Strategically Communicating

It’s customary to approach ethics from a negative, Old Testament perspective.  Provide a comprehensive list of “Thou shalt not’s” for employees to follow, and enforce them as best you can (Stacks and Bowen, 2011).  Companies might be better served, however, in establishing a set of ethical standards for employees to emulate.  Rather than merely cautioning employees against which actions to avoid, these standards provide employees with “moral principles [to] consider when making decisions” (Stacks & Bowen, 2011, p. 5).  Employed properly, a set of ethical standards not only provides ethical guidelines for employees, it also “becomes an instrumental way to promote a cohesive organizational culture that values ethics” (Stacks & Bowen, 2011, p. 5).

Interestingly enough, creating (and subsequently following) an organization’s ethical standards also aligns nicely with current business trends.  The 2013 Edelmen Trust Barometer Executive Summary shows that since 2008 operational excellence, once the capstone of corporate reputation, has become a mere competency, or expectation.  Its place has been taken by more ethically driven attributes like personal or customer satisfaction or even the greater good (“Edelman Trust Barometer”, 2013, p. 9).  Companies are now being judged as much on how ethically they do business as how well they do business.

The question (and challenge) going forward will be: how do we as ethical public relations professionals ensure that the ethical demands of the publics remain at the forefront?

It’s sad that “ethics” and “advertising” are often perceived as contradictory terms. In fact, I was surprised to learn that, according to the Institute for Advertising Ethics article, that only 13% of respondents said they “never” trust that advertising is honest in its claims. I would have thought the percentage would have been higher.

Digital culture has made it easier for advertisers to tout their products less ethically.  Is it ethical, for example, for a company to pay reviewers – either in cash or product – to write positive reviews about a product?  I recently viewed a blog that purported to be a how-to site.  Instead, it advertised an online service with a “free 30-day trial.”

On the flip side, social media allows consumers to share their experiences with products.  When these experiences contradict advertisers’ claims, the product/service/company suffers.  In addition, digital culture makes it easier than ever before for consumers to research products, services and companies long before they reach for their wallets.

Digital media doesn’t seem to have made building consumer trust any easier for companies and advertisers.  For example, according to The Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in business and government leadership is at a crisis.  Is a lack of trust in a business’s leadership reflected in the consumer’s trust in the businesses’ advertising claims?   It’s an interesting question.  I don’t think, for example, that consumers trusted Toyota’s CEO after the company mismanaged the gas –pedal crisis.  Yet consumers responded to the ad campaign that followed.  Is that the norm?

It’s no secret that the communications professional is expected to be at least conversant in any new or emerging technologies they might use at their place of work.  Proficiency in applications like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is assumed to be as much a part of one’s toolkit as are more traditional skills like listening or managing relationships.  Generally, however, this expertise is limited to use: that is, professionals know how to use the technology in question, but they have little to no knowledge of its inner workings.

In Strategic Communication, O’Hair, Friedrich and Dixon mention that learning computer programming is a great way of “future-proofing” or “making yourself effective” (2011, p. 158).  Nor are the benefits restricted to “future-orienting” yourself.  Any grounding in computer science will introduce the learner to the use of algorithms.  Though it has many formal definitions, an algorithm is basically a recipe: a step-by-step process that results in a specified output.  As such, it represents a structured approach to problem-solving that can be applied to practically any situation.  Use of algorithms helps break complex problems down into discrete, manageable chunks which can be tackled piece by piece.

There are other fringe benefits, to be sure.  Facilitating communication with computer specialists comes to mind, as does a better understanding of what programs can and cannot do.  Considering that many universities are now requiring computer scientists to take communication classes, shouldn’t communication specialists be required to meet them halfway?  Or is merely using applications enough?