Hi Everyone,
In my report I'm just about to start writing my recommendations to Savvy Creations which will outline its areas of improvement and areas of strength. After reflecting on the firm's areas of strength, something I've found really admirable is the way in which Savvy Creations places charity and not-for-profit organisations at such a high priority. My mentor at Savvy Creations who is also the Director, Sandra Spasojevic, goes about exercising its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to help out those companies who may not have the big budgets to afford PR professionals to promote their cause to the public.
An example of this is Savvy Creations' client, a bottled water company who are a charitable organisation that gives over half of its profits to international charities. There are 3 different bottle caps which represent different charity sectors; the red bottle caps donate funds to health orientated charities, green bottle caps donate funds to environmental charities and blue caps donate money to clean drinking water projects in developing countries. It really is a great initiative where by buying a bottle of water, people can contribute just a small donation to important causes without going out of their way to do so.
Savvy Creations offers free initial consultations and pro-bono work as part of their mission to help smaller companies, thus strengthening their CSR to the local Perth community. I think this is becoming a greater expectation that in the PR industry, firms need to be socially aware of the economic climate smaller companies and charities are in where they don't necessarily have the big budgets to hire a PR consultant who could make their brand even more recognisable.
This definitely resonated with what I've learnt throughout my studies at Curtin, especially in the PR consultancy unit, where CSR and community engagement is crucial in order to maintain a positive reputation in the industry as stakeholder expectations are growing where by giving back to the community from firms is becoming a priority. After all, the fundamentals of PR that I learnt way back in PR Principles is that the role of PR in society is to create mutually benefit relationships between firms and their stakeholders...so why not create these relationships directly between the PR firm and the community which they practice in?
Something to think about!
Tahlia
3 comments:
Hi Tahlia,
after seeing the title of your blog post I was really interested to find out how the consultancy you have been completing your internship with are socially responsible.
I really love the idea behind 'icy crown' and the way in which Savvy Creations support organisations such as these. I think it's definitely important in business and society today to be socially responsible, and often PR is at the core of showing how organisations do this. So it was a really great concept to identify that these relationships can be built directly between a communications firm and the community/non profit organisations themselves.
I really enjoyed reading this blog post. It sounds like you have had a great internship and had a fantastic mentor to help instil these values as something you can think about as a future (or current) communications consultant.
Good luck for the rest of your internship and your report,
Rebecca
Hi Rebecca, Thanks for your comment!
I'm so lucky that the firm I've been interning for is so aware of the economic struggles that smaller companies have as well as the need for PR firms to support charity organisations. It is these organisations that most need PR professionals to communicate to their stakeholders the importance and relevance of the cause yet are the ones with the most little funds to be able to afford a PR person. Luckily we have PR professionals like my mentor to step in!
Icy Crown is definitely unique in what it is providing not only to its customers, but to the wider community by giving proceeds to a variety of causes. You don't see many products like that these days and it has been a blast working with Icy Crown to spread the word and also feeling like you are contributing to helping out a fantastic organisation.
Good luck with the rest of your internship and I will be looking forward to reading the rest of your blog posts
Tahlia
Hi Tahlia,
It's so interesting to hear about how different organisations conduct themselves, and seeing what they're doing to remain socially responsible.
Unfortunately, I had the experience of being on the flip-side of CSR. Obviously I can't go into detail, but over the course of my internship it became clear that there will most likely be situations where you can't always act as you would like to. As one of the girls said to me, "sometimes you have to leave your morals at the door."
Certainly an eye opener!
Daisy
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