Communications initiatives are most effective when they are authentic, and integrated across all areas of any business.
Want to be perceived as caring about your customers, employees, the community? Care.
Want to be a leader in your industry? Lead.
And if you want to appeal to the ethical shopper, first make sure your factories can stand up to scrutiny – a lesson Gorman recently learnt the hard way.
All stakeholders are important and need to be considered in the scheme of communications. For better or worse, everyone associated with a brand is a potential ambassador or critic, even the truck driver delivering supplies (who may have more direct customer contact than the CEO). And, with social media, a single unfortunate incident has the potential to spiral into a full blown crisis.
Communications is a valuable asset for effectively sharing an organisation’s good work with external audiences, and of course, for intervening when something negative happens out of its control – but it works best when those external messages are demonstrably genuine.
For example, a marketing campaign can bring interest to a new product, but sales will soon decline if the reality doesn’t live up to the hype.
Similarly, an employee engagement strategy has the potential to improve staff culture, but management must implement it and lead by example for real change to occur.
When Our Lady of the Nativity Primary School in Aberfeldie was faced with a potential crisis – a mother starting an online petition (or ‘battle’ as The Age reported in print on May 16) to allow her daughter to wear pants as part of the uniform so she could comfortably run around and play.
In response, the school proactively – and admirably – gave the girl permission to wear pants and established a uniform committee to review the school’s policy, inviting the girl’s mother to join it. What do those actions say about the school? That they care about girls’ wellbeing. That they listen to parents and the community. That they’re open to change. (Or, as cynics would have it, that they have a PR-savvy principal.)
Contrast that with Girton Grammar School’s very different response when an openly gay former school captain appeared in a flamboyant suit (the school argues it wasn’t a suit) at a school function, and left (or was asked to leave, depending who you believe) after being told he was inappropriately dressed. When his complaint went viral and made the mainstream news, the school defended its actions – which appear to contrast with its stated desire to be a place where “where every child is accepted for who they are”.
The school’s positive actions – including the appointment of an openly gay student to the role of school captain – were overshadowed.
So what could be done? The headmaster is likely keen to back the member of staff who told the former student he was inappropriately dressed. That does not preclude the option of an apology that maintains the view the former student was inappropriately dressed, but recognises it is not the business of a school to comment on any adult’s attire and re-iterates the school’s commitment to LGBTIQ rights. Girton could also join the Safe Schools Coalition, a national coalition of organisations and schools working together to create safe and inclusive school environments.
Girton is now potentially vulnerable to ongoing social media attack, as well as follow-up incidents that become ‘news’ because of the perceptions already established.
For example, some are suggesting the student attend an upcoming Open Day, or that he sue. There could be a repeat performance at the same event next year. Or, in future, there may be an issue of a same sex couple attending a formal… or a student struggling with sexuality could commit suicide… which makes the news.
Ironically, Girton’s principal encapsulates the essential message of this piece in his welcome to the website: “Words sound but example thunders.”
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