End term assignment public relations

Reactive: Deal with a crisis that an anonymous post online saying that the prize of Viet Nam Harmony can be bought with money...103.. The ability to manage crises not only ensures the sa

DIPLOMATIC ACADEMY OF VIET NAM

ENGLISH FACULTY

END-TERM ASSIGNMENT PUBLIC RELATIONS

Lecturer: Tran Thi Quynh Anh Students:

INTRODUCTION 4

CONTENTS 5

I Introduction 5

1 Description: 5

2 Vision and mission statement 5

3 Additional information: 5

II Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) & Corporate Social Advocacy (CSA) 6

1 CSR: 6

2 CSA: 7

III PR campaign 7

IV Crisis management 8

1 Pro-active: 8

2 Reactive: Deal with a crisis that an anonymous post online saying that the prize of Viet Nam Harmony can be bought with money 10

3 Recovery: 11

V Press release (Trần Thị Diệu Quý) 11

REFERENCES 13

MEMBER EVALUATION 14

Crisis management is crucial in today's fast-paced and unpredictable world Whether it

be a natural disaster, a public health emergency, or a financial crisis, organizations and individuals must be prepared to effectively handle these situations The ability to manage crises not only ensures the safety and well-being of people involved but also helps in minimizing the negative impact on reputation and operations

With a desire to build up crisis management for our singing contest - Viet Nam Harmony, we have made a great effort in accumulating knowledge in study materials, and learned from reliable cases study However, we truly understand that shortcomings are unavoidable; therefore, we are looking forward to receiving feedback from our lecturer to make proper crisis management when it comes to nuts and bolts in a real situation

I Introduction

1 Description:

Endemol Group is an entertainment company that provides Media and Digital Marketing services This autumn, the company presents the contest “Viet Nam Harmony” - a singing contest that is held annually in Hanoi

2 Vision and mission statement

Vision statement: Becoming the most prestigious singing competition in

Vietnam

Mission statement: Discovering, training, and supporting the career

development of a new generation of artists using the most professional process

3 Additional information:

Objectives: We’re looking for someone with a beautiful voice that varies in

different genres Apart from that, they should fully have singer qualities and performance skills To do this, the competition will be organized in an academy concept for both competing and training, providing participants with a professional environment for practicing In addition, it increases solidarity among contestants

Criteria: Here are some criteria for our contestants to achieve:

● Beautiful voice with perfect vocal technique (60%)

● Confident and personable performance (25%)

● Good attitude towards the public (10%)

● Suitable outfits (5%)

Evaluation: The competition has 3 rounds 31 people passing the casting

round will compete in the elimination round where the contestants will have to perform one song that is related to a given genre like pop, rock, or jazz, 2 contestants will be eliminated by judges from each round The top 5 will attend the finale In the final round, 30% of the score comes from the judges and 70% depends on the audience

Judges: They all have experienced many years in the music industry and have

succeeded in their careers They are also well-known and acknowledged by the audience

● Tóc Tiên

● Trúc Nhân

● Tiên Cookie

Timeline: The contest lasts 5 months and is broadcast every Sunday at 8 pm on

VTV3

Prize: The last part but not least important is the prize of Vietnam Harmony:

1.000.000.000 VNĐ will be given to the champion Besides, the winner also has

opportunities to attend shows carried out by Endemol Group and the company’s partners

II Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) & Corporate Social Advocacy (CSA)

1 CSR:

A main way that businesses work to better the lives of stakeholders such as employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate, is CSR which involves corporate-sponsored initiatives that simultaneously address a social or environmental concern while benefiting an organization’s image It is traditionally 1 broken into four categories: environmental, philanthropic, ethical, and economic responsibility

Environmental Responsibility

Environmental responsibility is the belief that organizations should behave in as environmentally friendly a way as possible 2

We will cooperate with the eco-friendly fashion brands such as Moidien, TimTay … to sponsor clothes for the candidates’ performance, and additionally adopt eco-friendly practices such as using energy-efficient lighting and sound systems and promoting waste reduction by reducing the use of large balloon and confetti falling from the ceiling

Ethical Responsibility

Ethical responsibility is concerned with ensuring an organization is operating in

a fair and ethical manner 3

We will seek out diverse talent and provide opportunities for aspiring candidates from various backgrounds, cultures, ages, sex orientation, and treat them fairly by promoting transparency, integrity and fairness throughout the competition process

Philanthropic Responsibility

Philanthropic responsibility refers to a business’s aim to actively make the world and society a better place 4

We will donate money from SMS message voting, sponsorship revenue to charities such as “SOS Children's Villages Vietnam “, “Operation Smile” and encourage our candidates, employees,… to participate in virtual volunteering activities

Economic Responsibility

Economic responsibility is the practice of a firm backing all of its financial decisions in its commitment to do good We focus on three main activities:5

- Honest disclosure:

1 de Bakker, F.G.A., & den Hond, F (2008) Activists’ influence tactics and corporate policies Business Communication Quarterly,71, 107–111

2 Stobierski, T (2021) What is corporate social responsibility? 4 types

3 Stobierski, T (2021) What is corporate social responsibility? 4 types

4 Stobierski, T (2021) What is corporate social responsibility? 4 types

5 Stobierski, T (2021) What is corporate social responsibility? 4 types

Providing honest, timely and transparent disclosure about our operating issues like social practices, charitable practices or financial accounting

- Policy development

Investing in efforts that yield our CSR improvement including process-related and human resource investments

- Training

Spending on initiatives that train our employees on social awareness, and environmental concerns to foster a positive work culture

2 CSA:

Corporate social advocacy (CSA) moves beyond CSR in that it represents corporate engagement in controversial social or political issues that often lack direct relevance to the company Additionally, unlike CSR, corporations engage in CSA 6 recognizing it may not be received well by all stakeholders

We will create a theme song with a meaningful message featured by all candidates and a guest singer Lynk Lee, who came out as a transgender in 2020 to inspire the audiences to show the world their love, talent and who they truly are regardless of their age, background and sex orientation We aim to support gender equality and fight against any kind of discrimination in our society

III PR campaign

In the PR campaign, we use some given tactics for our competition

1 Creating newsworthy stories:

First of all, we team up with somebody famous In other words, we invite well-known and professional Vietnamese singers or composers to become ambassadors and judges The reason why we collaborate with Truc Nhan, Toc Tien, Tien Cookie to be our judges is because they used to be contestants in singing contests Moreover, they have a deep insight into music and gain a high reputation so these factors make them reliable in a music competition We also work with professional singers and composers such as Vu Cat Tuong or Kai Dinh because they have a signature in their vocals and music, thus, contestants can be inspired to self-improve and develop their talent That is one of the missions of our competition

The second method we use is photo story To be more specific, our contestants participate in a lookbook shooting project and their lookbooks are released as a type of

PR strategies Furthermore, we have standees and photo booths for audiences to snap photos These photos are posted on social media with the permission of the audiences Finally, we use the tactic that we run a running competition to fund for remote children This information is posted publicly on Facebook and volunteers take part in this competition which is held by our members of the organizing committee of Viet Nam Harmony

2 PESO model PR:

6 Dodd, M D., & Supa, D W (2014) Conceptualizing and measuring “corporate social advocacy” communication: Examining the impact on corporate financial performance Public relations journal, 8(3), 2-23 (“Conceptualizing and Measuring “Corporate Social Advocacy” Communication: Examining the Impact on Corporate Financial Performance Public Relations Journal, 8(3), 2-23

We also apply the PESO model for our PR campaign For paid media, we run advertisements on Facebook sponsored posts or Facebook sponsored accounts In addition, we also run ads on Spotify and each ad runs for 30 seconds

For owned media, it is crucial to create a website, therefore, we make an owned website and then publish various videos such as “Teaser” and “Countdown”

For shared media, we post the content on our Facebook fanpage with hashtags

From that, our ambassadors or judges share these articles on their accounts to attract their fans Besides, we create minigames which audiences receive presents and they have to like, comment and share with their friends Last but not least, we make avatar frames on Facebook so that people are able to upload their images with our frames

For earned media, we work with journalists to post news about the competition on

popular newspapers such as VnExpress We also organize “A working day in Vietnam Harmony” and invite influencers or KOLs to travel the workplace so they can post reviews or viral videos on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram or Youtube

IV Crisis management

In crisis management, there are three phases to concentrate: Pro - active phase,

Re - active phase, and Recovery phase

1 Pro-active:

In the pro-active phase, there are three steps that I focus on which are

Identification, Analysis, and Strategy decisions

Step 1:

Identification

Step 2:

Analysis

Step 3: Strategy decisions

A music producer

posts on their social

account to point out

that a contestant in

Viet Nam Harmony

performed a song

without proper

permissions or licenses

from the original artists

or their representatives

● With the first triggering event, I claimed that the utmost issue was Music copyright

● This event could detrimentally damage the contest’s reputation and make it hard for Endemol Group to deal with other artists, and producers in the next seasons

● The stakeholders in that situation were identified

as not only Viet Nam Harmony’s Legal Specialists but also the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and the artists who related to the scandal

● To prevent this dilemma from arising, I suggested Viet Nam Harmony establish a support team including a Legal Specialist, the Moderator of the contest who was in charge of censor music copyright, the Head of

Communication, and

an Account Manager

● Investigation: our team would investigate to verify

if the post of that music producer was true or not

● Correct action: if the post was true, we would quickly compensate the producer and post a press release to apologize on our Facebook account

A short video recorded

conflict among

contestants escalated

into physical

altercations that went

viral on the Internet

● With the first triggering event, I claimed that the utmost issue was: Poor contestants' managing capability

● This video could remarkably discredit the contestants' management and pose a concept that Viet Nam Harmony failed

in supervising its contestants

● Stakeholder: the contestant managing department, the communication department

● To prevent this dilemma from arising, I suggested Viet Nam Harmony establish frequent bonding events for contestants to enhance unity amongst them

● Diversionary response strategy: use a video filming contestants helping each other and promoting it

A contestant fainted

during rehearsal was

recorded by journalists

● With the first triggering event, I claimed that the important issue was the contestants' safety

● This news could impact reputation and pose a misunderstanding opinion

as the contest makes its contestants overwork

● Stakeholder: the contestant managing department, the communication department

● To prevent this dilemma from arising, I suggested the contest to outsourcing a medical team including general doctors and nurses from Tam Anh hospital

to support candidates 24/7

● Prebuttal7: I claimed that the Viet Nam Harmony administrator announced about the problem first on the Facebook account and

7a statement saying or proving that a criticism is false or unfair before the criticism has actually been made prebuttal noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes | Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com (n.d.)

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/prebuttal

expressed that we were extremely concerned about our contestants’ safety

2 Reactive: Deal with a crisis that an anonymous post online saying that the prize

of Viet Nam Harmony can be bought with money.

In this phase, we used four types of strategic responses to deal with the obstacles First of all, we used Denial We posted a press release on our social account and opened a press to deny that rumor Furthermore, Investigation was also a smart choice to investigate the anonymous who posted false information and how much were people ( mostly our followers, the authorities) concerned about this news Besides, we used Threat to threaten anyone who had the same ideology Last but not least, Viet Nam harmony would let KOLS who had been invited to the Final Round to upload video when they attended the events with compliments to justify for the contest quality

3 Recovery:

Our main goals were to clarify false rumors around Viet Nam Harmony, to restore trust and reputation from our stakeholders and to minimize risks and crises for our contest

In particular, we opened a press and invited journalists, answer their questions

to satisfy their curiosity Besides, we sponsored our champion, Duc Phuc to hold a live

- show outdoor and free entrance ticket with the aim to let the audiences evaluate by themselves that he deserved to be the champion with excellence ability and do not need to buy our prize with money Last but not least, we create a hashtag #nomorelies

to raise people's awareness about avoiding deceptive content

V Press release

Just a few hours after the end of the final night of Vietnam Harmony, i.e in the early morning of November 20, an anonymous post online saying that the prizes can

be bought with money Immediately after that, a lot of false and baseless information was spread, significantly affecting the competition itself in general as well as related stakeholders in particular Faced with this situation, Vietnam Harmony's crisis communications team immediately determined the cause of the crisis and assessed the situation, scope and impact of the crisis Realize that this is a serious crisis and can easily spiral out of control if not resolved promptly Therefore, in the reactive phase of crisis management, the crisis communication team prepared a press release denying the rumors of buying the prizes The press release officially issued on November 21 just one day after the crisis occurred shows Vietnam Harmony's proactiveness and sensitivity This is an important means for the contest to reach the media as well as related stakeholders to provide accurate and timely information and build trust for the contest