Responsible PR and marketing
I had planned another post for today, but yesterday's events caused me to change direction.
Stating it most charitably, yesterday a promotional event went awry, significantly inconveniencing thousands and costing Boston taxpayers a significant amount of money. (And I am not referring the the inconvenience of those trying to install Vista).
Details of the event can be found http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/index.html
or for a more local take on it
Although this is guerilla marketing, I post for it does impact us as practitioners as:
1) We are often called upon to provide counsel re: marketing
2) We plan special events and activities ourselves.
How does this relate to the PRSA Code of Ethics.
Discuss....
Stating it most charitably, yesterday a promotional event went awry, significantly inconveniencing thousands and costing Boston taxpayers a significant amount of money. (And I am not referring the the inconvenience of those trying to install Vista).
Details of the event can be found http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/index.html
or for a more local take on it
Although this is guerilla marketing, I post for it does impact us as practitioners as:
1) We are often called upon to provide counsel re: marketing
2) We plan special events and activities ourselves.
How does this relate to the PRSA Code of Ethics.
Discuss....
posted by Mark W. McClennan, APR @ 7:00 AM
2 Comments:
At 1:16 PM,
Doug Haslam said…
Wow, this whole event was a steaming pile of stupid-- Cartoon Network, Interference, City of Boston, just -- gaah. The only heroes PR wise in my book are the two jokers who took a liberal interpretation of "don't talk about the case" to an absurdist extreme (many people will disagree here, and that's ok).
Also, kudos to Turner/Cartoon Network PR for coming forward in cleaning up the mess that their marketing or advertising department made.
As to the ethics-- you are correct to identify this event as marketing, not PR. It would be nice to think that a PR person might have raised possible objections (and the possible ***storm that they were going to have to clean up), but how many marketing departments at organizations of that size include the PR department in planning events? I bet the answer is-- very few.
At 2:23 PM,
Chip Griffin said…
I agree that everyone involved looked silly -- or worse. As to the ethics and the value of ethics codes, I have my own assessment on my blog (Pardon the Disruption).
In a nutshell, I'm not convinced that ethics codes are the answer. (I have found that unethical people happily sign on to them, but don't care if they break them.)
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