Continue : Creativity in Public Relation (by Andy Green)

WHO DECIDES WHAT IS ADDED VALUE
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If creativity is adding value, who decides the measure of the added value? the answer lies in the context of the creative act. In the context of my daughter Charlotte Charlotte’s family, her picture provided added value in the eyes of her parents, knowing the skills of their chills. The new work of art provided added value as evidence of her growing development and talents. I a wider context, the picture may have very little added value; another painting by a child, which in the eyes of a dispassionate observer has provided no new insights. The same work of art has a different value in different contexts.
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The examples of a public relations practitioner producing press release reveals how the added value within a creative piece of work can vary according to its context. Here are three different contexts to illustrate the point:
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Context 1: The PR agency. The draft release presented for approval to a senior manager or client may appear to have added value as a result of some creative element within it. In this example, the practitioners may have previously had problem getting material approved for being regarded as insufficiently creative. They now regard their new work as truly creative, because its added value has enabled them to achieve a key objective- in this instance, that of providing their abilities to their manager or client.
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Context 2: Overloaded media. When the news release is subsequently issued to the media, the story may bomb, perhaps as a result of a large number of other major news stories at the same time. The creative element inherent in the news release may appear to have had insufficient added value, as it failed to be used by its target, the media.
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Context 3: Underused media. Maybe a year later, exactly the same news story could be updated and reissued at a quiet news time. As a result, it may achieve extensive coverage. In this exactly the same creative product, but in a different context. Its …..
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Page 12 & 13 ?

Hal. 14
Compromised. An example is when of the UK’s most outstanding creative practitioners, Mark Borkowski, launched an alcopop product named ‘Thickhead’ in 1997. as Mark takes up the story:
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It was a classic case where we came up with a very creative campaign – we even came up with some advertising straplines for it. But we didn’t understand the process inside the client, a brewery, who had given the go-ahead to some bright young things within the company to go up and create this brand. No one seriously considered the impact. And because of the type of PR they always got. No one expected (the product) to explode in such away that (it) provoked strong parliamentary an pressure group reaction to the idea of encouraging young people to drink. They had no fabric of actually dealing with it at high level, so the immediate reaction was to kick it into touch. It was a case of ’Give me dangerous radio’. But when you are given ‘dangerous radio’ or creative PR, the client has to actually know what they are dealing with.
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Reflecting back, Mark adds:
A Failure on our part was to really drive home and make sure people within the organization fully understood what they were getting involved with. If you don’t set the ground properly, and get all the details in place with your clients – so they cand understand them – then you can have a creative failure on your hands.
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☼ Consider whether you know of any examples from your own work, or elsewhere, where an organization’s brand values have been compromised by so called creative public relations activity.