Select a company or organization whose fairness or ethics is currently being scrutinized in the news or in social media. Provide enough background information about your selected company to convey its size and prominence in society, and then explain in detail the alleged fairness and ethics violations. Conclude your paper by choosing to support the allegations or refute them, and explain your reasoning based on what you have learned. In your discussion, be sure to include the information below. Summarize the concept of fairness as it relates to decisions. Explain how personal and business ethics can be subconsciously overridden in decision-making. Does your selected business exemplify this? Describe how the company could improve its image regarding fairness and ethics in decision-making.
Marketing departments are concerned with advertising and public relations (PR), and the communication channels they use have radically changed in the last few years due to new technology platforms. Both advertising campaigns and public relations are concerned with publicity—sending a message to the audience (established customers and potential customers) about a product or service that the organization offers. In Forbes, Robert Wynne (2014) explains in his article, “The Real Difference Between PR and Course/Unit Learning Outcomes Learning Activity 4 Unit V Lesson Unit V Presentation Article: “Investigating the Effect of Internet Marketing on Customers’ Decision to Purchase (Case Study: Amico Industrial Group)” Group)” Advertising,” that advertising is considered to be paid media while PR is considered to be earned media. Each type of media platform—magazines, newspapers, television stations, websites, and so forth—has specific sections where paid advertising appears. With PR, the message moves outside of these paid-for sections into a story or the editorial section, which falls under the category of promotional activities. They often are concerned with more subtle publicity, involving relationship building and forging a mutual-trust relationship with the audience. This helps develop credibility. Communication Channels Communication channels are constantly changing in modern society. Media and communication models that have been established over the years have undergone fundamental changes, primarily due to the introduction of the Internet into our lives. Effective marketing communication in both PR and advertising depends on developing a compelling message and delivering it to the right audience. Traditional media sources, such as television, radio, and print, still exist and are viable options but are limited in scope when compared to online media. The Internet offers an almost borderless way to transmit communication to the world’s population. The trusted third party discussed by Wynne (2014) may no longer be a network or newspaper reporter, but instead, it may be a person on social media with thousands of people who follow his or her channel. Case Study: KitchenAid and Twitter Social media platforms are simply websites that allow people to communicate informally with others through written messages, photographs, audio clips, or videos. Each social media platform offers unique opportunities and challenges. Twitter is just one platform in a vast world of online media and offers a business almost instant worldwide communication with customers and potential customers. This can allow for effective PR, but it can also damage a company’s reputation just as quickly. For instance, KitchenAid posted a tweet about President Obama’s grandmother during one of Obama’s debates. The tweet said that President Obama’s grandmother had known his presidency was going to be bad and chose to die three days before he became president. The tweet was quickly deleted, and KitchenAid issued an apology. Cynthia Soledad, a senior member of the company, admitted that a junior staff member had been handling the company’s social media accounts, and the sentiment was in no way representative of the values of the company. The problem with using social media is that the information remains online—even if the company wants to delete the message. Mistakes like this can very quickly circulate from person-to-person (known in popular terminology as going viral) and damage a company’s PR image. Trends in Social Media In order to take advantage of the Internet, organizations also need to be aware of new trends. Whenever companies develop new online platforms for communication and PR, marketing has to change. For example, Twitter was created in 2006. Originally developed to send messages containing 140 characters or less to registered users, the site evolved to adding promoted tweets and promoted accounts in 2010. In 2015, promoted tweets are no longer limited to 140 characters. This platform changed, and the companies who use it have to change as well. KitchenAid tweets an apology. (Allen, 2012) The promoted accounts and promoted tweets move the platform away from the idea of pure PR and more into the realm of advertising. This is another area that marketing departments need to consider. Advertising pushes its point of view onto the consumer, basically saying the advertised aspect of the product is what everyone should find important. PR takes the opposite point of view and focuses on the people who are actually engaged in the discussion. PR does not fall under the same category as advertising, and when companies pay to have their tweets promoted, it can seem disingenuous to the consumer. Case Study: The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and the Dove Self-Esteem Project One way that companies manage to promote their product through social media channels, including paid placement in those channels, is to focus on outside social issues. The Dove beauty brand is a good example of an organization that used a PR campaign on social media to advertise beauty products. The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty started a global conversation through social media about creating a wider definition of beauty after a major study, The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report, proved that the current definition of beauty for women was limiting and unattainable (as cited in Dove, 2016). Beginning in 2004, Dove used various social media platforms to raise awareness of this issue (Dove, 2016). First, Dove created an advertising campaign featuring real women whose appearances are outside the stereotypical norms of beauty (Dove, 2016). The advertisements invited people to “vote” on the women’s level of beauty at campaignforrealbeauty.com. This blended approach featured a paid advertisement with PR at the website. When the customers (and potential customers) visited the website to vote, Dove was not directly selling its product. Instead, Dove was focused on boosting women’s self-confidence. Each following year, Dove launched a new part to the campaign. One of the biggest successes occurred in 2006, when Spain banned overly thin models from its fashion runways. Dove produced Evolution—a short film on the social media site, YouTube—that depicts the transformation of a woman into a model, complete with makeup and Photoshop effects. Please see the Suggested Reading section if you are interested in viewing the short film. Those engaged in social media did not see the company as trying to promote itself, but rather, the company was viewed as trying to promote women and a healthy beauty image. The message had more impact with the receivers because it is presented as promotional material rather than advertising. Research has demonstrated that editorial commentary (supplied by a PR promotion) is valued almost as much as word-ofmouth advice from family and friends. This carries far more leverage with the consumer than advertising (Wynne, 2014). The Dove campaign had the best of both worlds: friends and family chiming in and the full weight of the organization’s PR department behind it. References Allen, F. (2012). KitchenAid attacks Obama’s grandmother, then apologizes. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/10… Dove. (2016). The Dove campaign for real beauty. Retrieved from http://www.dove.us/SocialMission/campaign-for-real… Wynne, R. (2014). The real difference between PR and advertising. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwynne/2014/07/08…
