Digging for Dirt
Disgruntled customers and chagrined former-employees can take their gripes to a worldwide audience not just via e-mail, but by creating whole new Web site just to slam your corporate reputation. Untied.com, a takeoff of United Airlines site, and the "Shell is Hell" site (http://yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au/groups/twag) are representative.
Concerned about parodies of your corporate image?
Sites to check out: The Corporate Dirt Archives - http://www.corporations.org/corplist.html and the Yahoo's Boycott Board http://boycott.2street.com. The list of boycotted firms on the second list brought up a "Server Error" when we tried, however. Perhaps one of the corporations under attack figured out how to win the cyber war.
Trends We Heard: Crafting a Message For the Other Guy
A little background in social interpretive theory can go a long way to ensuring that a multicultural public relations effort doesn't result in a faux pas.
"Often when we're communicating with groups we think are culturally different than we are, we send them messages we understand," said Stephen Banks, associate professor of communications at the University of Idaho at a PRSA session.
Multi-cultural communication can describe efforts to practice PR in overseas markets also applies to reaching divergent audiences here in the same country. "Culture is not a unitary concept," said Banks.
Our self-sense of culture can be defined by our age, race, gender, geographical origins, socio-economic background or political persuasion. "Australia alone recognizes 142 separate ethnic groups," Banks said.
Diane Alverio of Baldwin/Alverio Media Marketing, New Briton, Conn., has years of experience both as a journalist and as a public relations consultant to English-speaking and Spanish-speaking clients. She proposed four rules to follow in creating a PR campaign directed at those from a culture foreign to your own:
- 1. Assumptions will close doors for you. You do not know how someone from a different culture thinks or feels or what their frame of reference is, no matter how much you study the culture. Ask, don't assume.
2. Learn to find out what you don't know. English words don't have the same meaning in the U.S. as in England. Spanish words can have vastly different meanings in Argentina than in Cuba.
3. Regardless of your experience, get help. Little details of custom may even be a local matter. "Sometimes when we're in PR we think it's a matter of broad understanding," said Alverio.
4. When you hire translators, use only those who specialize in translating the written word and preferably have a marketing or PR background. Writing or translating PR copy is not the same as translating legal documents or textbooks. Your PR message won't resonate to a foreign audience if it doesn't have the same pizzaz as the English version you composed.
Lexis-Nexis Claims New Universe of Information
For between $55 and $570 a month and with a Web browser, business pros can now track news on industry topics through Lexis-Nexis's new "Universe," a service which allows a user to customize offerings based on work flow, tasks or functions.
One of its most touted features is its "bundles" capability - Lexis-Nexis dices up its 25,000 news sources into packages. (Lexis-Nexis, 937/865-1058)
People News
- Engineering and construction company Foster Wheeler Corp., Clinton, N.J., names Alastair B Davis to director of corporate communications, replacing Dick Kroll, who retired. (Foster Wheeler, 908/730-4444)
- The Pittsburgh office of Ketchum promotes Betsy Fitzpatrick from account supervisor to VP. Her focus is corporate and B-to-B practice areas. (Ketchum, 412/456-3519)
- Sharp Electronics Corp., Mahwah, N.J., names Kevin Allen to associate director of corporate communications. He was manager of PR. (Sharp, 201/529-8819)