Using the Virginia Tech massacre to sell pepper spray
19th April 2007 by Rich Barger, ABC, APR
Okay, I admit it. This is a view that will be offensive to many of the “politically correct” (PC) crowd.
But the point of the Media Relations Commons is to generate thought and discussion about media relations issues, right?
One of the members of an on-line newsgroup, YoungPRPros, posted thoughtful comments about the Virginia Tech massacre being a perfect time for people knowledgeable about mental health to give “an answer to the seemingly unexplainable.”
She said, “As PR professionals, pitching pepper spray, bullet proof vests or campus metal detectors would be a horrible ’spin’ on this tragedy. However, if you are associated with mental health in any way, the time is NOW for you to speak up.”
Of course, in the abstract, she appears to be absolutely right.
“Pitching pepper spray, bullet proof vests or campus metal detectors” right now would be ghoulish and monumentally stupid for most businesses and most audiences. It’s not a campaign I would work on. But, for some products and some target audiences, it would be reasonable business strategy to consider.
Maybe not a responsible one, but a reasonable one.
Clearly, many would consider such promotion to be in violation of the “good taste” provision of the IABC Code of Ethics. But the issue is not clear-cut. Does being “sensitive to cultural values and beliefs” only apply to the PC segment of the population [read: "audience"]?
Should it also take into account the values and beliefs of those who are frightened by crime, or fearful of other people who have weapons, or — and here’s that PC thing again — simply are scared of “foreigners” in general? Like it or not, that includes a statistically significant portion of our population.
People who sell pepper spray, bulletproof vests, metal detectors, or other protection devices have the same legitimate right to use the news to advance their business interests that the mental health industry has to “answer the seemingly unexplainable”; rightly or wrongly, because of the Virginia Tech killings, people who would consider buying such devices definitely are thinking about purchasing them right now.
Would such promotion be tasteful? Of course not. Would it be a good decision? Perhaps not. But, PC or not, looking out for their business interests, as they see those interests, is their right.
April 19th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Rich
You are right in most of this; however, you bought into the subtle (or not so subtle) idea, common among the PC crowd and others, that some communicators are inherently good, some are inherently not good.
In fact, when parents are panic-stricken and looking for something to do to help protect their kids, that is the best time for manufacturers of protective equipment to be out there, offering their products. Not pandering to fear, but offering a legitimate product or service at a time of greatest need.
If you were in a hurricane zone, and had a warehouse filled with bottled water, would it be offensive to make that known to people desperate for potable water? I don’t think so.
I’m coming at this from a number of angles: I’m a parent - I inherently want to protect my kids - and frankly, knowing where to get reliable protective equipment might be higher on my legitimate priority list than trying to listen to some mental health expert try to explain a homicidal nut-case (all I need to know is that there are violently-crazy people out there, and college mental health establishments are woefully unprepared to deal with potential mass-murderers in advance). That being the case, I don’t want “explanations” - I want protection.
My son is a college professor at a Southern state-owned university - which, to my way of thinking, means he’s ground-zero for copycat crimes right now. I’d be very interested in reliable and factual information on bullet-proof vests (except for the fact that he takes after his Uncle Bob, the “invulnerable” cop, and would never consider wearing one).
But I’d like to know about other legitimate ways he might protect himself.
Without going into details, I lost a son when he was a senior in high school, with no more warning than the parents of the 33 dead kids received. I know what that kind of loss does to you - and based on that, I think that information about self-protection is FAR MORE legitimate than information about mental health professionals trying to explain the inexplicable.
So Rich, while I embrace your reasoning, I reject the premise of the original poster, which you seemed to buy into. As long as it is done in good taste, communicators who provide real, needed information in times of crisis are doing a service, not a dis-service; rather than challenging ethics, they are embracing a higher good - helping their clients while helping members of the public.
Ned Barnett
(Full disclosure - I spent the better part of 15 years marketing mental health - primarily alcohol/drug abuse, but we got into other things - hospitals. I had to deal with literally hundreds of mental health professionals; and knowing what they have to offer at a time like this, I’d rather have a Second Chance kevlar vest and a Glock than some kind of what those of us in the trade politely called psychobabble - we had other words for what the mind mechanics put forth in times of crisis, but I’d rather not go there …)
April 20th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Rich, to quote MIMS the rapper, this is “why you’re hot”. Lol.
I love the way you stir the PR thinking tank and challenge us to wear our business vs. business ethics thinking caps.
So right you are.
If I worked for the gun store that sold the gun, my approach would be to question the polices that blocked/ barred psych issues from surfacing when my client, a legit gun store owner and father of 5 (hypothetical uhhhhhh placed here), performed a routine background check. He did everything right, and policies have allowed him to inadvertently be involved in America’s deadliest campus blood bath.
Follow me.
If I worked for the hypothetical author of “Dodging Bullets: 10 ways to Stay Alive When a Gun is Turned On You”, Oprah would be calling me to set up a town hall for my client!
If I worked for NAMI, I’d be defending 2nd chances for people admitted to psych hospitals, and place blame for relapses on an absent post -care support system.
If I worked for Dermablend or a cosmetic surgeon, I’d be pitching diminishing the appearance of bullet scars.
Well, I work for Gold’s Gym, so I could introduce self defense classes, CPR and worst case scenario life saving techniques, but I’ll pass.
Truth is, there is at least another week for so many of us to get some air time by linking our products & services to this tragedy.
So, who’s wrong?
Who’s right?
It’s not that cut and dry.
We are PR professionals, and so we must ask the PR questions: Did our client get some press that led to sales?
Was the desired end achieved?
Responsible, Reasonable, PC….. there really isn’t a yardstick.
April 20th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Thanks to Natasha for her on-target thoughts. It was her post in the YoungPRPros discussion group that prompted me to make the first comment in this thread, above.
With her permission, I’ll quote most of the original message she sent to that group, “Responding to Tragic Events”:
April 20th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
I have strong opinions about using an incident like this as a platform for a product or service, however relevant it may be.
It’s a fine line, I know. At Arizona State University, where I work, at least one vendor in the Mobile Marketing space that contacted us about using text messaging, but they did it only because we had been in conversations before.
On a related, sensitive topic, there’s a lot of discussion about how NBC used the ‘package’ they received to sell their news product. Brian Williams is taking a lot of heat. See the discussion here: http://tinyurl.com/2hmjhv
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Pitching a story about mental health could blow up in your face. As we see in the Virginia Tech story, all the mental health techniques were used to flag this idiot gunman and yet he still beat the system — even after being hospitalized. You’d be nailed for working in an industry with great flaws. You’d also get burned if you entered a discussion promoting gun control — again, because this idiot gunman followed the rules and beat the system.
I’ve been contacted by most of the vendors who sell the text messaging systems. They saw my name besides theirs in the Wall Street Journal and want to know what I do and how they can piggy back off of my work as someone who writes crisis plans.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117685626072073360-ZHbhixvh0_0f5udnXDdyu5qFK0M_20080417.html
These vendors tell me the reporters found them and that they did not have to do any pitching. What will happen next, however, is that there will be another crisis and the text message systems will also have flaws. As I told one TV talk show, text messaging is not the end all be all. It has its flaws. What can you say in 160 characters? Who will be authorized to send the message? How much time will be spent as administrators and lawyers debate the wording as the event unfolds? And, like at Virginia Tech, if you don’t have a working crisis plan that tells you to get the message out within the first hour, the text feature will be mute. Here is a link to that interview:
http://www.wdsu.com/6onyoursidelive/index.html
Scroll to the story that says, “Crisis Expert calls Virginia Tech Plan Inadequate.”
April 27th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Using tragedy, at least initially, is ethically wrong. I believe that trying to advance business at the expense of somebody’s tragedy. At an emotionally charged time such as the Virginia Tech incident is never an appropriate time to be cashing in on negativity. It will only come back to hurt you later. For a large corporation it could be the start of a PR crisis. If a company sells security and safety products that could have been of use at Virginia Tech incident the organization should wait an appropriate length of time before using the Virginia Tech incident as an example in their product/sales pitch. What is an appropriate length of time is another issue all together.
April 28th, 2007 at 7:23 am
I can’t agree with Nicholas, though I certainly understand where he’s coming from. Some companies, for sure, would be courting PR disasters if they “took advantage” of a tragedy to promote their services.
However, for others, which provide essential services at time of need, promotion can be a public service. I’ve posted on that previously in this thread (giving a few examples) - I won’t repeat myself, but I just cannot accept a blanket ethical violation (as he suggests) or the equally blanket assertion that it is never appropriate.
Let me give another example. Some years back, I was PR diretor for a county hospital in South Carolina. One winter, we had a major snow emergency (yes, it can snow in South Carolina - not often, but when it does, EVERYTHING shuts down).
I immediately began (from my neighbor’s kitchen - I’d lost electrical power, so my family “evacuated” across the street one of those rare South Carolina homes with a working fireplace and a back-up generator) giving live on-the-air interviews on local TV and radio, asking for people with four-wheel drive vehicles to come to the hospital to help us transport doctors, nurses and other essential personnel to and from the hospital. However, in the process of asking for the community’s help, I was also promoting our emergency services and assuring people (potential customers) that the hospital was still open.
Instead of committing an ethical violation, I think I was providing a public service - yet I was also clearly promoting our business, and in the process, helping to ensure cash flow (though that wasn’t my primary purpose, I can’t and won’t deny that this was a secondary goal).
There are many other examples where businesses which provide essential emergency-relief services NEED to promote themselves to their potential customers during or immediately after a disaster or tragedy. Of course, there are those who would exploit - and that’s always wrong - but there is no massive YES/NO barrier between the two - it’s all about professional judgment, rather than hard-and-fast rules.
Or so it seems to me.
Ned Barnett
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:05 am
I’d like to try to bridge the gap between Nicholas and Mr. Barnett. What some may call “PC”, others call “morality” or “ethics.” Mr. Barnett’s example is a good one at showing how its only a slippery slope if you start thinking it is. I believe that in the end, a lot of what I do as a communications professional is directly connected with my intentions. It sounds simplistic, but I have a compass. What pulls at my needle? Is it what is “true”, i.e., fulling my best and highest purpose, or is it the attraction of someone that has convinced me to put their interest at the center of my interest?
I think an organization true to its purpose need not feel as if they’re violating that purpose if it solicits its product. If they want people to be safer because that’s their mission, passionately trying to tell people about personal protection or improved text messaging is life-saving. I think it is only in the context of money-making that solicitation becomes suspect, and perhaps that’s normal although maybe not necessarily fair.
But such a business also has the responsibility of deciding when it is OK to start soliciting, because we are dealing with other human beings, after all; human beings who in crisis, respond best to empathy, not pitches. A little mushy for the quantatative aspects of marketing, advertising and PR perhaps, but a key cotter pin nonetheless. And that, I believe, is the differece between what’s right and what’s done formulaically so as not to upset other people.