Being a socially conscious PR consultancy

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