Brandstanding: Navigating Contentious Issues While Maintaining an Authentic Brand Voice
October 28, 2020 12:30 p.m. – 1:20 p.m.
Session Type: Leadership & Management
PR practitioners are at the center of helping organizations navigate the potentially treacherous or transformational involvement in contentious social issues. This session will examine the role of brand and brand voice in a world increasingly ruled by such issues.
Using case studies and original research, Dr. Capizzo will illustrate how PR practitioners can help organizations to manage contentious, polarizing social issues in the marketplace. Practitioners can help organizations guide thoughtful engagement with consumers and stakeholders, inform decision makers, mitigate risk and understand both brand loyalists and moral decoupling — where consumers may choose to purchase a brand even if they disagree with its stance on a particular issue.
The concept of brandstanding, where brands take a purposeful stance on a social issue of the day such as same-sex marriage, Black Lives Matter or climate change, is more prevalent than ever before. But if handled poorly, organizations put themselves at risk of losing their loyalists and alienating prospective customers. Whether part of issues management, crisis communication or corporate social responsibility programs, such engagement should reflect an organization’s values.
Remembering the “general public” perspective can help make the case for thoughtful engagement, even as audience segmentation plays a crucial part of effective PR strategy.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
• Define “brandstanding” as a core part of public relations and issues management and how it applies to communication today.
• Develop a framework to map organizational, stakeholder and community values to guide social issue strategy for their own organization.
• Determine tools to evaluate how consumers may react to certain organizational stances, from active supporting to passive supporting to boycotts and disagreement.
• Formulate a “general public” approach to calibrate engagement and define new audiences.
Using case studies and original research, Dr. Capizzo will illustrate how PR practitioners can help organizations to manage contentious, polarizing social issues in the marketplace. Practitioners can help organizations guide thoughtful engagement with consumers and stakeholders, inform decision makers, mitigate risk and understand both brand loyalists and moral decoupling — where consumers may choose to purchase a brand even if they disagree with its stance on a particular issue.
The concept of brandstanding, where brands take a purposeful stance on a social issue of the day such as same-sex marriage, Black Lives Matter or climate change, is more prevalent than ever before. But if handled poorly, organizations put themselves at risk of losing their loyalists and alienating prospective customers. Whether part of issues management, crisis communication or corporate social responsibility programs, such engagement should reflect an organization’s values.
Remembering the “general public” perspective can help make the case for thoughtful engagement, even as audience segmentation plays a crucial part of effective PR strategy.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
• Define “brandstanding” as a core part of public relations and issues management and how it applies to communication today.
• Develop a framework to map organizational, stakeholder and community values to guide social issue strategy for their own organization.
• Determine tools to evaluate how consumers may react to certain organizational stances, from active supporting to passive supporting to boycotts and disagreement.
• Formulate a “general public” approach to calibrate engagement and define new audiences.
Luke Capizzo
assistant professor, School of Communication Studies, James Madison University
Presenter