NGO'S activism in PR

In class today we have also watched a very interesting video called " Super size me". Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock makes himself a test subject of this documentary about the commercial food industry. Rigorously eating a diet of McDonald's fast food, three times a day for a month straight. Spurlock is out to prove the physical and mental effects of consuming fast food. While doing this, Spurlock also provides a look at the food culture in America through it's schools, corporations, and politics as seen through the eyes of regular people and health advocates. "Super Size Me" is a movie that sheds a new light on what has become one of our nation's biggest health problems: obesity

Why was this movie relevant with our topic. Well because in this case NGO are against this junk food corporations. They are not healthy at all and in time you can die. What PR is doing? In this case not much. When Morgan tried to get in touch with someone from the communication department it was impossible. He tried several times and no answer BUT when he could get in touch with the "PR of McDonalds he couldn't get the answers he wanted. This video was a clear example of NGO's role.

We all know that one of the biggest issues for PR is non governmental organisations. They always look for the right things to happen. They want to make justice everywhere is possible. We also know that even if PR is a tool to shoe transparency, promoting, campaigning, etc there are some ways that are not on the same line with NGO's desires. This is way there are always "battles" between the two.

Non-governmental organizations need healthy relationships with the public to meet their goals. Foundations and charities use sophisticated public relations campaigns to raise funds and employ standard lobbying techniques with governments.


The relationship between NGO’s and PR is quite interesting. PR and NGO are very rare associated to each other. This is because of the negative perception associated with the word ‘public relations’, even if NGO work almost the same as public relation, having the same materials such as campaigns or media relations, events etc. Another reasons could be that NGO's are afraid to be in the same bottle with PR. Public Relations is mostly used in corporations and this a paradox since the corporations are the target of NGO'S. . But if you have a detailed look, you will find that NGO'S do the same thing as PR such as writing press releases, briefing journalists, maintaining relationships with stakeholders and organising an event etc. Even if is almost the same work NGO’s think their are different and the work that they make is better than PR.