Ethical concerns within the PR industry are easily avoidable if you take the
right steps to stay clear of them. It is important to keep in mind that it will benefit you to be open to your clients and discuss some of these concerns, which will put them at ease and show that you are a trustworthy PR professional.
media update’s Talisa Jansen van Rensburg walks you through four ethical issues that every PR pro should be aware of:
1. Communicate sensitive information about clients
By working closely with clients, you will receive a lot of sensitive information. As the PR pro, it is your job to ensure you keep this information safe from third parties. The information you will receive will include:
You need to remember that you have a big responsibility to keep this information safe and not share it with anyone else. This needs to be done in order to reassure your current and future clients that you are trustworthy and that you have a
good reputation in the public eye.
2. Inaccurate PR measurements
Many PR pros make use of Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) as a measure of how successful their PR efforts have been. AVE has been around since the 1940s, which means that modern PR has a lot of other variables that this measurement does not take into account.
“
AVE figures are popular in the industry as an easy way to show much value you can get from PR,” says Claire O’Sullivan in an article for PR Week. “Often, AVE figures are much higher than any PR budget and they make PR people look really good.”
So, when a brand is looking for a PR professional, they need to first ask them about the metrics they use to prove how great of a job they are doing.
“
When it comes to identifying the right metrics to analyse, you have to take into account the campaign’s objectives,” says Mikaela Slattery, lead analyst at South African media analysis company Focal Points.
Just as no two campaigns are the same, the metrics used to measure them correctly cannot be the same.
“While return on investment is a metric that should apply to just about every campaign, there are other identifiers like target audience reach, social media engagement and positioning that can signal whether the campaign was a success or not,” Slattery says.
3. Dark PR
Unfortunately, it's a
man-eat-man-world out there; competition is stiff, and everyone wants to get out on top. And, just like you get really great PR pros who have good integrity, you get PR pros that are not exactly doing things the right way.
So what exactly is dark PR?This type of PR is also called
negative PR and is aimed specifically at a brand’s competitors to discredit them or damage their reputation by making use of tactics that can be found within dark PR.
So what can an ethical PR pro do about dark PR?You can help guide your client to practice safe steps when setting up passwords or sharing documents and sensitive information with other people. You should also
always be transparent with your clients and be open to discuss certain unethical practices you find taking place. It is also important to draw up an effective plan in case your client ends up being attacked by negative PR.
If you find yourself in a negative PR situation be sure to check out:
Five ways to handle a public relations crisis.
4. Twisting information
When a PR pro writes a press release and provides the reader with facts, but not
context, that would be considered as ‘unethical’. Giving your audience mere facts is not enough, especially since context can play a really big role in understanding the goal and message of the content.
For example, in late 2016 there was an issue with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7;
it was found that this phone caught fire 112 times in only the first month of sales. If the PR pro responsible for addressing the public about this issue said: “The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is being suspended and requests [that] people who bought this phone send it back to the suppliers” then this alone would be unethical.
PR pros have to give context to the public when making announcements, where they would need to explain to consumers the reason why they are suspending the phone and why they are taking it back. They would also need to explain
why the phone was catching fire. This way, no one is left in the dark; they understand where the issues arose from and what is being put into place to get it sorted out.
What are some other ways you think PR professionals can keep on the straight and narrow? Let us know in the comments section below.
Now that you know what some of the unethical practices in PR are, be sure to read about Dealing with dark PR to get a clear understanding of what it is and what you can do about it.
*Image courtesy of Vecteezy