I have to say that most probably it is the last time I'm writing in this blog..at least in this way, considering what I've learned in the class and from the articles. But you never know, maybe in a while I feel I want to write about PR again.
Since I took this lecture because I didn't pass the PR Theory lecture in BFM (Baltic Film and Media School), I can say that the reason was actually not understanding and partly a rift between the students and teachers..In some point I'm glad that I didn't pass, because I feel that in this PR Theory I learned in some part even more, specially, because I had to write it down here! It is kind of the perfect solution to know that pupils are actually learning something. Writing down the things talked about in class and our own thoughts, the conversations and theories are definitely being analysed more than they would be so to say 'learning the theories by heart for the exam', because most probably after few weeks we wouldn't remember almost anything.

Like we discussed in the class what are the points to make this lecture even better..everybody gave their opinion and to be honest for most of the opinions there are actually other separate classes, so maybe the only thing I would change is to call more quest speakers from the field, because I think..no, I know, that sometimes  talking about the experience can teach you more than the whole lecture together. Of course these people need to be carefully chosen. I'm saying it because I had the experience with one guest speaker from Tallinna Vesi, he actually came just for an hour, but stayed for four hours. It felt like with these four hours we learned more about PR than one school year can teach!  

Bye bye for now and THANK YOU for the experience :)

Social Capital

Our topic this time was Social Capital and in the shortest explanation - it is a connection between individuals.
Social Capital is for example interest group, where people with the same interest belong. In Putnam's article all the researches were made in USA, but generally we can also use it in Europe. So researches in such field as education, urban poverty, unemployment, the control of crime and drug abuse and even health have discovered that successful outcomes are more likely in civilly engaged communities.
Here we can take a moment to think if we belong to some interest group? And if we do, then does it somehow make us more active in society? In my opinion it is true (of course with exceptions). It seems like the sentence "the more you do the more you can" (mida rohkem sa teed, seda rohkem sa jõuad). So in that case we need Social Capital in every society to make people act, to actually make a democratic society a democratic one!
As it also says in Putnam's article: systematic inquiry shows that the quality of governance was determined by longstanding traditions civic engagement. The hallmark of successful regions were: voter turnout, newspaper readership, membership in choral societies and football clubs.

Putnam also explains how Social Capital refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefits.
As I said before - members of associations are more likely than nonmembers to participate in politics, to spend time with their neighbours, to express social trust and so on.

In the same time Luoma-aho (on Putnam) argues that people today have lost their sense of community, which makes collaboration and relationships difficult to establish and maintain. There are comparisons of history and nowadays society and the research shows that peoples participation in Social Capital is more and more reducing. That might be because of the mistrust and development of technology - people spend their time alone behind the computer/television, they don't have the need of belonging to an interest group.

Reputation plays also a big role in engaging people with and organization or any other group. It can be described as the value of public awareness in the social networks important to the organization (Luoma-aho article). PR has a big role of creating an organizations reputation. Of course in the same time it is not only the PR practitioners work to do that - also the organization has to be socially responsible, fair and honest to its customers and for the whole society. PR practitioners job is to make the organization seen in the society, to get the feedback from the public and in many cases also to make people interested, for example creating interest group.

THE END

'Balls' with holes

This Tuesday (04.10) we talked about how important are the raltionships between an organization and its stakeholders. Päivi explained communication between these two mentioned above rather figuratively, she showed us a tennis ball and a ball with many holes. First I think many of us were a bit confused what do these balls have to do with PR..but the balls represented an organization! Tennis ball doesn't have holes, so you can not see inside, but in the other gray ball with holes, we can see inside also from different perspectives, depending from which hole we are looking in.
In my previous post I talked about propaganda, well that tennis ball is something like propaganda, but the other ball represents an organization that should be in this day in our society to compete with the competitors. Everything is about trust - as in the article by Johansoozi says: for long-term relationship trust becomes even more important as there is higher level of investments involved.
Johansoozi also writes about organizaition transparency, which increases the level of trust between organization and its stakeholders, also it prevents from media to write 'bomb' news about some events/crisis.  Stakeholders need transparency to see if the organization is really doing what it says it is doing.

Kent and Taylor's (2002) concept of PR: one of the most ethical forms of communication and one of the central means separating true from false.

We also talked about crisis, where it is ALWAYS best to report about the situation, before the media. There was a good example brought up about H&M, where a civilian found big trashbags full of unused H&M clothings. After a while media picked the story up and asked for an answer from the up-mentioned company (why weren't the clothes donated to homeless/charity). H&M said 'no comments', which by the way is the worst answer one can give..and they did it many times in a row, until the news became big, they finally apologised and said they will find out who or what caused the clothes end up on a street.

If we think about managment relationship nowdays, it has had a huge growth from the 'propaganda era' until now. Since the stakeholders/customers and future customers know that they should have all the information available, there is a chance of misusage. Sometimes it even shows that stakeholders have too much power in their hands, for example in USA, the customers have every right to sue a company if they have misused their products, seen bad service etc. In some point it might get ridiculously unnecessary. It is a waste of time, money and reputation for nothing.
Every company wants to have a good reputation. Good reputation brings in the money and trust, trust itself brings more money and also a 'good light' in media. Nowdays good reputation is achieved (like said before) by communication with your customers, hearing out what their needs are and fulfilling these needs as much as possible. In our society, I think very important is Word Of Mouth (WOM). Everybody rather listens to their friend than acts like it says in a commercial. Also charismatic people give reputation, but this can be in some point dangerous - for some people charismatic may seem as interesting and attractive, but for others it might be frightning (specially in our quiet Estonian society).

LG reputation - I started to think about this companys reputation and I could not figure out if it has a good image or not. Since personally I think this company is big (meaning worldwide) and I have an opinion that they make high-quality products (I have never purchased LG). In the beginning of their time they were quite unknown to the world, I think because they just focused on home electronics. Now in the other hand I can see that they make also cell phones, smart phones, which have good quality and style. Also as I said before, probably because most of their interaction is in social media, they have become more popular among younger generation. Overall in my opinion they have raised from 'not so popular' to quite good reputation.

On Berger by Mats Heide

The article by Heide takes Berger as the main source of his facts. He talks about communication importance in crisis, before that and after crisis. He argues that crisis communication is the core of public relations, "damage control". Crisis time shows the value of PR and of course then it is mainly used.
Heide talks about Berger's foundings, that society and individuals exist within the language. Language provides us values, logic and information from which we can have knowledge.
Acoording to Berger, things are not what they seem - reality has many layers of meaning.

Berger also writes that there are different institutions in every society that shape our worldview and our actions. If we are acting right in the societys eyes then we get rewarded (in some case), but when we do wrong, we get punished. These institusions are all made from human/society - he also calls them moral pressures of society. Also I would say that for these institution to work we need language. Language to explain the rules. Here rules are meant something that we take as self-evident. Example: we do not think every minute that it is wrong to steal or hurt other people, this is just one rule that the society tells us since we were born.

In modern society people have to make decision all the time. And if somebody have a big responsibility and makes one wrong decision - that can cost a whole more than we would think. Also people have their ethics code and reality, but these realities can differ depending on the society and surrounding.

Those different codes can cause crisis. And of course crisis can be caused by making the wrong decision. In our modern world the information flow is faster than we can think. That's why in our society it is always best to communicate straight away - tell immediately what is going on. In case of bad news, there is always a big chance that media will put it in a bad light, but giving information straigh out, people will see it as an "accident" that could happen to anybody.
There are many examples of good PR skills in crisis that has lead to even more trusting customers after the crisis, but also bad communication skill in crisis, that has lead the company/organization to its death.

LG in Social Media

LG is a good example for a company that can use Social Media to get to its customers.
LG electronics started to promote its products trough blogsphere. Back then it was something that no other company like that did. At the start people were confused and maybe even did not take it very well, there was not much feedback. When the time passed and people understood that LG blog is the place where they can write their problems with their LG phone or whatever LG product they had, and they actually did get help. Even negative feedback was welcome and LG empolyees helped their customers in any way they could. The company became very popular due to the fact that they created an easy-to-use blogsphere for its customers. It was the place not only to promote their products, but where people could chat about their LG products, or even compare LG products with some other electonic company.

Also their Facebook page is very friendly and human. They have posts every day, some days even many, their page is very up-to-date (with the lates information) and the good social media communication shows out - they have 76249 fans, and that's only on the LG Electronicks UK Facebook page. They also have a Twitter account, but they give Twitter information also in Facebook, in case, some of their "fans" don't have Twitter account. There are 6233 Twitter followers and their blog posts also go through Twitter.

I think LG knows how to use social media properly, they have all the social media sites connected, that all the information gets through to all the people who want to have it. The communication skills are very well used, informal and the same level as it's customer/follower, giving out the lates information in the same time not seeming pushy. There are companys, who should take LG as an example how to use social media.

LG Life's Good

Excellence Theory and its critics

Last  lecture (27.09) we talked about how PR used to be, how it should be and ow it is persieved now. PR used to be/persieved the same as propaganda. Propaganda for example is a something that was used in German Nazi time or Soviet Union time. Its aim was to tell something to the whole society, not to get feedback, but to to tell the people to act like the government wanted them to act.

We talked about Grunin's models of PR:
1) Press agentry/publicity
2) Public information
3) Two-way assymetrical
4) Two-way symmetrical
These models can be used simutaneously, but the best PR model in our Democratic society is the fourth one. The first model is manipulating one-way communication (propaganda). The second is just giving positive information, but no need for feedback. The third is the kind, when parties do not have equal say in matters and the fourth is the most democratic - being honest, giving positive and negative information and parties are equal.

There are some organizations that have good PR workers and for crisis it is always best to tell what is really going on, not to hide facts and blame somebody else. Eventually everything usually will come out and bad communication can cost a company its popularity and customers.