Why Public Relations Shouldn’t Abandon Controversial Industries

Doug Downs (00:08):

In 2016, the Mylan pharmaceuticals raised the price of a two pack of EpiPens to $600. Seven years earlier it had been just a hundred dollars, but the increases came in steady increments, and by the time it was 600 bucks, the bubblegum had hit the fan and consumers, the media and lawmakers were all up in arms. There were several legal challenges with critics arguing the actual cost of production was about $10 per pack. There were several lawsuits including accusations of misclassifying, the EpiPen, to avoid higher rebates required for brand name drugs, and engaging in anti-competitive practices to dominate the market. And Mylan's PR and marketing teams were heavily criticized with accusations of a lack of transparency, insufficient response, and having taken a defensive stance. Truth is, communications in the pharmaceutical industry is complex. PR efforts are often seen as attempts to justify exorbitant drug prices, but there are a whole range of things that influence drug pricing, including costly research and development, extensive regulatory approvals, manufacturing, distribution, and the need to fund future innovations. It may cost $10 to produce the product at the end of that chain, but the whole chain is expensive. Drug development is a long, costly and risky process.

(01:41):

In a speech recently, the UN Secretary General António Guterres called Communications Pros working with fossil fuel clients, mad Men fueling madness. He went on to demand all PR agencies drop fossil fuel companies and stop supporting them. Now, climate change is real. There's no denying that, but Guterres' perspective sheds light on a different problem. He doesn't really understand what we do. He thinks we're spin doctors individually. Absolutely, you have the right to pick and choose whom you work with or for, but as an industry refusing to help those who are innovating and changing as a great many fossil fuel companies are is not helping the world shift. It's causing another problem. Today on stories and strategies, let's imagine we are spin doctors. Would you tell a doctor not to treat a smoker who's fighting lung cancer?

(02:51):

My name is Doug Downs. My guest this week is Stuart Bruce, joining today from leads right in the middle of England. How are you, Stuart?

Stuart Bruce (02:59):

I'm fantastic. Like you, Doug, really looking forward to our conversation.

Doug Downs (03:03):

Me too. And technically leads, are you premiership these days or are you division one? Where is leads?

Stuart Bruce (03:09):

No, we were relegated and then we had a brief spell back up again and then back down again. But with any luck, we'll get back up where they should be.

Doug Downs (03:20):

Absolutely. Stuart, you are the PR futurist and the director and founder of two businesses, Stuart Bruce Associates, a public relations consultancy specializing in crisis communications and reputation management and purposeful relations, a digital transformation consultancy for pr, communications and corporate affairs. You've advised and trained hundreds of PR professionals from more than 40 countries around the world, including Google, rolls Royce, the UK cabinet office, the Ukrainian Prime Minister's office and Cabinet Office, and the Bank of England. So straight up, when you heard the Secretary General, the UN Secretary General's comments, what'd you think?

Stuart Bruce (04:02):

Here we go again. It was yet another example of somebody totally misunderstanding what public relations is about. But that said there was also a positive aspect to it, the fact that he thought the public relations profession was important enough, influential enough, and big enough to be given a name check and for him to actually have a go at.

Doug Downs (04:28):

I'll give you that. Yeah. So now tell me about ways that refusing to work with fossil fuel companies can actually hinder progress toward environmental goals.

Stuart Bruce (04:40):

Well, I think we've got to take a step back for a moment and ask ourselves, what is public relations about? And there's kind of a clue in the name there relations. And I think fundamentally it's about every organization depends on relationships just to exist, whether it's relationships with employees, whether it's with government and regulators, customers, they're all relationships. And I think how they work is so important. And if we actually go back to that question of how would it help or hinder fossil fuel companies in order to achieve net zero, in order to achieve change, they have to take people with them. They've got to take their employees, they've got to take the regulators, they've got to take the investors. So that's all about relationships. So I see our role as professionals in actually helping them on that journey to take all of these different stakeholders with them because some will be enthusiastic, some will want them to go faster, some won't want them to do it at all, others will want them to go slower. And it's about getting all of those stakeholders moving in the same direction

Doug Downs (05:50):

Every company says. It's doing the right things and establishing the right change. So let me play devil's advocate. If I were to go work for the tobacco companies, I mean they say they're producing reduced risk products like e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products, nicotine pouches. Is it okay if I go work for RJ Reynolds?

Stuart Bruce (06:10):

Okay, so what we're getting into here is the difference between ethics and morals when it comes to the profession. And for me there's kind of two issues. The ethical part of it is what you do for those companies. So if you stick with, and it doesn't matter whether which professional code of conduct it is for which PR institute in which country, they nearly all have something in there about telling the truth, behaving with integrity. So that's the first point. Whatever you do, you have to stick with those ethical codes of the profession. The second part is the morality, because that's actually personal. That isn't a set of rules, which is what codes of conduct are. The morality is about what you personally are willing to do. Now for me, a tobacco company would be a big red, no, I just would not go near working for, but that's a model issue.

(07:09):

It's not an ethical issue, and I just wouldn't do it. And for me personally, the way that I look at it inside my head is can this be used for good? Does it have a possible positive use? And I think the suppose most dramatic example of that is probably the defense industry because I've just used the word the defense industry. If I'd used the arms industry, it has totally different connotations. So I think, but that's a personal judgment I would make and I would respect any kind of PR person making that personal judgment as who they want to work for. But whatever judgment they make, they still have to do it in an ethical way.

Doug Downs (07:51):

I want to break that down a little bit. Let's first go at ethics. Help me codify what are the ethics I should be looking for in an organization or a movement before I choose to work with them? Because ethical considerations and ethical behavior are extremely important to me personally as part of my morality.

Stuart Bruce (08:11):

So if we were to look at, say either the tobacco industry or fossil fuel companies, some of the ethical considerations, if it was a fossil fuel company that were wanting to deny climate change, then that would be an ethical no, because we all know it's a scientific fact. Client change is happening, fossil fuel companies are contributing to it. So absolutely a public relations professional should not be part of that denial. Now, if it's a fossil fuel company that has views on how it should tackle that and it say has a 10 year plan, but we think it should be a five year plan, as long as you are being honest and truthful and sticking to the facts, I mean, that is where the ethical dimension comes in

Doug Downs (08:59):

Some ways better to be on the inside. There's an old saying about better to be on the inside pissing out than on the outside pissing in. Right? You just have more sway.

Stuart Bruce (09:08):

Absolutely. I thought you were going to use a polite version of that, but you

Doug Downs (09:12):

Need the best version. It's a podcast. If I can't go over the edge on a podcast, when can I? And then morality, I love the way you broke those ethics and morality apart there. Help me maybe talk through some of the things that impact your choices there, because that's what it comes down to for each of us individually. Does that fit me morally? And I don't always know how to make that decision all the time. It's great.

Stuart Bruce (09:43):

And I think most people don't. And it's a real challenge. And I think over the years, I probably have boiled mine down into this, can it be used for good? Yes. Now that's a kind of hazy concept because you could have people, I have no doubt you could have people arguing, well, e-cigarettes are helping people to relax. And sorry, I'm not buying that, but that's just my personal opinion. It's my personal morality. I would be mean. One of the other controversial ones you get is if people are working for, say, foreign governments or other states which may have different approaches to democracy or human rights to we're used to in the West, now is it right to work for them? And I think for me, it would be a judgment per country. The first thing I would do is look at what, in my case, the UK foreign office says, what is their stance?

(10:47):

Because they know a lot more about it than I do, so I need to know their position first. But then the second one would actually be thinking, okay, is this country genuinely trying to change or is it just greenwashing or sports washing, which we see nowadays that it's trying to give the impression that it's wants to. I think one good example of that is Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It has an extremely controversial reputation, but I also happen to know from having spoken to people there in government and doing communications for them, that there is a genuine desire to change. So things like a big thing that the Saudi government wants to do is to get more Saudi women into the workforce. That raises lots of eyebrows for people in the west if they don't already know that. But it is. That's something the Saudi government wants to do.

(11:46):

Now, are they going as fast as I would like? Absolutely not. Have they done as much as I would like? Absolutely not. But the reason they haven't is there's also a kind of big spectrum of Saudi society that don't want them to do that. And if they attempted to push it through too quickly, it might actually mean it doesn't happen. And I think, so everything is about weighing up these things. Ultimately for me, it's about am I making a positive contribution by doing this? Am I making a difference towards public good? And I think that's too often ignored in public relations is the fact that actually part of what we are doing is meant to contribute towards society and public good.

Doug Downs (12:30):

But Stuart, what if it pays a lot of money? And let me deepen that a little bit. You and I are maybe a little longer in the tooth on playing the back nine on our careers, but there's a lot of young people and a lot of young people listen to this podcast and money is very, very meaningful. And for a lot of them, they've either started or are about to start a family and an opportunity to make a lot of money, morals. I don't want to say they get gray, but I stretch a little bit and I owe it to my family morally to make money when I can.

Stuart Bruce (13:06):

Okay. I think this is one where we get interesting. And I was recently in so at the global Amex summit and they had a panel there. And I get really frustrated when people talk about millennials, gen Z gen, whatever, as if they should all be this amorphous mass. And I think one of the things interesting things was listening to the young people on stage is that they clearly weren't an amorphous mass. So some would have said things like that, I need to pay my rent. It costs a fortune living in the city I live. Fair point. Others, no, I'm not going to compromise my kind of beliefs or to work for a fossil fuel company. And I think once again, it does come down to personal. And we've had practical examples in the PR industry. I mean, probably most notably the one I can remember is Edelman, when they took on the account for, I think it was the US border force, they pitched for it. It was hard work. They won it, then they had to resign it because so many people in their team didn't want to work on that account.

Doug Downs (14:14):

Listen to your employees.

Stuart Bruce (14:16):

And I think it's a real challenge for companies that you're going to have a mix. I mean, on the tobacco example, going back to when I ran an agency, we actually had that real life example. We had just lost a big client. It had literally just happened that week. We were kind of sitting there scratching our heads kind of thinking, can we keep everybody on? How long can we keep them on for? Do we need to let somebody go? And at that point, a friend of mine, actually, ironically at Edelman, called to say that they just had an approach from a tobacco company looking for something very specific that he knew we were really good at, that they were really good at, but they don't work with tobacco. And my initial response was, well, we don't work with tobacco. But then I kind of thought, well, actually, I might be about to make people redundant. Am I really in a position to make that decision and then sack people?

Doug Downs (15:17):

That's right.

Stuart Bruce (15:18):

So we actually talked about it as a team, and I put that to the team and said, look, if we take this on, if we don't take this on, some of you might have to go to a single person prompted to take that account, even though they knew their jobs were on the line, because we didn't know at that point who it was going to be. So I think, yeah, it does come down to that kind of personal morality

Doug Downs (15:40):

And what a tough decision for your staff because at the time they're willing to take a stand. But you and I both know human psyche because they think they'll be the exception and they won't be let go. They have that positive outlook to a different vein here. The UN Secretary General's comments ultimately are about someone in a very high and powerful position, truly not understanding what we do for a living. And you and I can sit and criticize that because it's been talked about and talked about. The problem is I can't explain to my mother, you can't explain to your mother what we do for a living. And the irony is we make our living explaining things that are difficult in an easy to understand way. Stuart, are we just stupid?

Stuart Bruce (16:22):

No, I think the problem is public relations is such a broad spectrum.

(16:30):

So if you are a publicist on a movie and you are just doing that, then you are a public relations person that's entirely different to doing corporate affairs or internal comms for the fossil fuel company. And I think trying to encapsulate that in a really snappy soundbite elevator pitch way is incredibly hard. And if you do, it leaves people gaping because it's not very specific. You see yourself, well, it's about helping s with their reputations and their relationships with the stakeholders. There's hardly a word in that sentence that most people can understand. Oh, so you talk to journalists, you make videos, you run events. People can understand those things,

Doug Downs (17:20):

The tactical,

Stuart Bruce (17:22):

But the fact is they're just the tools that we use. What's really important is why do we use those tools? What are we trying to achieve? And that is incredibly hard to explain to people.

Doug Downs (17:32):

Amazing. And ultimately, we do good work. We do help nudge the world in a better direction. Give me some examples of how PR pros have successfully driven positive change in society.

Stuart Bruce (17:45):

Well, just before we should do that. We should be nudge the world in the right direction. Yes, we should. But I think that's one of the reasons why we've sometimes used the words public relations and communications interchangeably. And I'm a big fan of using the term public relations, relations. And the reason is, if we talk about communications, it implies you can communicate yourself out of it just by saying things. You're going to make a difference when we both know it's by doing things, it's by changing behaviour. And that's the reason I always prefer the term public relations, even though if we actually go back to your point about its reputation, the reason people don't use PR is because, oh, that's just spin. That's just PR is the prerogative term that's used in terms of answering the question about give some examples. I think one of the challenges here is some of those best examples you don't actually know about.

(18:49):

It's a bit like when you do crisis communications and all of the best work I've done is the work I can never ever talk about because it's never become a crisis. You've been sitting advising your CEO who maybe wanted to do one thing, and you've advised a different course of action, so it never actually becomes a crisis. So I think that in terms of saying what those examples are, it's really hard. The one that sticks in my mind is actually from, I was really, really early on in my career and I didn't know what beer I was. I was still figuring it out. And there was a guy called, I was doing a professional qualification, and one of our lecturers was senior comm person at BT British Telecom, and he was giving an example of something that he'd done in his job where his bosses had said, look, you got to do something about our phone boxes.

(19:49):

I'm certainly conscious that young people are listening to this and be saying, phone boxes, what's a phone box? But yeah, because we're basically, they had a really bad reputation because all the phone boxes, the windows were broken. People were, I can say pissing because you've said it. Yes. People were pissing in them. They were smelly, they were dirty, the handsets were ripped out. They were just vile. And he was told you, you've got to, we were really lousy reputation for our phone boxes. You've got to fix it. To which Dennis's reply was, well, yeah, that's easy. We fix the phone boxes. If they weren't dirty, if they actually worked, if they were clean, if people could use them, then they wouldn't have a lousy reputation. And that's what they did. That's what they actually started to do. They put more investment into getting the phone boxes better because you explained to them you weren't going to fix it by comm alone.

Doug Downs (20:47):

I guess that's like the sports team that is developing a bad reputation because it keeps losing the answer is win some games.

Stuart Bruce (20:55):

Yeah, exactly. The question is, how are you going to win those games? You need new manager. Do you need to invest in new players? Have a shakeup of your tactics.

Doug Downs (21:05):

Right, right. Brilliant. I really appreciate your time today, Stuart. We'll have to get together again. No,

Stuart Bruce (21:10):

No. This has been fantastic. We really, really enjoyed the chat.

Doug Downs (21:13):

If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Stuart Bruce, you can do that. We've got some contact information in the show notes. By all means, send me your thoughts on this episode. I know some may disagree and might think the UN Secretary General was spot on, and that's okay. On Spotify, there's a link where you can leave a comment. If you're listening on buzzsprout, you can leave feedback directly there too, and any other podcast app. If you're listening, you can just send me a note personally at doug@storiesandstrategies.ca. Let me know if it's okay if I share your comment on a future episode. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies podcast. If you like this episode, please leave a rating, possibly a review. Thank you. Thumbs up to our producer, Emily Page. Lastly, do us a favour forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.