Dissertation - Revisited (new media)

Right, so after the disseratation tutorial here are some revised notes on the future of my thesis:

The general theory of the paper will follow the theme that

In relation to the British youth market (16-24 yr olds), the presence of traditional media is gone and those campaigns that have been most succesful at reaching this demographic have been those that utilize new media.

This demographic is known as one of the hardest markets to reach for PR professionals, yet some viral internet campaigns have such a colossal success rate with such a simple idea that it makes one think; is there a formula for a succesful new media campaign?

Succesful campaigns will be compared to those that have just flopped. The idea that there is a room full of 35-50 year old men trying to figure out how to make a "oool" and trendy campaign is quite amusing. One example of an online campaign that flopped was for movie Snakes On A Plane.
There was a program on their website where users could enter their or a friend's name to have a personalized audo viral message sent to someone spoken by Samuel L. Jackson.



Now inititally, the youth market really took to this idea (it has proved succesful with similar programs launched by THE RING film). However, it was soon dismissed because of a simple and quite offensive glitch. The programmers did not take into account foreign names! The program could say JOHN and TOM and LISA but could not say anything remotley foreign. One blogger in the US went to the Social Security Administration's website and chose names from the 50 Most Common Names list available. Any name that was "ethnic sounding" failed. Who were these PR professionals hoping to reach???

Sometimes I wonder if people ever really understand what 20somethings really want.

Can PR ever be ethical?

I find that I am not as ethics-conscious as my fellow classmates. Three in particular want to work for charities because they want to do something "right" and would never consider working for a giant corporation. I don't think I will work in the PR industry, only because I'm more entrepeneurial, but if I was to go into it, I would apply for positions in companies I know deal with big clients and that could earn me a good salary (so I can retire on a beach somewhere in 30 years time). I have no problem creating a campaign to get obese people to eat more hamburgers or to make them think they just cant be happy until they buy the new mp3 player available. However, I do have some empathy; I changed my BA course from Journalism to PR because I was uncomfortable chasing up unhappy people who had just gone through a tragedy to get juicy gossip. I did witness fellow classmates lie on phones about which media they were calling from in order to get access into people's traumatic stories and it just made me uncomfortable. Perhaps it was because I was speaking directly to them.. maybe if I met an obese person I would not be able to sell them a hamburger..

PRWeek held a debate at our University on whether or not PR practitioners have a duty to tell the truth. For the motion were former CIPR President Simon Lewis and George Pitcher. Against the motion was Max Clifford and our university's own Simon Goldsworthy (during my BA he preached the values of truth in PR, I find this quite amusing. It makes me smile!)

138 voted that PR practitioners should NOT tell the truth.
124 voted they should.

And these are PR practioners and students talking!

I find it hard to define ethics. Is bending the truth to be more appealing to journalists or neglecting to mention certain bad qualities unethical? If I am promoting a new software, is not mentioning that 1 time out of 10 it crashes and needs rebooting unethical? or is it just being savvy?

John Cass, a blogger who works in marketing says:

"If a company wants to be truly successful, they must understand their audience’s needs and expectations and meet them. Nordstrom is a famous example of a company that held the mantra that the customer is always right and they refunded and took back any clothing articles a customer wanted to return.."
(http://pr.typepad.com/pr_communications/2005/04/ethics_in_pr.html)

As long as your are not making empty promises or flat out lying (ENRON!), then as a PR practioner you should be alright. While being completely unethical is not recommended, neither is being so righteous that you maintain an open door policy letting everyone who asks know your problems and issues. Maintin some mystery!
You need to be a strong player in the PR field, if your competitors aren't ashamed to market a certain product, you should ask yourself why? Is it hurting anyone? or is it just feeding a capitalist market?