mediations: Facebook and PR

Mediations: Philip Young

Mediations coments on public relations, journalism, and communication ethics, often in the context of social media. Philip Young is a senior lecturer in public relations and journalism at the University of Sunderland, specialising in media ethics. He is also a lead researcher for the Euprera EuroBlog project. All views expressed here are personal and should not be seen as representing the University of Sunderland.

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Scoop!

Scoop!
Journalists appear in fiction in many guises and play many roles. Sometimes they provide central characters, often they intrude on the action, their attentions as unwelcome as they often are in real life. Scoop! gathers together these appearances under a variety of themes, some amusing, some trivial, some giving an insight into how the Press works and how it is seen to impact on our society.

The Kryptonite bike lock movie was a key event which made PR practitioners start to think seriously about the impact of blogging on organisational reputation. A couple of campaigns, aimed at Cadbury and HSBC, might well have similar significance for those who are trying to explore the implications of Facebook for reputation management.

Cadbury is reintroducing the Wispa chocolate bar, apparently in response to Facebook groups like Bring back the Wispa (1,351 members, Aug 25) (BBC story: Web campaign prompts Wispa return); HSBC is under fire in groups such as Stop the Great HSBC Graduate Rip-Off! (2,621 members Aug 25) for its decision to charge interest on previously free student overdrafts (Guardian story: Now it's Facebook vs HSBC).

Comments like these are presumably rather unhelpful as HSBC battles to recruit students going to university for the first time in September:

"I'm leaving HSBC next week as well! We need to show them that they cannot just not keep their end of the bargain and get away with it! Its outrageous! I feel so cheated."

Or....

"We need to warn new students to stay away from HSBC...would setting up a new group help? Opinions please!"

The Wispa campaigners used a rather more direct PR technique when they joned a stage invasion during Iggy Pop's set at Glastonbury.

Comments

The HSBC example is a nice example to add to the often quoted Kryptonite locks. The rip off Britain sentiment is one that financial clients have had to deal with and the advent of web 2.0 has made them more open to it.

But rather than bury their heads in the sand I believe that it's the perfect opportunity for the banks to listen, respond and act on what customers are saying. This is the real basis for building your reputation and looking to those very people to be your potential advocates.

So I say open the gates, when did we ever have an opportunity to build relationships in such a transparent, honest and potentially trustful way. For me that's a reputation worth having.

Posted by: Peter Kwong | September 04, 2007 at 11:00 AM