Posts Tagged ‘PR’

Tomorrow Bill and Melinda Gates will present their Living Proof Project in Washington D.C.  This is a new, multimedia initiative which shows the ‘living proof’ that US-funded global health funding is making a positive difference through the first hand success stories of people who have been helped and, in turn, empowered to help themselves.

The project is based on research showing that the lion’s share of media coverage around global health is negative, and further research showing that Americans want to hear the flipside of this - as described on the Living Proof website, “stories about progress, optimism and opportunity”.

Within the global health community, it has been commonplace to promote success, advocate for proven solutions, and ensure that positive images of the beneficiaries of their work are used.  Case studies like those in the Living Proof Project are very common to see on websites and in annual reports.  This makes me wonder about the apparent disconnect between what NGOs therefore put out, and the research that provided a rationale for this project.  Why was media coverage found to be generally negative when proactive communications from the global health community is generally positive?

One reason that comes to mind is a challenge of newsworthiness that faces many NGOs.  Good news is often less appealing to the media than bad news, and therefore for us PRs, a harder sell.  Another is the importance of setting up the problem or the unmet need in order to provide a context and an urgency for a solution.  This is a delicate balance that continues to challenge communicators.  How the Living Proof Project might succeed where others have failed, or only experienced moderate success, is through its ever newsworthy philanthropist backers.

Brand Republic recently reported that the animal rights charity Peta have dispensed with their usual string of models/actresses/ celebrities and instead hired strippers for their latest ad campaign. The tag line for this campaign is - ‘We’d rather go topless than wear fur’.

Initially this struck me a quite a clever idea - strippers whose profession requires them to be naked appearing in an anti-fur campaign - I see what they are doing there. All very tongue in cheek right?! And yet the more I thought about it the more I debated whether this was the right move for Peta.

It would appear to me that Peta targets campaigns like these and the previous style of celebrity endorsed campaigns to the everyday public hoping to broaden awareness of the organisation itself and its mission to establish and protect the rights of all animals. But are the public getting this message?

From the perspective of someone with only a peripheral knowledge of Peta it would seem to me that they don’t get taken too seriously. Images conjured up in my head upon hearing the name feature enraged women flinging red paint at startled celebrities - not ideal for an organisation who wants to affect change. To combat this image should they perhaps try even harder to shed this image with some really hard hitting grim campaigns? Or maybe they feel that adverts like today’s with the strippers is their way of showing that they are not all fanatics and don’t take themselves too seriously.

Have a look on their site and the picture gets more confused - here is a charity with a very serious message they want to get out to the world and yet they are going about it by running ‘Europe’s sexiest vegetarian‘ competitions. Again in all this tongue in cheek activity is the real message being missed?

Now I’m sure that Peta do great work but is it just me who is a little confused by the way they seem to be going about things?