consumer communication paper

Absolutely no plagiarism, must be original and very thorough. Please make sure everything is followed in the question and the grading rubric. Assigned reading articles are attached. Must include a cover page and reference page.

Please read over all of the posts and the various exchanges in the Peer Group Discussion of Consumer Communication Tactics and draw some conclusions about what works well in consumer communications. For example, which ones do you think did a particularly good job of addressing the issue? Which did a less-than good job? What qualities distinguished the good ones from the others?

Once you have finished your analysis, summarize your conclusions in a paper entitled, “Key Lessons on Effective Consumer/Client Communication”. The paper should be 5 pages long, double-spaced. Please do not feel it necessary to carry out additional research to complete this assignment. If you do use references, please adopt an APA format for presenting those sources.

Supported material/readings: Attached

Group Discussion

Develop a 1-3 paragraph post/online communication responding to the scenario as if you were a senior communications professional speaking on behalf of your company. Indicate at the top of the post where you would post your response (example: on ‘Glassdoor.com’), and to whom it would be addressed (example: ‘in answer to the person who started the thread’ or ‘as an independent entry on xyz blog’).

Scenario #1

A good friend has just let you know that your firm’s CEO/Founder/President is featured in several pictures with Hollywood celebrities at a “wild” party scene on www.TMZ.com. He looks very ‘cheerful’ and there are suggestions that he/she is a regular at such events. Some are even suggesting that your firm’s executive(s) might be funding some of the alcohol, drugs, etc. While you don’t suspect your CEO/Founder/President of purchasing illegal drugs, unfortunately a part of the rumors might be correct as it is well known that your CEO/Founder/President parties nearly as hard as he/she works.

Scenario #4

Over the past two years, your firm invested heavily in a sustainability initiative designed to involve employees in sustainability and community involvement activities. Over 80% of your firm’s employees now participate and 3 days per year, per employee, are dedicated to these activities. Yet, on www.Glassdoor.com a recent posting scoffed at the company’s efforts and accused it of being just “window dressing”. Unfortunately, there are practically no other posts on the site to contradict this employee’s assertions. Glassdoor is a website for jobseekers wishing to learn more about the companies hiring them.

Once you have your post ready, post it to the class discussion board. Please include as attachments to your post the Communications Strategy document and the Executive Briefing your team developed for your company in Week 1 and 2.

Once you have made your own post, please read and comment on others’ press releases AS IF YOU WERE A CUSTOMER OR CLIENT. Please feel free to be a grumpy or a supportive customer, as you feel appropriate. No truly nasty customers please!

For the responses you receive to your own post, please respond to your customers/clients as if you were a communications professional at your company – keep the conversation going and make it as real as possible!

My Initial Post:

This post would be available on our company website and our company Facebook page for viewing and the target audience is the public and media followers. It would be in a response to an article thread entry on TMZ blog channel that was received from a friend.

In the corporate world, there are many demands, and constraints placed upon executives.Many outside critics are always watching and directing attention on anything that a high profile person does. Please do not believe everything posted on the social media blogs. I am the communications director of our company and recently received photographs of our chief executive officer (CEO) with celebrities at a wild party. This situation has brought an abundance of discussion online in which many people especially bloggers termed him as an incompetent and unable to hold his role as a CEO.

One thing that people should come to know is that even company executives are human beings. They occasionally need some time to relax and enjoy themselves. Some photographs shown at this corporate event show his attendance at the event and his behavior appeared to be acting inappropriately. These photographs do not indicate that our CEO was partying nor funding the use of alcohol and drugs. Our CEO attended the event based upon an invitation as a brand ambassador and as the representative of our company. Various celebrities also attended as they all danced and celebrated the new occasion. Before any media platform relays any information to the public, it is vital to investigate and to determine whether the allegation is genuine.

The dissemination of untruthful information can be very damaging to the reputation of an organization especially as the propaganda involves the heads of those organizations (Gaines-Ross, 2010). Nearly 90% of the organizations worldwide are consumer based. The posting of derogatory information may be difficult to turn a reputation around (Berthon, Pitt & Campbell, 2008). Therefore, the implementation of a mandate to all media personalities and platforms at large ensure that they do not damage an organization’s reputation. This public information provides to put everything into perspective from the previous one.

References

Berthon, P., Pitt, L., & Campbell, C. (2008). Adlib: When customers create the ad. Californiamanagement review, 50(4), 6-30.

Gaines-Ross, L. (2010). Reputation warfare. Harvard Business Review, 88(12), 70-76.

Replies:

Hi Lisa,

I agree with your position as a communications director so I will play devils advocate. The reputation of an organization is critical to its success. As a CEO of a company, should one not always be aware of their surroundings and how actions can impact organizational reputation? Similar to stars who become role models, without asking, being in the spotlight highlights all of their behavior and the public judges them for it. The behavior of a CEO is also assessed by the public and can inadvertently create a negative impact on the company’s reputation.

Concerned Follower