Not Reinventing the Wheel: PR, SM, and relationship problems

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Not Reinventing the Wheel PR, SM, and
relationship problems
Professor David McKie (dmckie_at_waikato.ac.nz)Dr.
Margalit Toledano (toledano_at_waikato.ac.nz)
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Preview

• Love story or reckless affair?
• MADD about who?
  PR and SM speed dating
• Foreplays Paternity tests and employment
  prospects
• 3. Your place or mine?
• 4. Compatibility testing
• 5. (In)decent proposals?

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MADD about who? (1) Affinities

• MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) are poster
  case in Andreasens (2006) 21C SM. MADD major
  accomplishment new laws (p. 3), achieved by a
  PR tool lobbying, in what Andreasen terms
  upstream effort
• MADD is also a campaign example in a PR textbook
  Community involvement has always been a part of
  the MADD movement (Newsom et al, 1996, p. 466)
  

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MADD about who? (2) Sharing

• MADD is a grassroots mobilisation effort which,
  like other organisations, seeks change through
  integrated marketing an advertising and public
  relations campaign.
• Shocking billboard of actual crashed car
  advertising tool idea from former PR practitioner
• Community relations via news media, events, free
  publicity PR

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MADD about who? (3) Shared
aspirations

• Work in the service of organisations
• SM govt and non-profit sectors, PR also the
  business sector
• Goals to influence social behaviour driving,
  purchasing, donating, voting, protecting the
  environment, preserving health
• Tools communication, information, persuasion
  techniques, influence theory
• Similar campaign processes

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Foreplay (1) Family backgrounds SM

• Social Marketings
• Mother social justice as the good side of the
  family with a positive reputation and high moral
  values
• Father marketing, commercial background and
  dubious, if not illegal, acts in the background
• Distancing of father detectable in SM
• systematic application of marketing,
  alongside other concepts and techniques to
  achieve specific behavioural goals, for a social
  good (National SM Centre, 2007)

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Foreplay (2) Family backgrounds PR

• Public relations
• Father comes from a long line of circus hustlers
  (e.g., Barnum) with dodgy publicity and part time
  war propagandists (e.g., Bernays)
• Mother multiple personality disorder
• known associate of yellow journalists and
  muckrakers
• more respectable side managing corporate
  relations, reputation, CSR
  also involved in charities, public education
  social causes

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Foreplay (3) Employment prospects and likely
employers

• Social Marketing and Public Relations
• Health promoters and nonprofit organisations
• Local and national governments
• Social cause funders (including philanthropists)
• Public relations (works for both sides)
• Anti-health organisations from drug companies
  through big tobacco to fast food operators
• Anti-environment organisations from arms
  manufacturers and GM food researchers, cosmetic
  firms with a taste for guinea pig testing,
  gas-guzzling 4x4 makers, and oil companies
• Activist PR for Greenpeace, Friends of Earth
• Positive CSR

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Compatibility testing (1) SM on PR

• Kotler Andreasen (1996) argue that
• PR seeks to influence attitudes, whereas
  marketing tries to influence specific behaviours
• PR is organisation-centred instead of
  audience-centred
• PR relies on communication approaches raising
  awareness and influencing attitudes
• Social marketers are actually involved in
  providing services to clients.

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Compatibility testing (2) PR on PR

• PR is not just about media relations and raising
  awareness.
• From early on PR developed expertise and theory
  in employee engagement, fundraising, lobbying,
  as well as donor, community, volunteer
  relations
• These are additional to other upstream
  interventions that Andreasen recently
  discovered as essential for the success of SM
  campaigns.

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Compatibility testing (3) SM
on itself and PR on SM

• In commercial marketing the target audience makes
  a trade, or exchange, between benefits and costs
• In SM it is hard to portray the benefits and
  costs are usually very high
• Commercial marketing techniques currently used by
  SM are expensive and not always appropriate
• Campaigns are short term not enough to sustain
  the behavioural change
• SM not usually communication experts

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Compatibility testing (4) Educational
capital

• Many professional associations, giant PRSA body,
  international members (generating a body of
  knowledge evaluating courses)
• Academic divisions and associations ICA,
  Bledcom, EUPRERA
• PR publications Books, proceedings, national
  (PRISM), regional (AJC, Asia Pacific J of PR),
  international (PR Review Journal of PR research
  J. of Com. Mngt) journals
• PR underpinned by theory from media,
  communication, management research

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Why commit to marketing?

• Andreasen (2006) next level of SM to be
  able to influence legislators, foundation
  officers, TV news directors, or members of street
  gangs? (p. 11)
• do we need new concepts and tools, new kinds of
  education and training? New research? Or new
  measures of success to permit effective diffusion
  of social marketing into these new contexts?

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Should SM stay single?

• Serial employment?
• What about finding a permanent home between
  campaigns? Strength in NSMC
• Upstream functions such as media relations,
  fundraising, and lobbying need connections,
  expertise, training, environmental scanning
• Social marketers dont practice law, although
  they need legal services
• Why should SM create theory skills developed in
  PR from early 20th century?

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Proposing (1) Your place or mine?

• In education PR well set (almost globally) SM is
  networking well but still new marginal
• In professional reputation
• PR is a disaster area
• SM benefits from an ethical track record and
  commitment to social justice
• Who should teach SM? Marketing or PR academics?

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Proposing (2) Passionate civil union or marriage
of convenience?

• SMs exchange theory, audience focus, early
  research behavioural outcomes are vital
• PR has an academic base, fundraising skills,
  relevant prior research professional bodies
• Future needs greater equity eco-justice
• Given govt. cuts there will be shortfalls
• Answers are likely to need an enterprise
  framework new funding sources

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Happy Endings 1

• Practice Social change PR and PR programmes
  include SM approaches greater focus on
  audience/consumer and behavioural outcomes
• Practice SM accesses appropriate lower cost
  effectiveness using PR
• Education PR SM in each others
  courses training
• Offspring?
• Core SM, PR, Marketing
• other appropriate disciplines

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Happy Endings 2

• Many people in both camps already knowingly and
  unknowingly combine them
• Joke
• The man who invented the wheel was an idiot, the
  man who invented two was a genius
• Invitation
• Anyone interested in collaboration please contact
  us toledano_at_waikato.ac.nz
• dmckie_at_waikato.ac.nz