Abstract
Ideas spread across borders. This book contains descriptions of seventeen public relations activities, many of which were inspired by campaigns in other countries, such as Slovenian environmentalists learning from Estonians at a conference in Finland. Judging from the cases, it is also fair to say that some of the most interesting campaign ideas are fostered under circumstances that have little to do with a stereotypical public relations office, and that despite the differences in culture, campaign managers around the globe share some of the same communication values and face some of the same challenges.
One of the most entertaining case stories concerns the fundraising campaign Movember. The idea behind this international campaign is that men—who are normally shaved—grow mustaches in November each year to create public awareness of men’s health issues. With their November mustaches, these men become “walking, talking billboards,” whereas women can join the campaign as so-called “Mo Sisters,” who love the Mo. One of Movember’s core values is to create fun, and Bill Proud and Robin Xavier, of Queensland University of Technology in Australia, manage to reflect the joyful spirit as they present relevant facts and ideas in their feature style article. The campaign “was the brainchild of two friends, Travis Garone and Luke Slattery, who over a beer in a suburban Melbourne bar wondered where the Mo, or mustache, had gone.” Movember started small in 2003 and has since grown to a many-million-dollar organization.
The anthology includes work by well-known writers in the field of public relations practice and university education. Editors Jean Valin and John Paluszek are experienced practitioners and past chairs of Global Alliance for Public Relation and Communication Management. Professor Turk was affiliated with Florida International University in 2015. Among the authors are Donald K. Wright of Boston University, Don Stacks of the University of Miami, Shannon A. Bowen of the University of South Carolina, Chun-Ju Flora Hung-Baesecke of Hong Kong Baptist University in China, plus many other distinguished scholars and practitioners from different parts of the world. Some of the seventeen public relation cases have won national or international awards.
Many of the authors reflect on the values and challenges of getting stakeholders involved in the campaigns. For example, in South Africa a cableway company mobilized people to vote for Table Mountain in the “New 7 Wonders” competition, and in Japan the delivery company Yamato chose to focus its public relations activities after the earthquake in 2013 on its fifty-four thousand drivers because they were considered the best spokespersons for the company. The analysis of the Table Mountain is written by Chris Skinner, Durban University of Technology in South Africa, while Koichi Yamamura, Media Gain in Japan, studied the Yamato case.
IBM seemingly activated its four lakh employees in its “Smarter Planet” initiative. Stacks, Wright, and Bowen write that the employees as advocates for the company “served as influencers based on their personal beliefs in IBM.” Unfortunately, the authors do not elaborate on how IBM managed to persuade their employees to wholeheartedly support the campaign. Other studies show that stakeholders are not easily manipulated. For example, internal communication turned out to be the biggest challenge when a large Danish cooperative—as part of its commitment to social responsibility and sustainability—branded a series of African products, according to Finn Frandsen and Winni Johansen, Aarhus University in Denmark.
In general, case studies that point to challenges and failures in the process are the most instructive, and while few of the articles in this volume elaborate on failures, many fortunately reflect on challenges. For example, Hongmei Shen, of San Diego State University, points to several reasons for a less successful campaign by a Japanese pachinko hall operating company before its listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The aim was to improve its social reputation, but among other reasons it failed to seek “feedback from key stakeholders about whether its message delivery and content were appropriate.”
The publisher writes that “these studies will be of tremendous interest to all who teach, study, and practice public relations around the world,” and I agree. However, not all the case studies meet academic standards, and—considering the outstanding qualifications of people involved—this problem could no doubt have been solved by a stricter peer review process. For example, when reading the cases, I sometimes wondered if the authors have evaluated the motives of the sources, asked critical questions, or tested the informants’ interpretation with other relevant sources. The editors write that case studies “can bring life to theoretical frameworks,” and I agree. We desperately need good, timely case studies of public relations activities around the world to prepare our students for work in the field. However, less than half of the case studies in this volume apply public relations theory explicitly, and even fewer contribute to theoretical development. If the methodologies used in these case studies represent state-of-the-art within the academic public relations field, then we can benefit from a thorough discussion about qualitative standards for case studies.
Despite these shortcomings, I use the book in my graduate seminar on public relations and crisis management for international students, and I do so for two reasons: the volume describes many interesting campaign ideas, and the variation in academic approaches in the case studies creates a basis for discussions about methodology.