Public Relations Theories Course

Now it is time to round the course off. First I'd like to say that this course gave me a lot. These theories about how different aspects of public relations work, were very important to know. Some of them may seem obvious, but still need to be "put in paper" so we won't forget them. For example if different acts of crisis communication are said, it seems so logical that why should anyvody right it down, but in a crisis situation it is very easy to forget them. That is why those kind of theories have to be written down. 

Or if we think about stakeholders, of course they are important, everybody knows it. But if you read an article about the reasons, you start to see it from another angle. 

The most difficult for me in this course was probably reading those academical texts, which were long and, to be honest, sometimes quite boring. But after reading and thinking about what was written, I understood the reason of reading so they were useful. I liked the lectures, where our lecturer managed to explain these difficult theories in easier and more understandable language. The most interesting topic for me was probably crisis communication. It seems pretty hard to handle sometimes as PR professional, but interesting to think and discuss about. 

If public relations would be an animal, it would be a squirrel. They are cute and soft, but also clever, they know how to prepare. Squirrels collect acorns like PR people do plans for different situations. And if winter or needed situation comes, they both use their collected stuff to handle it. 

Happy Christmas everyone!

Ethical dilemmas of PR professional

Being PR prefessional isn't always easy. There are many ethical problems that may occur. It would be easy to be perfectly ethical if the company asks you to act so. But unfortunately in many cases the head of the company wants PR professional to lie or hide some important facts that may damage the reputation of the organization. Then PR person has to decide whether to be ethical or loyal to his or her job. 

If PR professional decides to be ethical and honest in that kind of situation, there is a risk of loosing a job. But being not honest can be even worse. These lies almost always come out and then the reputation of the company is certainly damaged and so is the reputation of PR person. So the best solution in the situation will be to convince your boss going the ethical way. Being honest about the problems from the beginning is much better than lies coming out later. Then the organization has to deal with real crisis.

There has been discussion that PR professionals should be ethical guardians in organisation. I think it's right because PR professional's work is most visible for general publics and that makes it even compulsory for them to be very ethical. But not only because of the publics.  "Public relations is the comparatively recent expression by business of the old precept ‘do unto others as you would have them do to you’ . . . To say of a man he is ‘a good chap’ means the same thing to all Englishmen" Jacquie L'Etang has written. Company should always think about why they exist and how to be beneficial for more people outside of the organization. Decisions should be done reckon with Corporate Social Responsibility. 

I support rather utilitarian standpoint, because rules should be done in favour of people. So not following rules, but making sure as many people as possible are happy, should be the priority. 

International Public Relations Association has written an ethics code for PR people. I read IPRA's code of ethics, where I think all the most important clauses are in. If you follow this code, there shouldn't occur problems about being ethical. 

Hesburger's crisis communication

My next task was to analyze some organization's crisis. I chose Hesburger's crisis that happened in July this year. It was actually a leak from inside. Hesburger's employees got e-mails, which told them to remove worms form salad. One of them decided to put the picture of it to Facebook where it started to spread very quickly. Soon many online newspapers wrote about it and even Reporter made a story. People were most shocked by the fact that the manager told employees to remove worms but still use the salad.

So what did Hesburger do about it? Their development director told to Õhtuleht that quality is very important to Hesburger and the mail was sent only to make an extra control. (Õhtuleht, 2012)

After veterinarian office's checking they threw away the salad because some worms were really found.

Emphasising their interest in best quality was a good step but I think they should have done more. I didn't saw any apologize from them. Yes, apologizing shows that they admit their guilt, but in that case, it was obvious anyway and denial would have done it only worse. Fortunately they didn't deny it. As next step I would have scapegoated the one who sent the e-mail. It was actually done but they told it only to veterinarian office who mentioned it in Delfi's article. I think it should have been Hesburgers most important defence for themselves. Saying that it was one person's mistake and Hesburger usually don't tolerate this kind of action would have done them more faithworthy. I also think they should have thrown away all the suspicious salad immediately when the crisis occured.

Some people think that this crisis was made from Hesburger itself to get attention. The numbers of sale actually started to rise after the crisis. It sure got them a lot of attention.

Even if it wasn't made from them, I think Hesburger was strongly responsible for the crisis but they got over it and even increased the number of sales so they did a good job.