Vol 36, No 1 (2017)

Mostly satirising top-of-mind brands, user-generated parody accounts are a phenomenon mostly
associated with Twitter. As an emerging trend in South Africa, parody accounts using cleverlywritten
satire attract a large and loyal following as social media communities enjoy the shared
pleasure of sharing funny content and the intense positive emotions felt when making fun of
brands that they care about. Of particular concern is when audiences find parody accounts more
honest, entertaining and authentic compared to the official social media brand account. Moreover,
user-generated parody accounts often misappropriate brand identities, thereby not only confusing
unsuspecting social media communities but also satirising brand meanings. Correspondingly,
social media management teams are faced with a reputational risk or paracrisis, since the
emotional resonance of brand reputations are being hijacked. Too often, official responses to
parody accounts are knee-jerk responses to take back control, such as aggressive threats and
litigation, easily escalating into angry viral social media backlashes. The purpose of the study was
to establish suitable paracrisis response strategies for parodied brands to maintain emotionally
resonant reputations. Using a synergistic approach to mixed methods in a triangulation design,
this study collected and analysed data from a purposive and snowball sample of 207 social media
experts. Findings suggested that humorous, tongue-in-cheek banter with user-generated parody
accounts intended for harmless fun optimise emotionally resonant brand reputations in the age
of parody.

Contemporary organisations and their leaders are continually tasked with finding new ways of
creating value for their stakeholders. Leadership effectiveness is critical within large organisations,
and leadership communication ranks as the top critical driver of organisational results. This
underlines the importance of leaders being capable communicators responsible for adding value
to organisations. However, discussions on the topic of leadership communication are rare. This
highlights the fact that the field of organisational communication has had limited engagement
with the world of leadership. This study aimed to address this knowledge gap and focused on
the role of communication in the leadership process, and attempted to identify ways in which
leadership communication could be improved. Leadership communication was explored from two
different perspectives to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon. Rogers’
revolutionary conceptual analysis was employed to investigate the foundation of the concept.
Thereafter, a phenomenological study was undertaken among communication professionals
exposed to leadership communication to explore their lived experiences of the phenomenon. The
data from the phenomenological study were used to enhance the conceptual analysis. Effective
leadership communication was described as a socially constructed and relational concept that
should endorse meaning-making in particular contexts. Guidelines are presented to enhance the
effectiveness of leadership communication.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a systematic difference in the
textual characteristics of information in the chairman’s statement of profitable and unprofitable
companies on the JSE main board. The study replicated research by Clatworthy and Jones
(2006) to determine the existence of impression management within chairman’s statements. The
difference in reporting between profitable and unprofitable companies was analysed in relation to
three pre-determined textual characteristics using an attribution theory perspective.
The primary conclusion drawn is that impression management does exist in the chairman’s
statements of companies listed on the JSE main board. Another finding of the study was that
‘extremely unprofitable’ companies are less likely to employ impression management. The
findings indicate that users of annual reports should be alert to the existence of reporting bias
introduced by management and its impact on the usefulness of management commentary in their
decision-making.

Business thinking, engagement with stakeholders, and the practice of public relations have
all been confronted with major paradigmatic shifts – especially as these are contextualized by
environments that are increasingly pluralistic. This has contributed to an important question into
what the education of future public relations practitioners (PRPs) should be so that they can
purposefully and successfully navigate and negotiate the challenges of decision-making – that
are ethical and moral in nature – in the context of complex, and diverse practice. In light of
this, public relations curriculum developers and educators are challenged to address issues of
purpose, values-based practice and education in order to prepare future PRPs for the ethical and
moral challenges that they will encounter. In the South African context this is further complicated
by the recent calls for decolonisation of South African public relations curricula. This conceptual
and exploratory paper addresses the issue of practice in an age of purpose, the changing roles of
public relations practitioners, and the contribution values-based education can make in addressing
demands for revised, and decolonised PR curricula.

Strong organisation-stakeholder relationships contribute to the former attaining its goals.
This is also the case with blood services, such as the South African National Blood Service
(SANBS). Blood services are dependent on people donating blood to unknown recipients, without
remuneration. This paper reports the approach of the SANBS to relationship management with its
donors, as well as the perceptions of blood givers of the quality of this relationship. The SANBS’s
relationship management approach and activities are analysed from a qualitative approach,
using mixed method research, namely qualitative semi-structured interviews and quantitative
questionnaires to answer the research questions.
The SANBS’s relationship with blood givers is strong, especially regarding relationship satisfaction
as outcome. The blood service staff’s behaviour and communication are the main contributors to
donor satisfaction, since they provide education and comfort during the donation process. Twoway
communication focusing on enhancing the outcomes of relationships, can therefore assist
the SANBS in recruiting and retaining donors.

This article pays tribute to Chris Skinner who was a participant in my master’s research entitled
“Corporate communication strategy: aligning theory and practice amongst selected public
relations practitioners in South Africa.” A man who needs no introduction to the South African public relations industry, Chris Skinner was known as a passionate leader and mentor who left indelible footprints as a lecturer and
as the author of the highly influential ‘Public Relations Handbook’. A fellow of the Institute for
Public Relations and Communication Management Southern Africa (PRISA); an accredited
public relations practitioner and a well respected communication specialist, Skinner had 40 years’
experience in business and corporate affairs (LinkedIn, 2017). During his career he worked,
amongst others, as a research associate at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) and
as a senior consultant with the East and Southern African Management Institute (ESAMI), and
contributed significantly to public relations education, corporate social responsibility, conservation
and crisis communication. In addition he served as Chairman of the Wildlife and Environment
Society of South Africa (Amanzimtoti) and president of the Amanzimtoti Rotary Club. Skinner died
on June 9, 2016. It was only after I learned of his death that I realised this might have been his last interview. I
would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the contribution he made to public relations,
and share his comments on corporate communication strategy.