Game On : Ethics and Business Partnerships

Game On : Ethics and Business Partnerships:

Last weekend I attended the 'Smarter than Smoking Western Australian Netball League Grand Final' as part of my internship. While that name is very detailed and all-encompassing, from this point on I'll refer to the event as the WANL Grand Final, for obvious reasons.

But, as you'll notice in the Netball WA content, the 'Smarter than Smoking' name stuck at all times, as was vital for their agreement with Healthway as a major partner. While event naming rights, signage, uniform logos and MC mentions on game day were all expected and rather standard, there was a little more to this partnership than was originally obvious.

On Tuesday, back in the offices at the State Netball Centre, I was tasked with writing a follow-up media release for the weekend's events. Great! But there was a twist. Another part of Healthway's partnership states that a certain amount of content each season must be released from Netball WA promoting Healthways messaging, in this case the "Smarter than Smoking" message. It felt a little sinister, a little sneaky even, having to find an angle that somehow worked this message into the release. As a Journalism/PR double major student I felt especially like I was going against my media ethics training.

I was curious, not having heard about this kind of content-based agreement within a partnership before, so I asked a few questions. According to the media relations officer at Netball WA, this kind of sponsorship is negotiated between the two organisations, with Netball WA preferring this method, as opposed to receiving Healthway content straight from the horses mouth, and then having to attempt to put a netball twist on things.

Which made sense, this way, we chose a netball angle and subtly worked in the smarter than smoking message. However in some ways it might have been better for it to be less subtle, and more obviously (and ethically) a partnership deal.

Having considered all this, I gave the release a good old crack. My morals aligned with Healthway messaging, and the fact that these athletes can actually attribute a lot of their on-court success to their diligence and dedication with healthy choices, including training, diet, and other healthy habits, off the court. Given those facts, I didn't feel like such a propaganda pusher, but I definitely would've had a different feel about things had the organisations and their goals not been so well matched and the messaging not so well aligned with my own morals.

I guess this is the kind of ethical issue that you take on a case to case basis, however my personal stance remains that transparency and clarity about paid/advertorial content is always for the best.