PR contributes to the society / world?

Hello fellow interns, we are almost reaching the end of our eventful internship period. I would like to reflect back in this entry and look back at what I have done so far, what significance it has had in my life and how much have I been able to learn and take back with me, more importantly I want to look back to see how much I have contributed to the industry, to FH’s clients and to FHKL in itself.

A friend of mine recently asked me a disturbing question; “so what do you do all day at work, come up with more documents and help form strategies for a client, a corporate super power to blind the public, to bring down one of it competitors in an endless war of corporate superpowers? Is that what you are contributing to the world?”

The question made me wonder, and perhaps others will ask us similar questions in the future. So without being defensive I decided to think of the best possible answer, which is as follows:

Dear Critic of PR

I understand the frustration you must feel when corporations appear to have gardens of money trees in their back yard and make billions of dollars, figures that we done even dream of, but allow me to give you my humble insight that I have gathered over the past two months.

The Big Picture:
To begin at the beginning, as human beings we spend much of our energy fighting for freedom, whether it’s freedom of speech or freedom of economy, however this only goes for those who do not have freedom and not for those of us who are lucky enough to live in democratic nations. If you are entitled to freedom as an individual why corporations shouldn’t be entitled to freedom of economy too?

I will not deny that many corporations behave and practice unethically, but this should not be an excuse for us to condemn all. After all corporations are made up of people like you and me who work hard and aim to get somewhere, it just so happen that they have aimed for a very high position and have achieved it.

What do we do?
Even though from Critic’s point of view it may seem that I sit at my desk till late at night coming up with another manipulative document to blind the public of the truth and create some fantastic crisis to get my clients competitor in trouble, sorry to disappoint you, I don’t and I’m quiet sure my colleague don’t, if any other PR firm or PR practitioner is doing that, then shame on them. The truth is that while the PR industry may have not always had the best of images, it has come a long way since it’s era of Edward Bernays Florid Deception and other such disasters.

I do not blame critics of PR industry, who are often journalists to misunderstand PR as there are many PR practitioners out there that are out of the control of governing umbrella bodies such as the IPRM (Malaysia). Even the ones that are registered can at times cross the line of ethics on multiple platforms.

Having seen up close and personal one of the worlds leading PR firms style of practice I feel certain that there is a heart in the PR industry after all and it is in fact PR that makes corporations have a softer more humane side. One example of this is one of FH’s CSR client that I will not name and will call client X, the account was handled mostly by me which gave me a lot of insight on what goes into the preparations of a CSR campaign. X was interested in carrying out a CSR campaign in Asia, one that will have real impact and a voice. A Corporate Social Responsibility campaign is often to the advantage of many parties but mostly to the society. In this case the client wanted to know more about the situation of migrant workers in Malaysia and major environmental issues here that they could look into and have a sustainable touching base for.

To gain in-depth knowledge on subject of migrant workers I arranged for meetings with some of Malaysia prominent NGO’s dealing with migrant workers and human rights. Note that company X has previously had a crisis concerning migrant workers in a contract factory, which is mainly the reason why Malaysia was put on the map along side, China, Vietnam and Thailand. I managed to arrange meetings with MTUC (Malaysia Trade Union Congress), Tenaganita and SUHAKAM. They each gave us vital information, advice, recommendations and awareness on serious matters concerning migrant workers in Malaysia.

The meetings were eventful and we meet passionate people who were happy to see X take action and initiative to do their research and contact them, they were ecstatic at the idea of working with X for the betterment of the society. While the NGO’s were getting excited over the ideas and things that we could do my boss reminded us all that “this is still a business move and has to give X coverage”. Which is the truth, X needs to profit and gain publicity from this campaign but the real benefit at the end of the day will go to the people whose lives were changed because of the campaign (the campaign could be to ensure that workers join unions so that their rights are protected or ensure minimum wage for migrant workers).

The point that I am trying to make is that while company X may be looking for their own interest it is us PR people that now have the power to do something positive. If we don’t do our job well, the money for the campaign could easily be allocated for a major advertisement campaign or similar projects. So it is up to us to make sure that the NGO’s voices, the people’s voices, the weaker parties voices and societies voices and demands are heard. It all comes down to the report that we write back to X to make an impact, to finally make a change.

You see Critic, this is PR, this is the only industries that have insight and the power to make unethical companies or companies like X make an effort to give back to the society. This is the kind of work that makes you sleep well at night, we may have helped X gain more popularity in the long run but if X goes on with the campaign we have helped thousands of people.

What do you think? What is PR to you? Does PR have a heart or is its only purpose to manipulate and spin?

Cheers
:)