All around the world PR campaigns are being conducted to vie for viewer’s attention. Most recently, Chevy jumped on this bandwagon during the 2010 VMA's as explained in a blog by David Goldman. Inside the blog, Goldman discusses how Chevy strategically placed cars from their line up into different VMA acts, with the most notable being in the hip-hop group, N.E.R.D's set. The Chevy Cruze, which is reminiscent of competitor cars, Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla, Goldman further explained, looked ridiculous next to the rappers whom are noted for living a glamorous lifestyle. But this American campaign reveals much more than just a garish publicity stunt. One can decipher from where Chevy placed this ad, who their target market was and what American PR values as a culture. For example, people watching the VMA's are usually teenagers, most just learning how to drive in their 16's, therefore seeing the Chevy Cruze on stage will make this target tween market want to go to their parents and ask for this car. Thus, proving the campaign to be quite successful in my eyes. Goldman makes a great point though saying that it is "cheesy" as pan shots of the crowd, where viewers expect to see only their favorite celebrities, would also get shots of the Chevy Camaro. Yet this type of "subliminal advertising" as Goldman calls it, does not seem like brain washing to me, but more as proper product placement. America has an infatuation with celebrates and fame. Just by placing this car among such images, is a great way to make a car seem more prestigious than it is. PR's aim is after all to raise positive awareness. How can one not raise this awareness if he or she does not use tools to show viewers how singular their product is. A product so special, it can hang with the stars.
Likewise, there is nothing ethically wrong with Chevy for being saturated in the media through hit programming. The Superbowl, a mass televised event bombards viewers with many ads. Some viewers just watching the Superbowl for these ads themselves. Although in other countries such as Spain, campaign ethics in PR are much different and thus Spaniards would view the Chevy PR plug on a more strict scale of ethics. Kaylen McMullen's blog, PR332 discusses the importance of getting to know someone on a personal level when dealing with business relationships in Spain. She continues to state Spain "appreciates face to face [contact] instead of actions by phone or email". Thus, seeing ads on TV or just using the media in general might be uneasy for the Spanish people to respond to. Additionally, PR campaigns in Spain are not as widespread, in fact according to McMullen, Spanish PR practitioners are only known for press releases with the majority having journalism degrees. Therefore, Spain might consider this ad placement cutting edge seeing as most PR efforts do not go beyond a pen and paper. One could even see not being able to go beyond the output level of PR in Spain as a restriction on what a PR practioner does, and thus as unethical to Americans.
Yet, similarities still exist. For example the fact that both the U.S. and Spain have high uncertainty indexes when it comes to how many people will be reached out of the target audience, (outcome) as well as which media outlets will pick up press releases (outreach). In the end, it's all just a matter of putting all ambiguity aside and carrying forth with the campaign hoping for the best.
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