I’m not sure this story was too popular with PRs.The real confession was that my client was a leading tobacco company. We used to train their sales reps from french West Africa and work with a leading securtrity company in running crsis management workshops. From The Australian September 2001.
CONFESSION time. I used to be a PR consultant. One client paid my
British-based employer $250,000 a year to maintain a watching brief; to
keep them out of the press. One locked cabinet contained highly
confidential crisis management manuals.
Others contained files on individuals who were for and against the many
issues we managed. One of our clients (not Nestle) had a spy in a
mothers’ group that was vocal against their powdered baby milk. We had
thick files of positioning statements on every permutation of the issue
we could imagine was important — including, more than 10 years ago
now, statements on mad cow disease and beef fat in biscuits.
Naturally, if anything was too sensitive, blank paper was used and names were omitted.
Welcome to the shady world of issues management.
The industry is trying to build a reputation for probity. Because many PR clients have dug themselves into an ethical hole, the industry is tarred by the same brush. But thanks to the actions of pressure groups, business is being forced to improve its ethical stance. Tony Jaques, who spoke to Media in his capacity as a lecturer (at Melbourne’s RMIT University) and writer on issues management (rather than in his full-time role as a public affairs manager for Dow Chemicals) says: “Some people say industry would not improve [its practices] unless activist groups put pressure on them. I tend to agree. Only recently have companies started apologising for their mistakes. IM has changed a lot.”
But where there’s intense competition, bad news, or legislative issues at stake, there’s still easy money to be made. Top PR executives can be hired out at top rates to manage these issues. And there is sometimes somone prepared to keep quiet when clients cross the moral line, or to cross the line on their behalf — whether or not instructed to do so. Such was the case when former Turnbull Porter Novelli director Ken Davis handled the account for Austereo, owner of the Triple M and 2Day radio stations. According to a statement agreed by the parties to subsequent court action (including Davis) he, independently of Austereo, or his employer, sent more than 50 bogus letters to the media, parliamentarians and regulators and others under false names in an attempt to “denigrate and injure” the Daily Mail Group in its bid for lucrative Sydney and Melbourne radio licences.
Such stories do nothing to ease the strained relationships between journalists and PR consultants. Most PRs contacted for this story were worried it would be negative. Why? Noel Turnbull, chairman of Turnbull Porter Novelli, says: “There is this complicity. Journalists make a fuss about PR people and issues management because they don’t want to admit how much is fed to them by PR people.”
Of course, the media is only one stakeholder group in the IM arena. The foundations of any IM campaign are built upon identifying the issues and the target groups for each issue, before devising a way of communicating and influencing it.
Jim Macnamara, president of the Public Relations Institute of Australia, says: “The media is a channel. Equally, the media is the world’s leading database. If something is not in the media it’s not an issue. The media is so big and so diverse most organisations can’t get their arms around it.”
The media, he says, reflects events and popular opinion and is a great source of information for issues managers. Newspaper cuttings can be scanned to identify sources of information and help develop lists of supporters and antagonists. They can almost provide a window into the brains of these target groups.
Macnamara is the local head of US-based media analysis company CARMA, which provides this window. The company analyses the scale and volume of positive and negative coverage for clients. It also monitors a number of other criteria such as authors and sources of information, and keys it all into a database.
Although he says very little of CARMA’s work is to specifically identify the support of individual journalists, inevitably some is. Most reports are on share of voice and who is leading a debate. One mobile phone company wanted to know why WAP technology was being criticised. An analysis of 2000 articles on a database gave the answer, according to Macnamara.
But the CARMA software has the capability to target individuals and monitor their shifting opinions on companies and sectors.
Sound like the KGB? Peter Lazar, founder and chairman of Professional Public Relations, admits data is collected for specific projects, mainly when lobbying for changes to legislation. But he says: “It’s not like the FBI, where you keep detailed files. We just don’t have time for it.”
According to Turnbull, sophisticated database management now drives IM. He says: “Journalists keep files on contacts. It’s OK to do so. As long as you don’t do something that infringes [on] privacy.” The question is deciding where the moral line is in IM.
Jaques says keeping files on people is approaching the borderline of what is considered acceptable. “Having files on people has scary connotations,” he explains. “Anything you write down you should be able to feel you could put your hand on your heart and say, `yes that’s OK’.”
Both he and Turnbull think spying is crossing the line. If the client is doing the wrong things, Turnbull says: “You should tell the client that they are making a serious mistake. You are going to get found out eventually.”
Fortunately, the media tends to be balanced, according to Macnamara. Although, he says: “Other times it can be very anti-business in sentiment. It’s very difficult for a company to get its point across when there is a popular cause. Usually you can’t get into dialogue with extremists.” Some question the value of dealing with them at all, as 10 per cent will always be against an issue, 10 per cent for and 80 per cent undecided.
The problem for Nike PR manager Kate Meyers is that some of the noisiest protesters are not prepared to meet and talk. Meyers says: “Those spreading the information are very rarely prepared to prove that the information is true. Very often the most vocal and loudest voice will be heard over the most rational.”
But there are those with which Nike has a constructive relationship such as Oxfam’s Community Aid Abroad, which wants to improve conditions for workers abroad. CAA’s Nike Watch co-ordinator Tim Connor says: “They have very professional PRs to cover the issues employed to put on a spin. We’ve tried to praise them when they’ve taken steps forward such as moving to [less poisonous] water-based glues.” Where the relationship becomes strained is where greater transparency is demanded of Nike, for example, in releasing addresses of its factories. One difficulty is that practices once considered acceptable are frowned upon now.
Similarly, McDonald’s — whose corporate office did not return phone calls and emails for this story — has sometimes created its own communication crisis through its own actions on many issues. For example, one PR pundit says the company should have ignored British protesters Helen Steel and Dave Morris, who campaigned against the company in the late 1990s. They handed out anti-McDonald’s leaflets. Instead, it took legal action against them, and the result was the famous “McLibel” trial. Steel and Morris were transformed from anonymous campaigners into global celebrities. After 2 1/2 years, in 1997, the courts found in favour of McDonald’s. The pair was ordered to pay the fast food giant pound stg. 60,000. Wisely, the company declined to chase the cash but its corporate ego suffered a big dent.
“The companies that have suffered are the ones that have not been prepared to communicate,” Turnbull says. “The companies with the strongest cultures often have very poor issues management. When they are criticised they
[management] sit back and ask, `what’s wrong with those people who are criticising us?’ It is the PR consultant’s role to help address
these issues. “You have to engage people. You can’t engage people when they want to burn your shop down. But you have to talk,” Turnbull says.
This is where the headache is for the likes of McDonald’s and Nike. Both have to live with the damage from protest groups and constant attacks from anti-globalisation campaigners who now promote their causes on their websites and use professional IM techniques themselves.
“Many companies and organisations are not very good at putting their point of view. There are still a lot of companies that stonewall the media and won’t talk to the media,” says Macnamara. “One thing we advocate in PR is that companies must be open. `No comment’ is not an answer’.”
But companies need to be selective in their responses, because they have limited PR resources. Nike’s Meyers says: “Things like S11 [the protest at the World Economic Forum in Melbourne last year] and M1 this year [a May 1 anti-globalisation protest in Melbourne] we do prepare for. On misinformation we take [action] on a case by case basis.” Meyers says Nike doesn’t take on every single issue. “In the case of M1, the company was asked for a series of interviews but the company declined as the protest wasn’t a specific anti-Nike protest.”
PPR chairman Peter Lazar says: “People have the right to voice views. From experience it is better not to confront. It is better to work in other areas and ensure that the organisation is doing the right thing. My indication is to leave them alone if possible. Don’t put the boxing gloves on.”
According to Turnbull, in the past decade the gap between what the public and pressure groups feel, and government and business believes, has widened. He believes PR people have to be edgy and tell clients these truths. “To me it’s a reflection that we have an elite that’s self-reverential and need to tackle these issues head on. One of the first things I recommend people do is read Naomi Klein’s No Logo,” Turnbull says.
Lazar says: “The problem is, however, many people want to get stuck into the McDonald’s and Nikes of this world simply because they are large and multinational.”
He says when he first started working for McDonald’s 22 years ago people would cheer when a new restaurant was opened. “Now when you open a restaurant only a small [anti] vocal minority are heard.”
Media reporting of issues in which only the vocal minority is heard exacerbates the problem. When 6000 Australians took a class action against McDonald’s on its 1999 Monopoly McMatch and Win promotion it made front-page news.
They claimed McDonald’s had cheated them out of prizes such as cars and trips abroad when their claims were rejected when they presented tickets from the previous year’s promotion at stores. One of the severest attacks came from A Current Affair, which highlighted the number of mums and dads who had been deprived of their prizes. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission announced it would prosecute McDonald’s, saying: “The ACCC has received more than 1000 complaints from consumers … There are many credible persons from all walks of life who in the ACCC’s opinion are not mistaken …”
Last month, the Federal Court ruled in favour of McDonald’s. As a sign of goodwill the fast-food giant will give each of 6000 aggrieved customers a $100 gift voucher, which can be donated to the Smith Family. This story was given only a small amount of space in newspapers.
CARMA’s Macnamara says: “McDonald’s suffered a huge amount of damage from the press despite having done nothing wrong.” Lazar says the company will now have to spend the next year or two rebuilding its reputation.
The problem for many companies is the intractability of many interest groups. Meyers says: “There are some people who will never be favourable towards Nike.”
As Jaques says: “The stakeholders expect to be engaged. They are not saying `please engage me’ but `I demand to be engaged’. The days of saying `I’m here from big business, please trust me’ are gone.”