PR & Building Trust Through Corporate Social Engagement

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Welcome.

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This is the Public Relations Review Podcast, a program to discuss the many facets of public relations with seasoned professionals, educators, authors and others.

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Now here is your host, peter Woolfolk is your host, peter Woolfolk.

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Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to our listeners all across America and around the world.

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Now, this podcast is ranked by Apple as among the top 1% of podcasts worldwide, so let me say thank you to all of our guests and listeners for being the basis for this ranking and if you enjoy the podcast, please, we certainly would like to get a review from you.

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Now, in this episode, we're going to have a discussion about whether it is wise or beneficial that corporations engage in social movements.

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Well, my guest today says yes, it is.

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He was elected to the head of the Public Affairs Council in 1997.

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Under his leadership, the Council has expanded its membership, online services, research on emerging public affairs trends, conferences and global public affairs program.

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He has written numerous articles and books and is a frequent speaker on public affairs, politics, communications and corporate management.

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Now, before joining the council, he was vice president of communications for the American Gas Association.

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He is also an accredited member of the Public Relations Society of America and he serves on the board of Institute for Public Relations.

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Now joining me from Washington DC which, by the way, happens to be my hometown is the president of the Public Affairs Council, doug Pinkham.

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Doug, welcome to the podcast.

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Well, it's good to be here.

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Peter, it's nice to meet you virtually.

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Well, and thank you so much, and same here.

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Look, you know you believe it is important that corporations and other large organizations become in social issues.

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Why

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Well a number of reasons.

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Social issues.

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Why do you believe that this is so important?

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Well, a number of reasons.

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One is, I mean, ideally, if you're going to be a company with a long run, you know it's going to be around for a long time.

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Obviously, you got to have good products and services at a fair price, but you also have to treat people well.

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You got to have a good workforce and I think one of the real secrets is to create the not just the impression, but the reality that you try to operate in the public interest.

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It doesn't mean that you're government.

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It doesn't mean that you're a charity.

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But if you're going to make and sell a product, you're doing it in a responsible way.

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In addition and that's kind of the argument for companies just getting involved in corporate responsibility in general, what we have seen is a real trend in the last 10 years.

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In general, what we have seen is a real trend in the last 10 years as companies are finding there is a real decline in population in Gen Z.

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There just aren't as many young people as there were when I was younger, as when you were young when, of course, it was very competitive to get your first job, and so the war for talent is real, and a lot of the pressure in fact, the majority of the pressure for companies to be involved in various social issues is coming from their own employees.

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The first study we at the Council did that made this point, that proved this point was back in 2016.

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And we since have then replicated it several times.

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So that's where a lot of the expectations are coming from not just the general public, but your own employees.

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So if you want to have a great workforce and people motivated and, once they start, stick around so they can tell their friends what a great place they work, you need to be engaged in society.

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So it's one of those situations where there's a number of reasons to do this.

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Having said that, it's definitely not a one-size-fits-all kind of practice to be involved in a social cause.

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It will depend entirely on what sector you work in, what your history is, what your track record, what your CEO has said or done in the past, what your competitors are doing, what the real needs are.

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In other words, you don't want to choose such a small or esoteric issue that no one seems to care about, but you also don't want to choose such a small or esoteric issue that no one seems to care about.

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But you also don't want to jump on board a very popular issue if there's just zero connection to your company in either the things you make and sell or your values or statements or employee volunteerism.

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If you do that, you look like you're either greenwashing, if it's an environmental case where you're pretending to be environmentally beneficial, or you're just being an opportunist and just jumping on board.

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There was some accusations and some reality during the whole Black Lives Matter movement as it emerged a few years ago, of some companies who had never said much of anything publicly about racial justice suddenly saying this is the most important issue in the world to us and we're pledging to make all kinds of difference.

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It sure would have helped them if they'd been doing it for a long time and not suddenly doing it when there's a big crisis.

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So there's a lot of important strategy that needs to be discussed as a company when you're deciding do we get involved in this issue or some other issue or do we stay on the sidelines?

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And I guess one of the main points I want to leave with you is this is not a binary decision Are we involved or not involved?

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There's a lot of shades of gray between one extreme or the other, and we can talk more about that in the discussion.

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Well, that was one of the things I wanted to bring up.

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Is that how should an organization go about deciding which social issues they would like to be involved in?

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What process should they use?

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Probably run across that before.

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Yeah, in fact we did an analysis of talking to our member organizations about that a few years ago and let me also say this quickly we are on K Street in Washington, which you've heard about as the lobbying mecca for Washington, and you know that because you're from DC and the majority of our members are companies but we have a lot of associations and nonprofits and universities.

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I think one thing that's unusual about us is that we are not involved in politics.

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I mean, we monitor political issues.

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We give advice, management advice on how to deal with various issues and we teach compliance to follow the laws and the ethics rules.

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But it's in our bylaws that the Public Affairs Council doesn't take any position on an issue and nor do we do any campaign money.

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And, frankly, since one of the things I do is talk to the media and give speeches, that really helps our credibility because we really can be a voice of reason, Because our job is to understand what makes for a good strategy, what works, what doesn't work, and then we collect organizations that we know who do it well.

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So on this issue of who does a good job of analyzing and responding, you know, pretty quickly to an issue, I can give you some interesting examples because and it shows you how diverse the membership is at the council One is the Mayo Clinic, which you may know is a very major international hospital chain operating out of Minnesota.

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Another is Exxon male and major oil gas producer.

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Pfizer Pharmaceuticals is another one, and then another is Southwest Airlines.

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You know the discount airline out of Texas.

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So very different organizations, but what they have in common is that they have a each has a cross-functional team including communications, pr, government affairs, social impact or corporate responsibility, legal, you know, and other aspects of the company someone from the CEO's office.

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And when an issue comes along that they think, hmm, this may be something we need to perhaps get involved in, they sit down, they talk about it, they debate it and they decide A should we be involved?

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And B, if we are involved, do we want to be a champion?

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You know the kind of thing where you put your CEO on television and you know this is like our big issue.

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Do you want to be a supporter, where perhaps you know you're not on the cover of the publications, the virtual covers, but perhaps you're part of a coalition or you do it through your trade association because you do care about the issue, you put up some time and effort.

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Maybe you have an employee volunteerism program for employees can get involved.

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That's kind of the mid-level.

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And then maybe you're a basic supporter where you say we're not really quite sure if we should be weighing in in a major way, but we are for this.

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It's in the public interest in our opinion, weighing in in a major way.

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But we are for this, it's in the public interest in our opinion.

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So you know, then, you're kind of waiting and watching and deciding what to do, but that doesn't mean you might not.

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I mean you might issue a statement, you might communicate just with your employees, but not for the public, about why this issue matters to us.

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As we were just going into the fall elections, a lot of companies, for obvious reasons, don't weigh in on the presidential race.

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And who are we for and against?

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because most of them don't have an official position on that, nor do they donate money to the presidential campaigns generally speaking, but what we tried to really encourage companies to do is take a stand for democracy and talk about the importance of open and fair elections and obeying the law after what happened in 2020.

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So that's a way, without even mentioning names of candidates you can talk about what's right and speak up, but you don't have to be a leader or even a major supporter.

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So that was one of those ones that was very obviously, as you can imagine, politically sensitive.

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There are other issues, like support for education.

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My goodness, I don't think anyone's against education.

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Some people don't like public education but support for the environment is one of the most popular causes.

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We monitor public opinion on various forms of discrimination.

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In fact, we do an annual opinion survey with a major online polling firm called Morning Consult, and we've done it for 12 years now and for a number of those years we've been monitoring.

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Do you think that major companies should be involved in this social issue?

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And we list the environment, ending hunger, discrimination by race, gender and so forth.

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Education, human rights, voting rights, abortion.

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You know, a sort of a common sense, bipartisan approach to immigration.

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We don't even ask an extreme left or extreme right view on immigration.

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You know, do you feel like something should be done?

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Should companies be weighing in?

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But the question isn't do you believe this issue is important?

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It's do you want big corporations involved?

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And what you find is there are people on the far left who don't want companies involved because they don't really trust them.

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But there's even more people on the far left who don't want companies involved because they don't really trust them.

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But there's even more people on the far right these days and this is relatively new who don't like the fact that a lot of the issues big companies have weighed in on, maybe take a different take on a social issue, that they may feel the opposite about it.

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They might be pro-life, they might think we put too much money into public education, or they may feel environmental laws are too strict.

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So there has been a bit of a pushback, but one of the things we're finding is that, despite some of the backlash and the criticisms of some companies for being too woke, that public support for companies being involved in social issues has only increased.

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It has not decreased.

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And even after the Trump election, I would wager that next year when we ask this question, we will find that at minimum it has stayed the same.

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And again, the highest rated issues are, you know, starts with the environment.

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But we've seen, you know, year over year, out of this last year, out of 12 issues, 11 of them showed an increase.

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Well, let me sort of jump in on that one, because I was looking at the list of those issues that your organization listed and I'm just going to read the top six, because all these had a 60 plus percent agreement that they should have some support, and it starts with the support for the environment and sustainability, then ending hunger and supporting food security, ending discrimination by race, ending discrimination by gender, supporting access to quality education and expanding human rights.

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Those are the top ones because all of those had approval or ratings that over 60 percent that there should be some engagement, and those ratings were higher than they were in 2023, in some cases by four or five points or maybe one or two.

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But I agree with you because this does show that there has been growth in the fact that employees, or whoever else is in that organization, they do want support for these particular issues, if not other issues as well.

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That's right, but one of the things that's really striking is we have the ability.

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I'm a real nerd when it comes to polling, so I have a document sitting here that's like 700 pages of crosstabs.

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Oh boy, women over 65 feel about this and you really have to be a geek to get into this, but it's fascinating.

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So when you divide it up by political leanings, you know you tend to be more Republican versus Democrat.

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I have never seen such a large delta between what Republicans would like big companies to do versus Democrats.

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The difference, the gap, ranges from 13 points and that's the smallest one, and that's like support for education and food security.

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You know difference between what Republicans and the higher number, what Democrats want.

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And then it gets all the way up to 27 percentage points and that's, of course, legal access to abortions.

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But there's some others with large deltas, like ending discrimination on gender identity and supporting sort of common sense immigration reform, and those are like 25, 26 percentage points, and I think that helps explain some of the negative partisanship that exists.

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It isn't as much over fiscal issues like tax policy, it's over the social issues everything from abortion to immigration, to how you define discrimination should apply to people who are transgender or you know what I'm saying but even things like, for instance, ending discrimination by gender.

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I'm old enough to remember when women were really treated shabbily in the workplace, and unfortunately that's still the case in some companies.

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But by and large a lot of improvement has been made.

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I think if you talk to a woman 60 years old, she would probably say you know, it's not great, but it's definitely much better.

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Yet the difference between what Republicans expect companies to do and Democrats is fairly large, and only a little over 50% of Republicans would like to see companies involved.

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So this is just really an interesting example of how different two major groups of Americans Democrats and Republicans feel about an issue affecting business.

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Well, you know, on that particular issue, the other part of that in terms of women's involvement, particularly on boards of directors, that's where there's, you know, huge disparity in how many women are actually appointed to or members of boards of directors.

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I mean it certainly has been increasing, but it's very, very noticeable about that sort of thing.

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I totally agree.

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I think this is true for all forms of discrimination is it's great when we show progress, but we shouldn't declare victory.

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And I don't think we're close.

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I mean, I think women have come a long way.

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My board of directors I have a very large board and when I got there in 1997, I'm guessing it was probably 10% female.

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Now it's probably 50% female, so that's real progress.

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And we female now it's probably 50% female, so that's natural progress.

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And we've also had I think we've had more female chair chairs of the board than men.

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So I feel good about that from a leadership standpoint.

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But then you look at other areas of discrimination, such as discrimination by race and in the public affairs profession.

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We do surveys on this and we have seen improvement in terms of people of color entering the profession.

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But where we have seen a fall off is in people of color sticking with it and making it up to the top job affairs not necessarily with our members to help give them some executive education and mentorship to make it easier for them to move into the top job.

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Basically get them prepped and have a greater chance, Because we have a long way to go in terms of people of color being in leadership positions, and I think that's just a good way for companies to look at it and for industries and professions, that it's not an all or nothing and it's not just one strategy.

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You might want to look at it and for industries and professions that it's not an all or nothing.

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It's, you know, and it's not just one strategy.

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You might want to look at what your specific challenge is and how much progress you know still needs to be made.

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You know.

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The other thing that also happens with that is that once an organization does decide which issue it is that they're going to be involved in your audience, if you will whether it's employees or others then want to find out how are're going to be involved in your audience, if you will whether it's employees or others then want to find out how are you going to be involved and begin to see some results and some sort of regular reporting on what it is you're doing and how are you helping to have this particular issue be successful.

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I totally agree.

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There's been this whole movement underway in the corporate world over the last 30 years, basically saying if you can't measure it, then it doesn't count, because sometimes it's the fact that something didn't happen especially if you're a lobbyist that might be an accomplishment, or an article didn't appear in the media that was critical of the boss.

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But there are a lot of ways you can measure.

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You look at opinion polling of the public, of thought leaders, of your own employees.

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How do people associate what you do for a living?

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Is it positive or negative?

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There's also services that will track the tone of media coverage and you can see.

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Okay, the general tone has improved six percentage points since last year.

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So there are a lot of ways to do that.

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So it's no longer an excuse to say that the tools are not available to measure it.

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So it is very important that you do that, and I think the smartest companies are ones that choose issues that seem to fit them.

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And that doesn't mean you only can choose one.

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You choose several.

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But if you have methodology and you explain it to your employees and maybe include employees in the decision about how involved should we be, it also is important to have that because it allows you to say no, because inevitably someone maybe someone important within your company comes to you and says we need you to weigh in on this issue and you have to be able to say well, remember, we had that strategy meeting and we talked about like 40 different issues and we narrowed it down to five.

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Unfortunately, that just wasn't one we could do.

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But here's some other resources, here's some groups you can get involved in personally if you want to advance that issue.

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So I think what it comes down to, the lesson there is to do something.

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Well, you have to decide.

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You can't make everyone happy.

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Somebody once said I don't know the secret to success.

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But the secret to failure is to please everyone or try to please everyone.

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But I think when you're willing to say we don't do that, then they will take you more seriously when you say look what we have achieved.

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You know, I think the other thing too is deciding how we're going to get involved, because involvement can include employees at all levels.

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It can include C-suite people or combinations thereof.

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So obviously there should be some discussion about how we're going to get involved, who's going to be involved you know those kinds of discussions so that people can see that, yes, we are serious I know because I'm doing this and then also talk about the results of your engagements as well.

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That's right.

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It's the amount of engagement, like, let's say it's an employee volunteerism program.

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I used to be a judge for the Place of Light Foundation, which gave awards for corporate volunteerism, and I remember we would read, you know, case studies from companies who would get their retirees involved you know, people who retired from the company because they have extra time and maybe it's to you know help pick up trash in the park, or maybe it's to write their members of Congress or city councilmen or state representatives on an important issue that benefits the public, and retired people are very responsive to that.

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So you know, but you don't want to just count which is nice to show we had a great turnout for the employee service project.

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But then you survey your employees and was this worthwhile?

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Do you feel it made a difference?

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And you talk to your partners.

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You know the charitable organizations you've helped and get them to be very straight with you.

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Were we in the way or were we helpful?

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And I've seen both.

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I've seen gosh, I've seen a work project where a bunch of volunteers came in to do some painting in an inner city community building and they did a terrible job.

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And you know, I and some others were going around touching it up afterwards because we felt so bad.

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So you've got to make sure that people take it seriously and if they're going to do a good job, then if you don't, you go back and fix it so that no one is left with a bad taste in their mouth and no one says you know, you didn't really care about helping us, this was just a social event for your staff.

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You know some of those that I have seen I think Subaru is perhaps one in that, yes, they sell cars, but their social engagement has nothing to do with automobiles.

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It has to do with national forests and, in some cases, animals.

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That they are very, very up front and vocal I shouldn't say vocal, but things about encouraging people to adopt animals and take care of national forests.

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Well, I mean, I could tie that string together.

00:21:29.894 --> 00:21:41.117
If you think about your Subaru and people take it on off-road and it gives you, you know, and people take it on off-road and it gives you you know, you see, you know the commercials of people going camping in their Subarus, so it kind of sort of fits in the same way.

00:21:41.117 --> 00:21:49.402
Nike is very active in supporting wilderness areas because you know, you wear their shoes, their hiking boots, you're an active person.

00:21:49.402 --> 00:21:52.464
If you're an active person, then you probably appreciate wilderness.

00:21:52.464 --> 00:21:54.902
So that isn't far-fetched.

00:21:54.902 --> 00:22:01.496
I've seen ones that are clearly far-fetched, especially people supporting human rights and civil rights and so forth.

00:22:01.576 --> 00:22:16.959
Yet they not only haven't done anything in the past, perhaps they've done a lot of support for politicians who feel exactly the opposite, or the CEO has said some indelicate things that would lead you to think that they were not as open-minded on issues of race, for instance.

00:22:17.500 --> 00:22:48.541
You have to look at your history and this is where the communications executive plays an incredibly important role because, as all of your listeners know who work in this field and I have you know part of your job is to tell truth to power and it's to diplomatically say to the CEO let me explain why we're not going to look good, we're going to look actually bad if we do this, because of what happened that incident four years ago and whatever else you know and the public hasn't forgotten and so we have to be very careful about the issues we get involved in.

00:22:48.541 --> 00:22:55.707
And, in fact, if we do get involved, it would be good for us to acknowledge that we realize some will be skeptical.

00:22:55.707 --> 00:22:57.643
In other words, you acknowledge that there will be opposition.

00:22:58.255 --> 00:23:22.398
A good friend of mine who used to run government affairs at Target had a saying that I still quote, and it's this that when you're a big company and you're facing a potential scandal or something that looks like wrongdoing by the company and you're trying to deal from a communications perspective with critics and the media, you have two options you can either appear evil or you can appear stupid.

00:23:22.398 --> 00:23:29.362
And his advice was pick stupid, he said, because the public will forgive stupid If you say oh, my gosh, did we screw up?

00:23:29.362 --> 00:23:36.688
Oh, I don't know what we were thinking, we really messed this up and we apologize and we will do everything possible to make it okay.

00:23:36.688 --> 00:23:45.522
I mean, yes, that's hard, but people will have some respect for the spokesperson and the CEO as human beings, because everybody makes mistakes.

00:23:45.522 --> 00:23:53.080
But where you appear evil is when you say we didn't do anything wrong or it wasn't our fault or my lawyer won't.

00:23:53.142 --> 00:23:55.951
Let me say anything about it, because you know how lawyers are.

00:23:55.951 --> 00:24:01.067
Anything that looks like you are escaping the potential for taking blame.

00:24:01.067 --> 00:24:14.305
In fact, I would argue that even when you're not all that guilty in other words, where it's debatable about whether you're really at fault you say you know what someone's at fault, but regardless we feel terrible about it and here's what we're going to do about it.

00:24:14.305 --> 00:24:32.443
Folks are so used to CEOs and politicians getting up there and denying wrongdoing that if you're willing to take the hits and say we're going to make it right In a way I've seen polling that shows that actually improves your reputation more than if nothing had happened.

00:24:32.443 --> 00:24:42.844
So the act of genuinely apologizing and saying we didn't do it correctly, interestingly, is actually a way to improve your reputation, because it happens so rarely.

00:24:43.295 --> 00:24:51.064
Well, not only that, it is perhaps a skill you should learn under crisis communications as to how you go about handling those kinds of things.

00:24:51.064 --> 00:25:01.548
You're absolutely right, because if you say no, we didn't do it, or that, no comment, those things can really, really sink you.

00:25:01.548 --> 00:25:04.624
And I had a guy on here not too long ago.

00:25:04.624 --> 00:25:20.548
All he does is crisis communications and one of the things is that you can comment, and that comment could be that, yes, we certainly have a lot to say, but you know right now we're under directors from the court that we can't say anything.

00:25:20.548 --> 00:25:24.461
But once that is rectified, we'll be more than happy to answer all your questions.

00:25:24.461 --> 00:25:26.185
You know something along those lines.

00:25:27.415 --> 00:25:32.298
That's an excellent point, and in fact, I would argue that this is a time when over-communicating is a good thing.

00:25:32.298 --> 00:25:36.895
In other words, we're going to have a weekly briefing until the last question is ever asked.

00:25:36.895 --> 00:25:39.701
And if at some point the reporters stop showing up and are getting tired.

00:25:39.701 --> 00:25:41.224
That doesn't mean you should give up.

00:25:41.224 --> 00:25:43.449
You should say hey, we're still willing to do a weekly briefing.

00:25:43.996 --> 00:25:51.604
It's about, it's like total transparency in a situation like that, to the point where people are actually tired of listening to you but they know you're not hiding anything.

00:25:51.944 --> 00:26:00.366
And I think that's what really, really matters that you're willing to let your hair down and say you know, we will tell you everything we know.

00:26:00.366 --> 00:26:02.916
And if we don't know, we'll tell you that too.

00:26:02.916 --> 00:26:04.701
We'll say we're not sure, but we'll find out.

00:26:04.701 --> 00:26:06.476
So there is a way to manage it.

00:26:06.476 --> 00:26:10.355
One thing I'd actually like to add to that we did a study some years ago that we should update.

00:26:10.355 --> 00:26:14.644
That's really interesting, and it was how to manage crises and controversies.

00:26:15.186 --> 00:26:22.088
So a lot of research has been done on the art of crisis management but, my view is not enough has been done about controversy management.

00:26:22.535 --> 00:26:30.106
So, for example, if you take a position on a social issue and some of your employees are upset, or the public's upset, that's a controversy.

00:26:30.106 --> 00:26:43.405
You know, in your career working in communications, you might face a handful of real, honest-to-god crises, like really big problems, dangerous or controversial, but you might have a new controversy every week.

00:26:43.405 --> 00:26:49.655
And one of the things we studied is looked at what actions the public would take if a company did something.

00:26:49.655 --> 00:26:53.525
That was a crisis, and we define that versus a controversy.

00:26:53.525 --> 00:26:58.643
And what we found is the way the human brain reacts emotionally to something.

00:26:58.643 --> 00:27:00.346
It's almost identical.

00:27:00.846 --> 00:27:05.723
And the two actions we measured is whether people would threaten to no longer do business with you.

00:27:05.923 --> 00:27:06.787
You know, boycott you.

00:27:06.846 --> 00:27:11.738
And again, sometimes people don't follow through, but it's the fact that that's what they want to do is boycott you.

00:27:12.138 --> 00:27:14.106
And then secondly, is to say bad things about you.

00:27:14.106 --> 00:27:34.663
Now, the interesting conclusion from that is people are more likely to walk out than speak out, meaning they're more likely to quietly stop doing business with you than say bad stuff about you online, which is a surprise, because what you see online it seems loud and oh my God, look what they're doing, but actually that's a fraction of the people who are actually upset.

00:27:34.663 --> 00:27:38.156
So that was, I think, an important takeaway from that.

00:27:38.156 --> 00:27:45.746
But what we found is that roughly the same percentage of whether it was a crisis or controversy would stop doing business with you and speak out.

00:27:45.746 --> 00:27:53.698
And that tells me that, my God, every company in America needs controversy training, because they're a different animal.

00:27:53.698 --> 00:27:55.806
They often don't last as long.

00:27:55.806 --> 00:28:08.170
They can be triggered by a whole host of different things, but the fact that the brain is reacting the same way to an oil spill or an industrial accident, as look at that company's position on that social issue.

00:28:08.210 --> 00:28:11.644
That's terrible, and we just may not take that second one seriously.

00:28:11.644 --> 00:28:18.509
But in terms of how that individual stakeholder feels it might be absolutely identical to a major industrial accident.

00:28:20.175 --> 00:28:24.400
Well, Doug, you have given us quite a bit of information on this topic.

00:28:24.400 --> 00:28:29.238
Is there anything you think we may have missed or do you want to address before we call it a day?

00:28:30.039 --> 00:28:41.059
I guess the only thing I would say is I would expect that public expectations and employee expectations for companies to be involved in social causes will only increase.

00:28:41.059 --> 00:28:48.800
People may not always like big companies, but they feel that companies are very competent, they're good at what they do and they have more faith in companies than government.

00:28:48.800 --> 00:28:53.500
So it stands to reason that companies will be expected to do more and more.

00:28:53.500 --> 00:28:56.347
And you can't always expect to get a thank you.

00:28:56.347 --> 00:29:02.087
You know you may be saying to your CEO you know we should get involved in this, and the CEO will say well, let me get out of it.

00:29:02.087 --> 00:29:19.835
And the answer is the public won't think we're any worse than our competitor, but you may not get a trophy, you may not get an award, but if you don't do anything, then you're going to be viewed as the villain, as I said earlier, and as evil, and so we're going to have to get used to the fact that expectations will only increase.

00:29:20.155 --> 00:29:24.275
So, we're going to have to get used to the fact that expectations will only increase.

00:29:24.275 --> 00:29:34.465
Well, doug, let me say thank you so very, very much for contributing this valuable information for our listeners, because this is something that certainly a lot of people have an interest in, and the more information we can provide them, the better off they will be.

00:29:34.465 --> 00:29:42.318
So let me say, in the future, if you have some other great ideas and issues that you think we should cover, please don't let us know.

00:29:42.861 --> 00:29:44.836
Well, I'm happy to do that Again.

00:29:44.836 --> 00:29:49.087
I will do a very short commercial, just for purposes of access to information.

00:29:49.087 --> 00:29:53.726
If you want to go to our website, it's pacpublicaffairscouncilorg.

00:29:53.726 --> 00:29:56.559
And under research.

00:29:56.559 --> 00:30:10.545
Everything we've ever published is free and available to an organization, whether they're a member or not the study on crises and controversies, our poll survey, or annual poll, going back 12 years, but the data is very rich.

00:30:10.945 --> 00:30:38.287
Whether you're an academic or a practitioner in the field, there's a lot of important lessons to learn and you're certainly welcome to use the research we've created well, that's a very generous offer and I'm sure many of our listeners will take you up on that, and I certainly want to say thank you again for being a guest on our show, and I also want to thank our listeners for continuing to listen and to support us and assure that they will get a lot from what Doug has presented us today.

00:30:38.287 --> 00:30:49.528
So the other thing is, please we'd certainly like to get a review from you and also share this information with your friends and please don't forget to listen to the next edition of the Public Relations Review Podcast.

00:30:51.316 --> 00:31:01.621
This podcast is produced by Communication Strategies, an award-winning public relations and public affairs firm headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee.

00:31:01.621 --> 00:31:03.566
Thank you for joining us.