Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley

Here's a direct quote from PRSA's ethical guidelines:

"Examples of Improper Conduct Under this Provision:

• A member representing a ski manufacturer gives a pair of expensive racing skis to a sports magazine columnist, to influence the columnist to write favorable articles about the product."

I use this example all the time in teaching and training. So far I have unanimous agreement that this is unethical and people generally focus on two words that push it over the line. The first word is "gives" and the second is "to" from the phrase "to influence". The big problem here is the clear quid pro quo. In the case of a reusable product like expensive skis I would normally expect them to be loaned to the journalist for review. Obviously some products – such as tickets to an event – must, of necessity be given rather than loaned, which makes it all the more important that there should be no quid pro quo either explicitly or implicitly built into the arrangement.

So here's a direct quote from an email about the Brit Awards sent to Telegraph columnist, Tim Walker:

"In addition – in return for this ticket we would like to ask that you agree to the following…

The list included tweets from both the journalist and the organisation before and after. The list goes on to include the hashtag that the organisation was promoting. It also suggests wording for a tweet about going to the event.

Advising people of the hashtag seems appropriate and proper but the email crosses the line with the phrase "in return for this ticket". It is unethical for a PR professional to offer such an express link and unethical for a journalist to accept it. That may be why in almost 30 years sitting on both sides of the PR-journalism divide, I have never encountered anything like this before. It smacks of someone who is unware of the ordinary PR-journalism dynamic: someone who doesn't know that asking this of a journalist is not going to secure the compliance you want. It is much more likely to get you a negative write-up in Press Gazette.