Download Nine Steps of Strategic Public Relations

Nine Steps of
Strategic Public Relations
Sunarto Prayitno
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Introduction
Communication managers are organizational decision
makers. Consider the complementary roles of two
categories of communications managers: Tactical and
strategic.
Tactical managers make day-to-day decisions on many
practical and specific issues.
Strategic managers, on the other hand, are concerned
with management, trends, issues, policies, and corporate
structure.
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Introduction
In the workplace, public relations practitioners often find
themselves functioning in both the technician and the
managerial roles, but the balance is shifting.
Today’s environment – and more importantly, tomorrow’s
– calls for greater skill on the management side of
communication.
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Introduction
The job of strategic communication planning calls for
four particular skills:
1. Understanding research planning.
2.
Knowing how to make strategic choices.
3.
Making selections from an expanding inventory of
tactical choices.
4.
Completing the process by evaluating program
effectiveness.
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Introduction
You’ll find nine steps, each presented with the
following three basic elements:
1. Explanations that are clear and understandable,
drawn from contemporary theory and current practice.
2.
Examples that help you see the concept in action,
drawn from both nonprofit and for-profit organizations.
3.
Hands-on exercises in both short form and expanded
versions that help you apply the process in your own
situation.
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Introduction
An effective practitioners understand a problem and
manages it to its successful conclusion.
How do we manage problems? Sometimes by making
them go away. Sometimes just by helping them run their
course with the least harm to the organization.
Public relations practitioners face all kinds of problems:
low visibility, lack of public understanding, opposition
from critics, and insufficient support from funding
sources.
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Introduction
Marketing communicators face similar problems:
unfamiliarity of companies or products, apathy from
consumers, product recalls, and other liabilities.
Both may deal with indifference among workers and
misunderstanding by regulators.
Public relations and marketing are distinct yet
overlapping fields. Each has its own focus and its own
particular tools, and each discipline fulfills different
purposes within an organization.
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Introduction
Yet more and more, it is becoming evident that the
coordination of public relations and marketing
communications can increase an organization’s
efficiency and effectiveness.
In this classic sense, public relations focuses on longterm patterns of interaction between and organization
and all of its various publics, both supportive and nonsupportive.
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Introduction
Marketing communications focuses more immediately on
products or services that respond to the wants and
needs of consumers. It seeks to foster an economic
exchange between organizations and its consumers.
Both disciplines deserve a seat at the management
table. Both identify wants, interests, needs, and
expectations key group of people, and both structure
ways to communicate with them.
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Introduction
Both disciplines rely on research and are rooted in the
organization’s mission and directed toward its “bottom
line”
Finally, public relations and marketing communications
share a concern about both the sort-term and the longterm interest of he organization.
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Introduction
Strategic communication is the name for such planned
communication campaign. More specifically, it is
intentional communication undertaken by a business or
nonprofit organization, sometimes by a less-structured
group.
It has a purpose and a plan, in which alternatives are
considered and decisions are justified. In variably,
strategic communication is based on research and
subject to eventual evaluation.
It operates within a particular environment, which
involves both the organization and groups of people who
affect it in some way.
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Strategic Public Relations
Most textbooks dealing with public relations encourage
a four-phase process:
Some use the RACE acronym (John Marston, 1963):
– Research
– Action
– Communication
– Evaluation
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Strategic Public Relations
RAISE (Robert Kendall, 1997):
– Research
– Adaptation
– Implementation Strategy
– Evaluation
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Strategic Public Relations
SOSTAC (Smith, Berry, and Pulford, 1999):
– Situation
– Objectives
– Strategy
– Tactic
– Action
– Control
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Strategic Public Relations
ROPE (Jerry Hendrix, 2000):
– Research
– Objectives
– Programming
– Evaluation
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Strategic Public Relations
BOSTE (Sunarto Prayitno, 2008):
– Background
– Objectives
– Strategies
– Tactics or Executions
– Evaluation
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Strategic Public Relations
Defining public relations problems, planning and
programming, taking action and communication, and
evaluating the program (Cutlip, Center, and Broom,
2000).
Philip Kotler and his colleagues (Kotler, Roberto, and
Lee, 2002) identify sight steps in four general stages that
focus on analysis of the environment, identification of
audiences and objectives, development of a strategic
approach, and development of the implementation
plan.
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Strategic Public Relations
Strategic Planning for Public Relations (Ronald D. Smith,
2005) offer a model that is meant to be both logical and
easy to follow. These steps are grouped into four phases
that are both descriptive and accurate, but their names
don’t lend themselves to an acronym.
So, without a great deal of fanfare, this model is called,
simply: the Nine Steps of Strategic Public Relations.
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Strategic Public Relations
Phase One: Formative Research
Step 1: Analyzing the Situation
Step 2: Analyzing the Organization
Step 3: Analyzing the Public
Phase Two: Strategy
Step 4: Establishing Goals and Objectives
Step 5: Formulating Action and Response
Strategies
Step 6: Using Effective Communication
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Strategic Public Relations
Phase Three: Tactics
Step 7: Choosing Communication Tactics
Step 8: Implementing the Strategic Plan
Phase Two: Strategy
Step 9: Evaluating the Strategic Plan
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1. Formative Research
During the first phase of the nine steps, Formative
Research, the focus is on the preliminary work of
communication planning, which is the need to gather
information and analyzed the situation.
Step 1: Analyzing the Situation
Your analysis of the situation is the crucial beginning to
the process. It is imperative that all involved – planner,
clients, supervisors, key colleagues, and the ultimate
decision maker – are in solid agreement about the
nature of the opportunity or obstacle to be addressed in
this program.
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1. Formative Research
Step 2: Analyzing the Organization
This step involves a careful and candid look at three
aspects of the organization: (1) its internal environment
(mission, performance, and resources), (2) its public
perception (reputation), and (3) its external environment
(competitors and opponents, as well as supporters.
Step 3: Analyzing the Publics
In this step you identify and analyze your key publics –
the various group of people who interact with your
organization on the issues at hand.
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1. Formative Research
This step includes an analysis of each public in term of
they wants, needs, and expectations about the issue,
their relationship to the organization, their involvement in
communication and wit various media, and a variety of
social, economic, political, cultural, and technological
trends that my affect them.
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2. Strategy
The second phase of the planning process, Strategy,
deals with the heart of planning: making decisions
dealing with the expected impact of the communication,
as well as the nature of the communication itself.
Step 4: Establishing Goals and Objectives
Step four focus on the ultimate position being sought for
the organization and for the product or service.
This step helps you develop clear, specific, and
measurable objectives that identify the organization’s
hoped for impact on the awareness, acceptance, and
action of each key public.
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2. Strategy
Step 5: Formulating Action and Response Strategies
A range of actions is available to the organization, and in
this step you consider what you might do in various
situation. This section includes typologies of initiatives
and responses.
Step 6: Using Effective Communication
Step six deal with various decisions about the message,
such as the sources who will present the message to the
key publics, the content of the message, its tone and
style, verbal and non-verbal cues, and related issues.
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3. Tactics
During the Tactics phase, various communication tools
are considered and visible elements of the
communication plan are created.
Step 7: Choosing Communication Tactics
This inventory deals with various communication options.
Specifically, the planner considers four categories: (1)
face-to-face communication and opportunities for
personal involvement, (2) organizational media
(sometimes called controlled media), (3) news media
(uncontrolled media), and (4) advertising and
promotional media (another form of controlled media).
While all of these tools can be used by any organization,
not every tool is appropriate for each issue.
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3. Tactics
Step 8: Implementing the Strategic Plan
In step eight, you develop budgets and schedules and
otherwise prepare to implement the communication
program.
This step turn the raw ingredients identified in the
previous step into a recipe for successful public relations
and marketing communication.
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4. Evaluative Research
The final phase, Evaluative Research, deals with
evaluation and assessment, enabling you to determine
the degree to which the stated objectives have been met
and thus to modify or continue the communication
activities.
Step 9: Evaluating the Strategic Plan
This is the final planning element, indicating specific
methods for measuring the effectiveness of each
recommended tactic in meeting the stated objectives.
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