going with this – no news value and poorly written.

From my experience as long as the news value is high editors may look pass the quality of the writing because at the end of the day, what they want to put out is an interesting product. Press releases are looked on firstly as companies’ propaganda. In more recent times they are being viewed as ads. This has created a new set of tension between the media and pr professionals, especially in those organizations where the measure of the success of the pr is judged only on column inches in the newspaper. Is it then correct to say that if your releases don’t get publish that you are not doing good work? (This sets me off on a totally different road of what is the role of the pr professional and how should success be measured? To be explored in another article.)

Editors try to be fair and impartial in placing releases. Of course with tons of releases hitting their desk everyday and the space in the paper for stories rapidly diminishing due to ever increasing aggressive ad ratios, the onus is on pr professionals to do what I consider to be job 101 of the profession – build relationships.

Relationships should be established with all the persons on whom your success and the success of your company or client depend. It is not enough to write a great press release because it may be shelved because a bus load of people crashed in St. Joseph and seven people died and suddenly all the vacant slots in the newspaper are taken up with all the human interest, eye witness stories for weeks. And hey, this will sell a couple thousand more papers, your release won’t. You need to have a relationship with the editor so that you can pick up the telephone and remind him or her of your great release.

I have spent a mighty long time on the press release because I think that it is a useful tool and should be used in a lot of instances instead of a grand press conference. (To be continued).

Hello IABC

Well we have made the first step! After a successful meeting of a good mix of Barbados' pr stalwarts, mid-career professionals, newbies, and individuals interested in the profession, a board of management have been chosen to do the work to get the Barbados Chapter of IABC off the ground.

Judette Coward-Puglisi, president of IABC Trinidad and Tobago did a fantastic job telling of the Trinidad experience and helping to guide the meeting into making solid choices for the vacant board positions. She told the communicators that her chapter was founded on the principle of the 3 Cs - Content, connections and credibility. She said that Trinidad's membership of 80 in the first instance had grown in two years to about 370 and that the Chapter was actively podcasting, blogging, hosting a website, conducting conferences and ongoing educational forums for members. The Chapter had also received a "Certificate of Excellence" from IABC for its outstanding performance.

Judette spoke of some of the common universal concerns of pr persons which helped forged the backbone of her Chapter's coming together - 1. CEO not valuing our work 2. Building relationships with the media and forming a body to bridge the gap. 3. The issue of measuring ROI and 4. Accreditation.

At that end of the night yours throughly had become the Executive Vice President and President Elect. Our good friend Christal Mc Intosh who was mentioned in the earlier post is the President. Other members of the executive are:

• Petal Barclay-Smith - VP Administration
• Lynette Taylor -VP Communications
• Cliona Donohue - VP Marketing/ Membership
• Fay Best - VP Finance
• Richard Thomas - VP Professional Development
• Vicki Olton -Co-VP Professional Development

The board has its first meeting on Wednesday.

A New PR Chapter In Barbados

T.S. Elliott referred to April as being the cruelest month. He probably was a Bajan hotelier because April signals the end of the booming winter season and the start of the low occupancy period for hotels. April however for the rest of the world is a glorious month ushering in spring - flowers, butterflies and all things bright and beautiful.

For pr professionals in Barbados April also brought great news. The online community which had been gathering for the last six months or so will finally be meeting. The community was occupied for a long time with which international association it should align itself to, PRSA or IABC.

As a member of both organisations for a very long time, I felt the topic did not need much discussion it needed a decision. Both organisations give great value to members, it is really a question of preference. I maybe a little bias towards PRSA, being an accredited member and the only person in this part of the region with the APR for the last six years.

At one stage when my good friend Cheryl Procter-Rogers was president of PRSA I had flirted with the idea of establishing a chapter in Barbados. All the materials were sent to me and I passed them on to another professional but I was knee deep in a MBA and she was a new mother, at a tender stage in a very big organisation. All our good intentions remained just that.

I was delighted to see Christal McIntosh, full of youthful zeal and clearly a web 2.0 junkie leading a serious discussion on the Internet encouraging local professionals to gather. I immediately offered her my full backing although I warned her that having just launched my own company my time would be limited. Of course if you know Christal you would know that this was no deterrent and she is somehow able to squeeze every ounce of advice and work out of me.

The inaugural meeting will be held on Thursday May 8 at 6pm at the Small Business Development Centre on Fontabelle. Judette Coward, the Chapter President of IABC Trinidad will be on the island to tell of the T&T experience and to give us some advice on starting the chapter. Judettte, like Christal, was responsible for the formation of that chapter. Christal has also sought the help of IABC International and has received a lot of support from that organisation to facilitate the first meeting. All business communicators are invited.

Can anyone guess which organisation Barbados will be going with?

Social Media Penetrating Popular Culture

I was listening to listening to Mix 96.9 yesterday and what I heard was the preachers of social media and their impact on advertising prophesy come true. The country generally being a little behind on the Internet I was pleasantly surprised to hear a popular night spot, Jumbies, on the even more popular St. Lawrence Gap advertising a Facebook Friday evening bash. The ad was calling on the SUV group and all ‘facebookers’ to bring their Facebook home page with them for a special entry fee. They advertised Vampire shots and Slayer Martinis. My heart sang a song. I have been singing this song to my clients and everyone who would listen for a while now. There is a new information revolution going on around the world.

Traditional modes of information dissemination are under threat. And this may seem a little blasé because we have been hearing this for some years, however there is clear and present danger on the horizon. Around the world a number of traditional media conglomerates have embraced the new dissemination modes but in the Caribbean, I would love to say we are playing catch up but really we have not fully woken up yet so no serious catch up has started. Everyone has the token website but the use of the social media techniques and other web based services does not even appear to be on the horizon. With our open door policy to the rest of the world our media houses are clearly making themselves vulnerable. The recent bid for Microsoft and Yahoo to join forces against Google is a sign of the impeding storm of mergers and acquisition for the all important advertising dollar. It will be interesting to see the survivors and their corporate strategies.