M92MC Week Four Non-corporate PR John Keenan John.keenan@coventry.ac.uk

M92MCWeek Four

Non-corporate PR

John Keenan

John.keenan@coventry.ac.uk

Week FourSo far…• what is PR?• Cultural framework• Corporate PR

http://www.classtools.net/education-games-php/fruit_machine

Today – non-corporate PR

Essay and practical

Media as Consciousness Industry

As social groups and classes live […] increasingly fragmented and sectionally different lives, the mass media are more and more responsible (a) for providing the basis on which groups and classes construct an ‘image’ of the lives, meanings, practices and values of other groups and classes; (b) for providing the images, representations and ideas around which the social totality, composed of all these separate and fragmented pieces can be coherently grasped as a whole. This is the first and great cultural functions of the modern media: the provision and the selective construction of social knowledge.

(Hall, S. 1977: 340-1)

Campaign Time

Groups of no more than 6. https://m92mc.wordpress.com/module-guide/

PR Company name

Think of cause to control and promote the interests of.

Who needs PR?

1. Activists2. Charities3. Us4. CelebritiesPlacesPoliticians

Why?

1. Activists

1. How will you get into the news?2. How will you control the news?

You have a church fete in aid of the newsteeple and you want The Coventry EveningTelegraph to cover it

Your child needs an operation in Americaand you need to get public donations

You are an animal rights activist group andyou want to publicise the plight of batterychicken farms in Turkey

You are on strike against the car firm Nissanand you want to get national support foryour cause

You are the Green Party and arestanding for election so need to publiciseyour manifesto

Fathers for Justice Case Study

http://www.fathers-4-justice.org

Gitlin, the Whole World is Watching p.291:

•An Opposition movement is caught in a fundamental, an inescapable dilemma.

BE RADICALIf it stands outside the dominant realm of discourse, it is liable to be consigned to marginality and political irrelevance, its deeper challenge to the social order sealed off, trivialized, and contained.

PLAY THE SYSTEMIf, on the other hand, it plays by conventional political rules in order to acquire an image of credibility; if, that is, its leaders are well-mannered, its actions are well-ordered, and its slogans specific and "reasonable," it is liable to be assimilated into the hegemonic political world view; it comes to be identified with narrow reform issues, and its oppositional edge is blunted.’

Cited in Ryan 1991: 1

http://www.routledge.com/cw/theaker/s1/case-studies/

http://lymebayreserve.co.uk

Case Study 2: Lyme Bay

2.7 million children died from starvation in Africa in 2014

In 2014 2.5 million people got AIDS mainly in India and Africa and 1.7 million died from the disease

Every minute, 20 football pitches of rainforest are cut down

Prince Harry was photographed naked in Las Vegas

Golding and Elliot from Making the News (1979)

Studied TV news in Nigeria, Ireland and Sweden finding the same news values

Drama - news stories ‘are stories as well as news’ p.115

Visual Attractiveness - visually arresting

Entertainment - humorous, amusing, diverting

Importance - significant to a large number of people

Size - number of people, scale of event

Proximity - cultural and geographical

Brevity - happens quickly

Negativity - ‘Bad news is good news’ p.120

Recency - up-to-date

Elites - includes famous people

Personalities - ‘make stories comprehensible by reducing complex processes and institutions to the actions of individuals’122

Accessibility- is it accessible to the media for pictures and quotes?

2.5 MILLION DIE OF STARVATION IN AFRICA

Drama - X NOT A STORY

Visual Attractiveness - X

Entertainment - X

Importance - TO UK X

Size - Y

Proximity - TO UK X

Brevity - X

Negativity - Y

Recency - Y

Elites - X

Personalities - Y

Accessible - N

RESULT - 4/12

1.7 MILLION PEOPLE DIED FROM AIDS LAST YEAR IN INDIA AND AFRICA

Drama - X

Visual Attractiveness - X

Entertainment - X

Importance - TO UK X

Size - Y

Proximity - TO UK X

Brevity - X

Negativity - Y

Recency - N

Elites - N

Personalities - Y

Accessible - N

RESULT - 3/12

EVERY MINUTE 20 FOOTBALL PITCHES OF FOREST ARE CUT DOWN IN BRAZIL

Drama - X

Visual Attractiveness - X

Entertainment - X

Importance - TO UK ?

Size - X

Proximity - X

Brevity - X

Negativity - Y

Recency - Y

Elites - X

Personalities - X

Accessible - N

RESULT - 2/12

Drama – Y

Visual Attractiveness – Y

Entertainment - Y

Importance – X

Size – X

Proximity – Y

Brevity – Y

Negativity – X

Recency – Y

Elites – Y

Personalities – Y

Accessible - Y

RESULT - 9/12

Dumbing down-isation

PRINCE HARRY WAS NAKED

Using news values, how will you get into the news?

2. Charities

The voluntary sector

• Over 162,000 active voluntary organisations in the UK in 2010/1

• Brings in £11.7 billion to the UK economy • An estimated 765,000 people work in voluntary sector

organisations. This is 2.7% of UK National Council of Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) 2014

• Increasing mistrust‘when asked if they agreed with the statement ‘I trust charities’, only one third of non-donors agreed and just 26% agreed that ‘charities use donations wisely’(Fundraising Standards Board (FRSB) 2012).

Case Study Macmillan

http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Home.aspx

http://www.suebradburypr.com/case-studies/miller-and-son/news/making-a-splash-for-macmillan-cancer-support

http://www.behindthespin.com/news/macmillan-cancer-support-launch-comfort-blanket-campaign

http://www.behindthespin.com/careers/working-in-house-at-macmillan

http://enterprise.gre.ac.uk/news/articles/2012/a2324-worlds-biggest-coffee-morning

http://www.charitycomms.org.uk/articles/macmillan-s-brand-journey\

http://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2012/sep/25/how-to-get-ahead-cancer-care-macmillan

http://static3.thedrum.com/news/2014/08/25/macmillan-cancer-defends-itself-after-allegations-it-has-attempted-hijack-als-ice

http://www.beattiegroup.com/prclients/pr-press-releases/2009/february/marks-spencer-donates-10000-to-macmillan-palliative-care-unit.aspx

http://www.72point.com

Motion and Leitch 2007: 266

3. The Self

Foucault 1980 cited in Motion and Leitch 2007: 267

Motion and Leitch 2007: 267

You and I as PR Projects

How do we create and maintain a sense of who we are?

Why do we do this?

Bourdieu’s CapitalEconomic Capital

money, goods

Cultural Capital - Embodied

attentive family, habits- Objectified

books, paintings- Institutionalised

university degree

Social Capital Professional bodies

Symbolic Capital honour, prestige, recognition

•Casualisation

•Individulisation

•Flexibilization

•Delayering

•Freelancing

•Self-employment

•Subcontracting

Post-industrial Society

‘with the results that the insecure, temporary and flexible worker dominates in a society no longer rooted in the rhythms of paid, full-time work’ McFall p.13

Every employee becomes an entrepeneur

…. of the self

New Public Management

1. Empowerment

2. Outcomes not input

3. Missions

4. Clients not customers

5. Decentralized authority

6. Market responsiveness

du gay p.164

Taylor – constant supervision; dispirited workforce – unions

Hawthorne – groups motivate each other..sometimes

Today – as above and we motivate ouselves

Individualization

Chomsky

Work is a means to an end

The end - gain an identity

“consumption ..now becomes the primary motivation for work” McFall, p.14

‘Each individual is...engaged in a project to shape his or her life as an autonomous, choosing individual driven by the desire to optimize the worth of its own existence’Paul DuGay 1996 Consumption and Identity at Work. London: Sage p.157

Campaign time and comfort break….20 minutes

4. Celebrity

Early celebrity industry: Hollywood PR

1910: Florence Lawrence’s producer plants a false story reporting the star had been killed in a trolley-car accident. Story denied, public appearance staged: triumph

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/31/celebrities-politics-endorsements-history_n_2051173.html

https://www.looktothestars.org

‘The celebrity is also a commodity: produced, traded and marketed by the media and publicity industries. In this context, the celebrity’s … function is commercial and promotional.’

(Turner 2004: 12)

Celebrity Politics

“celebrities have become `integrally involved' in political activities … it contributes to their overall professional strategy of marketing their own celebrity-as-commodity and it also gives them political influence” Turner 2004: 125)

“Photography always involves an observer (even if that observer is the self) but, like fiction itself, it does have the power to offer us kinds of truth which can be represented only through artifice.”(120)

‘The camera does nothing but lie’

John Fiske, 1987: 56Television Culture, London: Routledge

Dead-batted questions she did not want

Revealed through her terms

Body Language - puppy-look

Dress – black

Order of questions – depression, enemies, Camilla, adultery

Were you unfaithful?Yes, I adored him; yes I was in love with him

37mins

Propp

Character roles

Princess - something that needs rescuing

Villain - takes the princess

Hero - rescues the princess

Helper - helps the hero

Dispatcher - send the hero on his/her way

Donor - someone with the magic properties or secret that helps the hero rescue the princess

“For the Cinderella figure with whom Diana has been most insistently compared, it was that very process which, paradoxically, became her only real means of exercising autonomy over her own identity. Marilyn Monroe was not merely fictionalized by the studio bosses and by her admirers; in a very real sense her Marilyn persona was a piece of brilliantly sustained performance art. The photographer Eve Arnold, who worked with her over a ten year period, observing and recording that performance, writes movingly about the problems of identity which such a masquerade involved”

Woolf, J. (2006) “Not the girl but the legend: mythology, photography and the posthumous cult of Diana” Life Writing 3 (1): 103-123.

Technology of powerTechnology of self

“The emotions generated by [Diana’s] death forced the relationship to break free of its management: to become, as it were, an unequivocally `real' event… the potential of the modern audience's relationship with a person they know solely through their media representations, but who nevertheless plays a part in their lives', was made [vividly manifest]” (Turner 2004: 84)

Discourse of Activism

Context:- traditional politics seen as irrelevant Mouffe 2000 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5rwu0FA9aO4C&lpg=PR9&ots=RFEn5xmHoz&dq=mouffe

%202000%20politics&lr&pg=PA18#v=onepage&q=mouffe%202000%20politics&f=false

- Public sphere - consensual discourse neglecting

oppositional and counter-hegemonic tendencies

-

Madonna in Malawi

Transnational Celebrity Activism in Global Politics: Changing the World? By Liza Tsaliki, Christos A. Frangonikolopoulos, Asteris Huliaras p.195

Transnational Celebrity Activism in Global Politics: Changing the World? By Liza Tsaliki, Christos A. Frangonikolopoulos, Asteris Huliaras p.205

“Ambassador Mom”: Angelina Jolie, celebrity activism, and institutional powerSource: Conference Papers -- International Communication Association January 1, 2007

Lady Gaga on Twitter

“Gaga’s fans] were requested to call their senators, asking them to vote against the [Don’t Ask Don’t Tell] policy then post videos of themselves on YouTube undertaking the act…

Gaga's call for action functioned as an instigator, relying on fans to draw upon their own networks to spread the message further to create a larger collective.”

(Bennett 2012)Bennett, Lucy. 2012. "Fan Activism for Social Mobilization: A Critical Review of the Literature." In "Transformative Works and Fan Activism," edited by Henry Jenkins and Sangita Shresthova, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 10.

Troy Carter, Gaga's manager since 2007, described their dynamic as "95-5." "The only thing I do is managethe vision”

Dyana Kass, who heads pop-music marketing for Universal, has teamed with marketing firms like Flylife for Gaga's outreach to the gay community and ThinkTank to supplement her online efforts"You can't buy that kind of authenticity, and as a result the demand for her involvement in projects is staggering.“http://vandymkting.typepad.com/files/2010-2-22-adage-gaga-oooh-la-la---why-the-lady-is-the-ultimate-social-climber.pdf

Simulacra

Can the real real stand up please?

‘public relations practice in which celebrities … are experimenting with a particular genre of personal disclosure’ (Tolson 2001: 444)

Dyer 1987 - “real self” behind a public face or mask.

‘our culture has become fascinated by a type of public performance in which signs of ‘real emotion’ can be detected’ (Tolson 2001: 446)

‘for not only does the humanitarian cause appear to transcend narrow political and cultural interests; it also takes the form of a popular mediated response to a mediated public concern’(Tolson 2001: 456)

“It’s not that I am being dishonest, it’s that I loathe reality” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cggNqDAtJYU

Lady Gaga's a Fake & You aren't great - By K.S.Zacharias

Listen up all you monsters. You know who you are — Lady Gaga is a fake. There is nothing, I repeat, nothing authentic about her, not even her ability to bamboozle you… Lady Gaga needs you to pay attention to her in the worst way…

What Lady Gaga is good at — really good at — is not her music as much as it is her marketing. She says it best herself: ”I’m telling you a lie in a vicious effort that you will repeat my lie over and over until it becomes true.”

To be sure, Lady Gaga wasn’t born that way. She has a multi-million dollar marketing machine that works full-time creating the image that she was born this way.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/karenspearszacharias/2011/06/06/lady-gagas-a-fake-you-arent-great/ June 6, 2011

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