“Have you ever lied to the media or to any other stakeholder to protect your organization?”
“Why did you have to lie?”
“Would you ever lie again?”
“Would you mind leaving your job if you had to lie?”
With these four questions, Mawuko Afadzinu, Vice-President of the Institute of Public Relations Ghana and Head, Marketing and Communications of Stanbic Bank Ghana, generated a controversial discussion at the Global PR Trends Summit recently held in Accra.
The Global PR Trends Summit is an annual forum designed for senior practitioners to address the critical issues facing the profession. Held for the first time in West Africa, the 18th annual Global PR Trends Summit analysed the latest challenges and trends in the PR world with special focus on visual PR, content PR, digital PR, crisis communications, CSR and reputation management. Sharing the platform with international public relations experts from Lego, SAP, P&G, Citi and Boehringer Ingelheim, Afadzinu was speaking on the topic:
Why Public Relations is now Personal Relations?
Trust, according to Afadzinu, is a big issue in the work of a PR practitioner. He therefore charged practitioners to remain truthful in their work in order to establish, at a personal level, the reason and the justification for people to believe what PR represents. He charged practitioners to be truthful in order to build quality personal relationships, a crucial pillar for the profession.
“We have a huge credibility crisis as an entire generation,” he says.
“People don’t believe anything; they don’t believe the government; they don’t believe corporates. We need to be true to ourselves; we need to be real because if ultimately, we ourselves are not persuaded about the veracity of the information we are sharing, then our relationships will be a challenge right from the word go.”
The advent of social media and citizen journalism have changed the way PR works. There is now an avalanche of information and everyone is in haste to be the first to file the news. Urging practitioners to tap into the right roles and understand the issues of value to people, Afadzinu said it is of extreme importance for professionals to develop an authentic voice that people can rely on.
The core of a PR practitioner’s job, he said, is how to connect businesses with people at a personal and intimate level and not at a public and distant level.
“We cannot have quality relationships when there are reputational issues,” he says.
“Strong relationships help build significant bridges with key stakeholders, who in turn become ambassadors. Beyond that, we are able to deliver value for our organisation.”
In a world where there is so much information but trust deficit, Mawuko challenged PR practitioners to be experts who understand their business and offer quality professional thoughts that create value.
Mawuko Afadzinu, Public Relations Ghana VP and Stanbic Bank Ghana Head of Marketing and Communications
Source: Biznisafrica.co.za
