By Chinwe Uzukwu In general, it is important to have diversity in a business setting no matter the type of business it is. An industry such as Public Relations (PR) needs a team of members who are different from one another in order to develop campaigns that appeal to a diverse audience. After all, it is the media and the target audience’s public opinion that will determine if a PR plan was successful or not.
For instance, the famous clothing brand “H&M” received severe backlash over their back-to-school advertising campaign for fall 2019. This particular campaign featured elementary school children in H&M hoodies. The campaign displayed a number of children from all races to model their collection. The African-American young girl received a ton of backlash due to how her hair was represented in their campaign, causing H&M to send out a statement defending their decision process with the campaign. The target audience for the campaign was highly displeased with everything about the campaign. If you were to check the PR team members for H&M at that time, you would see there were no people of color on the team. It is very important to reflect racial diversity in PR and marketing campaigns to avoid controversial campaigns such as this one. PR firms and professionals need to understand and learn these lessons to increases their chances of generating positive responses from their target audience. Having a person of color on your PR team can result in better outcomes for campaigns. When planning campaigns, African-Americans can bring different perspectives from those of Caucasians or other races, and vice versa. The more diversity in the PR industry helps PR professionals respect customs, beliefs, and cultures of other races. Source: PR Agencies Need to Be More Diverse and Inclusive. Here’s How to Start. https://hbr.org/2018/04/pr-agencies-need-to-be-more-diverse-and-inclusive-heres-how-to-start#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Bureau%20of,%2C%20and%205.7%25%20Hispanic%20American.&text=For%20example%2C%20Barri%20Rafferty%20of,top%2010%20public%20relations%20agencies
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AuthorBowie State University SPR Group Student Blog Archives
May 2022
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