The Hindu Business Line : PR job fraught with pitfalls

MORE loathed than lawyers and more scoffed at than salesmen, public relations (PR) practitioners are trusted the least by the public, so much so that they are "held in even greater contempt than estate agents and advertising gurus," comments Gerry McCusker in Talespin, from Kogan Page (www.vivagroupindia.com) . The book compiles 79 real-life PR disasters "from the worlds of branding, business, media, music, politics and sport."

Even as PR is accused of spin doctoring — that is the doling out "half-truths, full-blown deceptions and anything in between" — PR's worth as the most potent form of business communication has never been stronger, avers McCusker. "The percentage of marketing budgets allocated to PR is bigger than ever before, the number of undergraduates seeking a career in it is rising rapidly and the number of PR consultants employed worldwide is at an all-time high," he writes, positively.

The book is not for bashing up the PR profession, the author hastens to clarify. "Practised properly, it's a job that calls for an all-encompassing range of skills and qualities, including creativity, diligence, diplomacy, discretion, ethical behaviour, humility, integrity, leadership, perseverance, restraint, sensitivity, sociability, strategic thinking, vision and a very, very thick hide!" A quick checklist, that is.

PR disaster makes a hot story for the media. For instance, as I write this, Stephen Ulph's story titled "Islamist insurgents seek to contain PR disaster: notes of defeatism" is "13 hours old" on http://jamestown.org; Microsoft gets the rap in www.geek.com for messing up PR in the Claria issue; "Sir Clive's `quantity not quality' strategy and Alistair Campbell's PR disaster" is a posting on www.planet-rugby.com and is about who should be blamed for what happened to the Lions; and "utter farce and beyond a PR disaster" comments www.autoweek.com in its `2005 Midseason Motorsports Review' of Formula One.

A PR job is fraught with potential pitfalls and catastrophes that are predisposed to causing bad news, cautions McCusker, and lists the sources of disasters. Act of God comes first, though you may generously excuse the profession for the hit it takes from natural disasters. Next is `business operations,' that is, company processes or product failures that catalyse "customer complaints, dissatisfaction and subsequent negative news coverage." Mergers and acquisitions, and also organisational changes can cause discontent, worthy enough to report. Litigation is another cause, and when details spill over to the public domain, the public may be treated to spicy info hitherto unknown.

Three other causes of PR disasters that the book mentions are: Rumours or `difficult-to-dispel gossip,' eroding corporate reputation; mismanaged workplace grievances that erupt to cause negative publicity for the organisation; and scandal, where "financial or sexual shenanigans around employees or the workplace become a matter of public interest and comment."

Tales in the book include the Keane fiasco that put 7UP down; the egoistic lunacy that caused a traffic snarl-up during the inauguration of the South Eastern Freeway in Melbourne; the cola debacle faced with the pesticide charge; the biggest tyre recall that involved Ford and Firestone; the `moose trap' that put Merc's Baby Benz in a corner; and the flak that Dow Corning faced from some media commentators about the liquid silicone in implants being comparable to the petrol tanks of `Pinto' cars tending to explode in crashes!

McCusker arranges the cases A to Z, with a `lessons learnt' box for each. For instance, the moral of the ASCAP goof-up is that the address database should be sifted so that the right message goes to the right audience. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers had relied on a master mailing list of 8,000 camps for its letter demanding licence fee for songs around campfires. Promptly, editorials criticised "the killjoy attempts to make a buck out of one of childhood's simplest pleasures: singing campfire songs," but ASCAP had intended to target only "those larger summer camps that staged rock or pop concerts and larger-scale parties where music is broadcast via public address systems."

The 80th disaster may well be ignoring Talespin!

BookMark@thehindu.co.in

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