The last few weeks I have begun my marketing  internship at Levi Strauss & Co. The main description of my position is to engage employees, improve internal employee relations  and to assist my team. My team has high expectations of me to be a self starter, creative, organized and efficient. 

When I find a second or two of down time I must be creative. There’s always something!  When I see something that might need improvement I am taking the intiative to brainstorm and come up with new ideas to improve the internal employee relations at Levi Strauss & Co.

After only a few weeks, it has been exciting and eye opening. I have never worked for a large corporation or even explored the internal employee relations side of public realtions.

So I’m taking on a new theme with this blog. I will be blogging for the next three months about public relations topics that I am learning during my time at Levi Strauss & Co. Let me know what you think!

The Italian food company Barilla America Inc. did just that. Barilla America Inc. used the information that was discovered by Edleman’s research branch Strategy One. Strategy One found that 93 percent of people ranked sharing meals as the most important activity in helping them connect with their family. Strategy One also found that seven in ten people report that some other activity competes with the typical family dinner and six in ten report some type of technology or entertainment-related distraction.

Barilla America Inc. vision is to help people live better, by bringing well-being and the joy of eating into their everyday lives. Barilla America Inc. combined vision and research to spawn the company’s “Share the Table” campaign.

Barilla America Inc. has created a place on their website for viewers to take a pledge to have more meaningful meals with their families. Also with every pledge, $1.00 will be donated to the Meals on Wheels Association of America. On the website people can take quizzes to gage how their families are doing with having meaningful meals, read tips on how to have meaningful meals and also advice from popular celebrities.

Barilla’s “Share the Table” landed over 1,000 placements and 187 media impressions. National television and radio coverage included “The Rachael Ray Show,” “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” “The Today Show” and in magazines including The Family Circle Magazine and Country Weekly. People genuinely want to make the change to have more meaningful meals and I believe that Barilla America Inc.’s success contributed to their effective use of research.

        Using play on words, Honest Tea sponsored sampling vehicles called “Honest Stores.” These stores were stocked with racks of Honest Tea products for sale for $1.00 in seven major cities during hot summer months. These sampling vehicles were completely unmanned and were solely based on the honor system. What the consumers didn’t know was that they were being filmed. Hidden cameras were placed at these sampling vehicles to tape the reactions of the people and to see if they were truly honest and paid for the tea. The local media was quickly alerted about the event, which created an exciting buzz around the brand and stunt campaign. This campaign engaged consumers in a way that was unexpected and also improved sales. America proved to be 87 percent honest and Boston was named the “Most Honest City in America” with an honesty percentage of 93.3 percent.

        The “Most Honest City in America” campaign has beautifully demonstrated Honest Tea’s corporate social responsibility. Honest Tea’s CSR states, “The company strives for authenticity, integrity and purity, in our products and in the way we do business… Honest Tea seeks to create honest relationships with our employees, suppliers, customers and with the communities in which we do business.” This campaign effectively paralleled the company’s mission statement and CSR and also achieved a significant return on investment with double-digit sales increase in the seven cities where the sampling vehicles were placed. This campaign also challenged the consumers to embody their brand of being truly honest.

Facebook has often been accused of shady business practices in the past. This public relations blunder is another one for the books.

Facebook forgot the most important business practice- to be transparent. Transparency should not be a tactic or strategy for a business. Transparency should be a business principle. Openness about your business and its practices is a very important tool and will allow your customers to trust you.

Here are a few key guidelines to being transparent:

1. Stick to the facts and state the truth.
2. Accept and acknowledge when your company has made a mistake. Your customers will appreciate it.
3. When your customers have questions, you should provide them with answers. Don’t beat around the bush.
4. Disclose every relationship your company has with other companies or issues.
5. Make information accessible for your customers. They don’t want to go fishing for your dirty laundry.

Unfortunately for Facebook their trust was lost with their customers by using a third party public relations firm.  . Facebook should have remained transparent with their issue with Google. If Facebook would have had an honest and open discussion with Google about Social Circle, I believe that the tables would have been turned and Google would have been seen as the company in the wrong.

 World Fair Trade Day is on May 14, 2011. It is a day to promote opportunities for economically disadvantaged producers, inform people about fair prices and gender equality, improve working conditions, and encourage environmentally friendly business practices.

Ben & Jerry’s social mission is to initiate ways to improve quality of life locally, nationally and internationally. Last year Ben & Jerry’s also committed to using 100 percent fair trade ingredients. They have combined World Fair Trade Day and their social mission with this campaign. Twitter users can tweet as they normally would on the Ben & Jerry’s website, and Ben & Jerry’s will turn any leftover characters of their tweet into a message about World Fair Trade Day.

This is a great tactic that Ben & Jerry’s developed. It is simple and to the point. Ben & Jerry’s put their social mission to work and created a lasting brand image of being socially and environmentally responsible.

I do recommend this tactic because it allows fans to feel like they are contributing to the cause. I would suggest that when a company uses this tactic of spreading awareness that they also back up the education with donations or change in policy like Ben & Jerry’s did last year. When using this tactic a company must keep in mind the goal of the cause and make sure it correlates with their mission statement. I am curious to see how many other companies jump on the bandwagon of donating tweets.