The M-Net Face of Africa competition

Abstract

The M-Net Face of Africa competition was conceived as a platform for African models toshowcase their talent to the international fashion world, and to present a positiveimage of contemporary Africa. Other goals of this competition were to comply with MNet's social responsibility in the greater African community where the broadcastingcompany functions, and to develop inter alia television broadcasting programmes forM-Net's rapidly increasing audience across the African continent. The Excellence Study(Dozier, Grunig & Grunig, 1995) formed the theoretical basis of the present study.This study argues that public relations (PR) contributes to organisational effectivenessby "using programmes to build relationships with the strategic constituencies of anorganisation" (Grunig, 1992:65).The major theoretical concept in the present study was the public relations campaignbuilt around the M-Net Face of Africa competition, and the following three constructswere identified for the purposes of the present study: the seven steps in the PRcampaign, the goals/objectives of the campaign and the evaluation thereof.The research goal of the study was to evaluate the M-Net's Face of Africa public relationscampaign by means of a standard, internationally accepted evaluation model for publicrelations programmes. It was established that M-Net has never formally and scientifically