Week 3: Public Relations Ethics

Lecture

This is the second lesson for Public Relations and I've learnt that advertisements runs in every part of Singapore, surrounding our everyday lives.

So, just what is public relations? From my understanding, public relations is the opposite of advertising. For advertising, money is paid for messages to be posted to consumers through different forms of media. In public relations, money is not paid for company to appear in print or articles. Instead, reports and publications of the company is based on the reporter's information which they received and researched.

Going deeper into the context, each and every advertisement that we see on the street is a strategy to attract targeted consumers. These strategies has a goal (objectives) and, in order to develop a good and working strategy, comprehensive research is vital. I agree with this point as I believe that an adequate amount of research certainly helps in contributing to our knowledge and will build a better foundation for the designated campaign and

Ms. Tanya elaborated on the SWOT Analysis which includes Strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats. I understand that SWOT analysis as a simple framework for generating strategic alternatives. In other words, it is a strategic planning method utilized by many organizations to ensure that there is a clear objective defined for the project. SWOT falls into 2 categories, whereby strength and weakness are internal factors and opportunities and threats are external factors.

For instance:

Strength - Quality processes and procedures & location of the business

Weakness - Poor quality of goods and services & damaged reputation

Opportunities - Market vacated by an ineffective competitor & join ventures / mergers

Threats - Price wars with competitors & taxation introduced by government on the product

A good example will be Wal-Mart, a successful retail company made use of SWOT analysis to analyze and focus on the key issue:

Strengths - Wal-Mart is a powerful retail brand. It has a reputation for value for money, convenience and a wide range of products all in one store.

Weaknesses - Wal-Mart is the World's largest grocery retailer and control of its empire, despite its IT advantages, could leave it weak in some areas due to the huge span of control.

Opportunities - To take over, merge with, or form strategic alliances with other global retailers, focusing on specific markets such as Europe or the Greater China Region.

Threats - Being number one means that you are the target of competition, locally and globally.

Personally, I feel that SWOT analysis is good for analyzing and examining the interaction between the business and the external marketplace. With this planning technique, it helps marketers / organizations to focus on key issues, that potentially has the most impact on the business. In addition, it also allows the organization to know their current standing in the market.

Apart from analyzing, setting objectives for the project is equally important. Let me elaborate - SMART objectives help ensure that effective goals are set. Setting objectives are important as it helps the company to focus on specific aims over a period of time and can motivate staff to meet the objectives set.

Specific – Objectives should specify what they want to achieve

Measurable – Should be able to measure whether the objectives set are met

Achievable - Are the objectives set, achievable and attainable?

Realistic – Can the goals be realistically achieved with the available resources

Time – When do to achieve the 'set' objectives.

I didn't know that for planning, there's so many steps to go through. However, these steps are essential for the success of a campaign as it reminds the organization of its' aim and focus over time.

Reading

So, what exactly are ethics? The book define ethics as standards of behavior and, my ethics are the rules and standards governing the conduct by which I live my life and make all my decisions by. And, in relation to public relations, ethics are important for a few reasons. Firstly, ethics act as a guideline and gives a baseline for understanding the concepts of right and wrong and ethics helps by giving a ready understanding of how to react to a certain situation long before that situation happens. Secondly, ethics acts as "invisible" mediator when dealing or coming into contact with other people. So, If the sense of ethics are wrong then, the reaction to other people will result in a negative manner. Lastly, ethics are critical as people see us in them. We have the ability to show others the correct way to act and behave by remaining ethical in the way we talk to people and deal with the media.

So, being honest, keeping promises and caring for others are ethical behaviors. Then, how is unethical behavior defined? Pushing someone is unethical however, when someone is about to be hit by a car, and was pushed hard onto the other side of the street, is that considered unethical too? Often, unethical behaviors are not illegal and frequently, it falls in the grey area, between both right and wrong which often makes it difficult for people to decide what to do when it is encountered. In addition, different people have different views of what is ethical and what is unethical. For example, some people feel that it is alright to tell a little "white lie", while others feel that a lie will always be a lie and there is no excuse for it.

There are 3 main school of thoughts for ethics:

• Deontologist - Theories suggest that it would be possible to create a complete and comprehensive law that would prevent all negative behavior for everyone who follow the law.
• Consequentialist - theories suggest that how ethical the action is becomes irrelevant… the result of the action in preventing harm and promoting the most happiness for the most number of people becomes the single benchmark for ethical behavior.
• Virtual theory - Moral individualism suggests that a person cannot know what it is to be moral without first discovering what it is within themselves that determines certain behaviour to be linked to moral or immoral acts. Likewise he or she must also give others the freedom to undergo this process within themselves to find their own moral center.

Personally, I agree with moral individualism as the prerequisite is to discover the truth which is true to the person in order for the person to understand their own moral drives. With regards to public relations, virtual theory dictates that public relations practitioner must make the right choices for themselves at all times thinking of both the short term and long term effects. Therefore, if everyone made decisions which created positive benefits for themselves, they would all be acting ethically because they would be true to themselves.