All Talk

It can be easy to concentrate on the messages being communicated to the consumer, and to do so vey individually however Grunig (Journal of Public Relations Research, 2000) suggests that the best way in achieving ethical PR is through ‘collaboration as a core professional value of public relations.’ He went on to name two ‘axioms of corporate strategy’ defined by Freeman and Gilbert in the 1980’s one of which I feel to be very relevant to PR today, ‘corporate strategy must reflect an understanding of the values of organizational members and stakeholders’. Stakeholders including not only owners, shareholders, staff and suppliers, but customers! That is ethics (and those of the consumer should have great influence here) should fundamentally affect corporate strategy, and it is PR’s job to manage that communication and ensure that a company is able to make such decisions of strategy based on solid communication with consumers.

This can make ethical PR reachable, for by fundamentally affecting the core ethics of an establishment for the good can allow for ethical PR by the removal of conflicting characteristics and practices of the establishment being represented.

So keep talking but start listening, and not only that but responding... laying the foundations for change.

Ethical PR Practitioners: An Urban Myth?

In an ideal world we would all think of others above all else and be ethical and happy and dancing in circles at the local park singing... we don’t! In reality acting ethically is only easy if the company you are representing is as ethical as your own personal ethics, but ethics vary so much the chances of that happening are slim to none. You’re not hired to make the world a better place, you’re hired to do a job and get results... which is why there is as much chance of meeting a truly wholly ethical practitioner as there is meeting a crocodile slithering out of your loo! Well perhaps that a teensy exaggeration, but you get the point I’m making!

Ethics are very well but at the end of the day telling the truth gets you nowhere, not when that truth is ‘we have been whipping children in sweatshops’ or ‘we don’t give a shit that the chickens your eating suffered greatly before we brutally slaughtered them’ (pardon the language but sometimes it’s justifiable). Thankfully companies are beginning to care because consumers care too, but there’s still plenty of progress to be made not just by companies but by consumers too... after all they are still both heavily influenced by the money in their pockets!

Basically these ethics which many of us hold up so high and pride ourselves in upholding can get in the way, and sometimes they have to be compromised. Something which is a fact of life, we need to earn a living and to do that we need to succeed. If faced with the prospect of losing your job our tossing your ethics aside what would you choose? If those ethics are so important to you, get out of PR or learn to disassociate your work from yourself.

What I don’t understand is how this is any different from working, or indeed shopping, at such an establishment such as KFC which is notorious for its mistreatment of chickens. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you support it by working there and helping supply it or by purchasing there and supplying demand for it... don’t use PR practitioners as scapegoats! Man up and face it, those ethics we all love so dearly aren’t worth that much! We want what we want, we keep consuming despite the consequences and we do so in our millions! The information is there for all to see, even if KFC’s PR people don’t shove it down your throats. We are individual with free will and access to the internet; if we want to know we can get to know but the plain fact is we don’t! So perhaps it is the public interest for us to not to know, and we can stop beating ourselves up about those poor chickens... or maybe we need to know! Do I sound indecisive? Well the public are fickle what can I say!? They are walking contradictions, saying one thing and buying another!

I’ll go eat my free-range eggs now while defrosting my tortured chicken breasts...

PR: It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it!

Ying & Yang

It’s not a lie if you don’t say anything...

Well some people would say it is but in the technical sense (and let’s face it, that’s the one that counts) you’re not, however I think it’s fair to say that it isn’t 'protecting and advancing the free flow of accurate and truthful information' (PRSA, 2010). So how can we, as PR practitioners, possibly justify that? Simply put; it’s not our responsibility.

Barney and Black (Holt, 2002) draw the comparison of PR practitioners and lawyers, in that it is someone else’s responsibility to act as a counterbalance, to be the ying to our yang! In essence practitioners have ‘no obligation to consider the public interest’ (Holt, 2002) and this job would essentially fall to journalists and other such figures. You can see the argument there, if everyone did their jobs well and thorough it would be a fair system, but that reliance on quality journalism is presumptuous and indeed ‘opponents say because a counterbalancing message is not guaranteed, practitioners cannot afford to overlook the public interest in ethical decision-making’ (Holt, 2002).

But to say it cannot be overlooked does not mean it should completely dictate influence either, and furthermore what is considered to be in the public interest is open to interpretation!

Let’s take for instance Nike who were accused of ‘tolerating sweatshops’, now is this in the public interest of the UK? There is no denying that it is ethically unacceptable but does it class as being in the public interest of the UK and its Nike consumers? It doesn’t directly affect them, but then it could be argued that they deserve to be aware of the way in which a company they support acts and practices globally as well as nationally. I think in this case as a consumer I do believe that is the case, but put in Nike PR department’s shoes... what people don’t know won’t hurt them. But that is not something that can be relied upon and I think the crux of the matter is to encourage change before knowledge is made public knowledge by the counterbalancing forces of journalism prevail!

To Give Is to Be Good!

Let’s talk about charity, because there can be greater act of kindness than that charity and if it’s good for business why the hell not!? Every supermarket seems to have a cause with Morrison’s helping kids grow things, Tesco’s getting computers in schools and Sainsbury’s providing sports equipment! The more consumers buy the more they provide, it’s win win! Isn’t it?

Let’s take a look at Pets at Home who have a support adoption campaign which fund-raises in store from the sale of tote bags and adoption fees from their in store adoption centres. They help small animals in store and larger ones by donating money raised to other charities and sanctuaries. Not only do they benefit from positive feelings being associated with them facilitating such good work but they also encourage consumers into the store resulting in more spending and more profit! It is again another example of enlightened self-interest theory from Baker (1999) discussed in the previous blog, where doing good makes good business sense! But where do the animals they have in store come from?

Many small animal charities now encourage people not to breed or to get animals such as rabbits from a breeder when there are so so many in rescue! Yet Pets at Home continue to source their animals from rodent farms, doesn’t sound too bad does it? Farms are nice places after all... all green and lovely! Think again, take a look at this. For those of you who don’t know me, I am a bit of a rat enthusiast and I breed them as a hobby... for anyone to be able to treat animals that way and support churning animals out without regard for the animal’s well being, health or longevity is irresponsible to say the least in my view. Yet despite this Pets at home do support them. A bit of a contradiction there if I do say so myself! Worse still they are notorious for their incompetence in sexing animals, resulting in unwanted litters and even more strain on animal charities! Even from my own limited experience, every single instance (from three separate stores) has involved mis-sexing and two whole litters of tiny and wholly unexpected little hamsters!

Is it ethical then to support charity to make yourself seem to be responsible and concerned for animal welfare when your practices say otherwise? Well yes it is, it is my own responsibility as a consumer to research the ethics and practices of a company, not telling you something isn’t lying or deceiving. We all do it on a day to day basis on a personal and individual level, when you meet someone you don’t tell a person all about you warts and all! In a job interview you sell you strong points and avoid you weak ones, and would anyone see that as unethical? I doubt it very much! Why then so we consider companies and corporations by different standards to ourselves... surely that is unfair!

Only The Truly Ethical Can Act Ethical!

Acting ethical is far from being ethical, to be truly ethical suggests a genuine concern for how actions affect others despite the consequences that it may have on a personal level. Many ethical actions are taken for another reason... The Bottom Line... more commonly known as profit or money!

There are companies popping up everywhere employing Corporate Social Responsibility, their motivations in many cases are suspect to say the least but then faceless corporations and conglomerates are often regarded with disdain. However, the fact of the matter is that ethics are profitable in contemporary markets which have resulted in an ‘enlightened self-interest’ which Baker (The Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 1999) defines on the assumption that ‘one serves one’s self-interest by ethical behaviour’ as ‘businesses do well (financially) by doing good (ethically).’

One company arguably reaping the benefits of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) could be the massive corporation that is McDonald's, who have introduced organic milk, rainforest alliance certified coffee and free-range eggs among others! This is not an isolated case and is aimed to ease the consciences of new and existing consumers who are becoming more and more aware of our collective social responsibility in regards of the sourcing of consumables. With McDonald's themselves stating that ‘British consumers are increasingly interested in the quality, sourcing and ethics of the food and drink they buy’ (Ashbridge, 2007)it is clear that it is consumer needs that have driven them towards this move, arguably not because they want to make the world a better place.

But is that necessarily a bad thing? Is it unethical to make a company look to be ethical when fundamentally it’s a capitalist giant who has one main objective, to make money? Does it matter that the meals are often sensationally calorific or that they still offer such meals to children, specifically targeting them with toys and the such, when they are doing their bit to help cows and chickens be happier? Now in their defence they do offer healthy alternatives despite still typically being ‘accused by health campaigners in America and Europe of helping to cause an obesity epidemic’ (Walsh, 2006), ranking as the least ethical of high-profile corporations according to a public opinion poll. But then while the laying chickens may be free ranging until their hearts are content, the meat chickens aren’t afforded exactly the same courtesy... suppliers do have to meet ‘strict animal welfare standards’ (McDonald’s, 2010), what that entails is not exactly clear, but the words free-range do not appear. This could be a sly tactic to get McDonald’s associated with free-range, encouraging transference of this impression of high standards of welfare onto other products such as chicken, without actually having to make the full financial commitment.

But what I now have to ask is this, is that any different to me buying free-range eggs and not free-range chicken? I buy free-range eggs to make me feel better about my selfish consumerism, after all who are we to say chickens are there to be manipulated for our own gain be it meat or eggs? We have taken it upon ourselves as humans to declare ourselves this master race so surely the least we could do is farm the animals we eat respectfully and with as much kindness as is possible given you’re going to slaughter them. We aren’t much different from those faceless corporation and conglomerates; fundamentally we all act selfishly without concern for what we are taking from the world and how we treat it with our main concern being our own back pockets. Perhaps we have huge issues with such companies because we see part of ourselves, in them, that we hate.

Regardless, ultimately no corporation can continue without the support of consumers and so who is to blame if not us? If you’re not happy with the way someone is acting then its simple, don’t support them by consuming their products. And don’t whinge when they don’t listen to you while you continue to do so!

So in conclusion, yes of course the ethics are, perhaps, suspect... but is it unethical to try and represent yourself as ethical when you’re not? It must be is socially acceptable at least, as it is practiced across society by individuals, groups and companies alike. An in our society majority rule, so I certainly wouldn’t lose sleep from doing so.