PR's Conscientious Objectives

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More and more corporations are catching the corporate social responsibility (CSR) wave, promoting themselves as good global corporate citizens. The PR industry has taken note observes PR Week. "Many [PR firms] have identified CSR as a major growth area for their business, and an opportunity to operate at the highest levels, counseling board members and even CEOs, rather than just focusing on more junior employees," PR Week writes. "All these agencies see CSR and PR not only as a natural fit for one another, but almost as one and the same. 'This is classic, substantive issues management,' says [Burson-Marsteller's Jordana] Friedman. 'We are being issues management experts first, and communicating the stories second, which is really where PR should be anyway. We bring to the table an exceptional combination of our expertise in having dialogue with NGOs, policy makers, and social investment funds.'" Ketchum Chairman David Drobis writes in Public Relations Strategist, "Given the link between corporate social responsibility and reputation, PR practitioners, as communications counselors, are in a unique position to help companies develop, institutionalize and communicate their corporate social responsibility practices."