Wednesday 16 April 2008

Political Issues and other disasters



There are two new-borned websites are very popular among netizens in China. Interestingly, these two non-profit websites are both set up by average Chinese netizens to demonstrate their opinions towards the protest recently happened in Tibet and other related incidents.




One websites is http://www.anti-cnn.com/, which "is established to expose the lies and distortions" the American news network (and other western media organisations). But CNN is becoming the target since one of its archor Jack Cafferty appeared on The Situation Room, and called Chinese "goons and thugs" and said products manufactured in China are "junk". Another websites is aimed to raise a campaign to boycott Carrefour, the French retail giant, whose biggest shareholder— LVMH Group is accused to donate a huge amount of money to Dalai Lama.


The website http://www.anti-jialefu.cn/ has been created to demonstrate the boycott Carrefour, the second biggest retailor based in France. Emails, text messages are spreading among people in China, saying not go to Carrefour on 1 May and suggesting not purchase products under LVMH Group such as Christine Dior, Louis Vuitton, etc.

Public relations people in Carrefour China responded quickly when asking organisational attitude towards the f Li Jing, head of public relations for Carrefour’s Shanghai branch, said the company was investigating the situation. Yesterday, a statement released by Eric Legros, the CEO of Carrefour China appeased on media outlets online and almost all the popular websites in China.

The statement stresses the goal of Carrefour is to promote economical and cultural development across the world. Carrefour has and will never do any things which might hurt Chinese people. The statement denies "the support to certain illegal non-government organisation(s)". At the end of the statement, Eric mentioned he and the CEO of Carrefour Group are fully support of Beijing Olympic Games 2008 and are expecting to attend the opening ceremony in Beijing.

From a public relations perspective, the reaction from Carrefour is fast and effective. Public relations practitioners in Carrefour were aware of the problem and the different voices from the virtual world. They responded to the rumour very quickly.

There is a growing tendency towards utilising ICT (Information & Communion Technology), such as websites, mobile phones, PDA as a tool in crisis communication. In my opinion, public relations people with Carrefour China could do a little bit more, such as setting up "online media centre" to better satisfy journalists. Gernerally speaking, the section incorporates important contact numbers, all the news releases, CSR report (corporate social responsibility), images and videos together. These could be used as supplementary information to support Carrefour’s statement and stand.

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