324 CHAPTER 10 PUBLIC RELATIONSManagement’ PR campaign in order to teach students how to spend money wisely. This way, MasterCard aimed to
show the authorities that it wanted to be part of the solution to mounting debt and not part of the problem.
The campaign consisted of teaching students how to spend money wisely via peer-to-peer communications.
In other words, students taught other students in budget training sessions at universities across the Netherlands
and spread the word further through local and student media. To avoid being accused of commercial benefit,
MasterCard did not brand the campaign. MasterCard’s logo, image or house style was not revealed; MasterCard
was only mentioned as sponsor or facilitator. Student trainers, not MasterCard, organised and promoted the
courses. They set up partnerships with the university’s faculty and student organisations, and maintained local
media relations. Each student gave at least one training session per month to a minimum of 15 students. Each of
them also wrote a minimum of four media articles, blog posts, letters to editors or other external communications.
This way, hundreds of thousands of people received budgeting tips.
Before the training started and the campaign was launched in the media, MasterCard presented the programme
to different stakeholders, including MPs, civil servants at the Ministries of Finance, Social Affairs and Justice, con-
sumer associations, the Dutch Association of Banks, the Dutch Merchants association and the Dutch Central Bank.
The ‘Smart Study = Money Management’ campaign resonated well with students, the different stakeholders and
the media. The campaign was well covered by the main Dutch newspapers, radio stations and on different websites,
mentioning almost always the budgeting tips as well as MasterCard. At a cost of only €100 380, MasterCard was
able to increase political goodwill enormously and the campaign opened several doors for MasterCard at a political
and governmental level. The campaign received a Sabre Award for the best Benelux PR campaign in 2011. Because
of its huge success, MasterCard decided to extend the campaign.^15Although employees can be a direct target group of PR activity, they are an important
intermediate public too, because they are oft en in close contact with other audiences such as
the general public, the local community, suppliers and distributors, etc. It is therefore vital
that they should ‘spread the good news’ about the company. Th erefore, internal PR should
create goodwill with employees to motivate them to do so.
Finally, a specifi c type of PR activity is crisis management or crisis communications. It may
involve diff erent types of audiences, corporate and marketing, as well as internal and external
ones. Crisis communications are covered in a separate section of this chapter.
Most PR objectives relate to giving information, infl uencing opinion and building or
sustaining attitudes and feelings. Only seldom is PR directly aimed at changing behaviour.
Although objectives can be similar across target groups, diff erent emphasis can be put on
diff erent types of objectives, depending on the nature of the audience ( Table 10.2 ).Internal public relations
Th e main purpose of internal PR is to inform employees about the company’s strategic priori-
ties and the role they are playing in them, and to motivate them to carry out these objectives.
Internal communications start with building a corporate identity and motivating and training
the company’s own personnel to behave accordingly in their contacts with external audiences.
Th is should be a continuous concern, as discussed earlier (see Chapter 1 ). Additionally,
employees should be informed about specifi c marketing actions or major decisions that aff ect
them, to motivate them to accept the decisions and to co-operate in carrying them out. A
bank that launches an advertising campaign to stress service quality should convince its own
personnel to make quality of service a priority in their day-to-day contacts with customers.
Otherwise the whole advertising campaign may contrast badly with the actual behaviour of
the employees and may, as a result, be completely unbelievable.
Oft en the families of the personnel are also involved in the decisions taken, or in events
that are employee-related. Organising open days and inviting friends and relatives of the
personnel, for instance, may create a lot of goodwill and sympathy for the company among
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