How to Give Your PR Campaign a Global Spin

Climate change, human rights, health, anti-terrorism, and equality – these are all demanding issues of our century and the globalised world we live in today. As these topics are discussed in a cross-cultural context and without any geographical boundaries, social media plays a revolutionary part in the change of communicating these movements.

This change must also be reflected in the role of the PR practitioner and calls for a more strategic and adaptable way of doing business in order to be relevant to a wider and more diverse audience. In particular, converging media landscapes and the new role of the media in a supranational context require innovative and effective ways to engage in a cross-cultural public relations (PR) campaign. For the field of public relations, this instrument can be used for campaign-specific purposes and to strategically enforce business goals, but still respond to the sentiment of the recipient to form a global support movement (as Ginesta, Ordeix and Rom (2017) explained in their article). Some examples from recent years have shown how important cross-cultural PR strategies are and how they can strengthen cohesion in political and social issues while conveying a message of unity to the outside world.

Campaign 1. Nation-building process in France

source: bbc.co.uk

After the terrorist attack in Paris in 2015, a governmental strategy was formed to show a unity in the fight against terrorism and to strengthen the cohesion among the citizens (Ginesta, Ordeix & Rom, 2017). This strategy spread around the world and hashtags such as #JeSuisParis or #TerrorismHasNoReligion expressed compassion while condemning the terror attacks and taking a clear stance against xenophobia. 

Campaign 2. Equality for same-sex couples

Another cross-cultural example for a hashtag that started a worldwide movement is the #LGBT and #SCOTUS Human Rights Campaign, which was run by Facebook in April 2015 in support of the US Supreme Court’s ruling to legalise same-sex marriage.

 

source: Tombleson & Wolf, 2017

Well-known companies such as Ben&Jerry's also took up the campaign and integrated it into their corporate strategy, by renaming one of their products.

source: facebook.com

Campaign 3. Public condemnation of sexual harassment

The latest hashtag movement spreading across borders is the #MeToo movement against sexual assault – building a unity, raising awareness and giving a voice especially to women, who are often victims of sexual harassment. 

source: twitter.com

Bridget Tombleson and Katharina Wolf call these kinds of campaigns hashtag activism:  a public debate or movement supporting a cause that is led primarily by using a hashtag to increase awareness of a topic and to foster the debate on social media.

As part of today's society, the role of journalists, PR practitioners, and consumers is no longer as clearly separated as it was in the last century. Consumers are just as active in the media communication process by creating or commenting on content. The abolition of these formerly strictly separate roles means for the profession of public relations that ‘going online’ with a campaign is the most influential and far-reaching way to start a movement in a cross-cultural context.

In social media networks, we are all together, and we are all connected. The boundaries that digitalisation has removed can make social movements even more effective through Cross-Cultural Public Relations Campaigns.

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About Alice Claridge

She is a master student at the University of Amsterdam for Political Communication. She likes to see social movements raising and people being excited by a good cause. Hopefully, more Public Relations campaigns will address such issues with creativity and engagement.

Scholarly sources on which this article is based on:

Ginesta, X., Ordeix, E., & Rom, J. (2017). Managing Content in Cross-Cultural Public Relations

Campaigns: A Case Study of the Paris Terrorist Attacks. American Behavioral Scientist, 61(6), 624-632.

Tombleson, B., & Wolf, K. (2016). Rethinking the circuit of culture: How participatory culture

has transformed cross-cultural communication. Public Relations Review, 43(1), 14-25.