After my own debate yesterday, I found out how important is it to write a blog in an interesting way to actually make people read the whole thing. Hence I’ll put in extra efforts in this last week’s blog to at least make it some interesting to read. So Melanie doesn’t just skip over the blog and actually read my very last blog… This week’s readings were all about research and evaluation. Three terms, which I feel must be remembered from this week’s reading are:-
The most important terms, which marked boundaries for the reading’s scope.
Ethics are important and must be discussed in any form of research and the practitioner must be conscious of any kind of manipulation in the output or input data.
The concept hidden behind these terms are was quite hard for me to grab. There are also various types of input research methods that must be applied in practice as
A PR practitioner:
Singh also shows that research must be taught in the course as a very important stage of the public relations process. The chapter is a helpful one in understanding about the actual job of a Public relation practitioner. Just how much research is involved must also be seen as an essential task and must remain ongoing. Practitioners must be aware that there is a thing called too much research which might lead into wasting of valuable time and money.
The use of different methodologies is an important talent of public relation practitioners. He can opt to use formal or informal research with qualitative or quantitative methodologies. It may be under a primary or secondary research.
Research must be an ongoing activity and is essential to successful public relations endeavours, especially plans, campaigns and strategies. Research is a fundamental part of public relations practice and must be followed at all stages. Its use determines if a practitioner is acting as a professional or not means is he purposive, goal-directed and problem solving or not. Research techniques vary greatly including surveys which can be conducted in. The style of research will depend upon the system that the organisation operates under.
The reading made me think more about public relations theory in terms of intense research needed.
Some important quotes from the reading:
• “Management requires more facts and statistics from PR professionals to show that their efforts contribute not only to overall organisational effectiveness but also to the bottom line.”
• Input research: determines what goes into a campaign. “Input can indicate what problems or opportunities exist, what the perceptions and beliefs of the public are and what tools or methods of communication would be most effective in helping the organisation achieve its objectives with those publics."
• "Outcome research measures the extent to which the original campaign objectives were met, providing a sound basis from which to begin the planning for future campaigns."
I learnt public relations theory and practice in much more depth and the ways in which the proceedings actually happen in a profession. These research skills might even be very useful in writing for the final PR report. No matter how good the research is, most important thing is how you use the information you have gathered. Research can therefore be used as a tool in building and managing successful public relations activities.
And one last thing before i conclude my last blog.... this was a far too exciting experience to write blogs, as it was a first attempt for me. Reaching the last bit of blogging has made me a bit more inclined towards writing. I do not find a better way of understanding the readings than to actually read and summaries them and receive some positive and motivating comments. I hope blogging has enhanced my writing abilities from the beginning till end.
Yeah... I'm so happy to finally conclude my last blog.
I understood from the reading that the strategic system and systematic design of public relations plans is vital to the effective identification, implementation and management of public relations goals and objectives that complement and support organisational goals.The strategic public relation plan and budgets can firmly establish the goals and objectives of a firm.The reading later also discuss briefly the roles of strategic planning
Key Performance Indicators should also be identified to measure the progress of the company towards its mission. PR strategies, to my understanding, are very important and useful skills to have in this industry for creating a firm organisation.
Now let’s talk about tactics. The chapter enlightens that a tactic is any means of achieving this strategic outcome. There are two types of tactics,
Controlled means the practitioner has power from the start to the very end of the process, such as advertising.
Uncontrolled tactics are anything that can be altered or blocked completely such as media relations.
Methods of delivery of tactics also play a critical role in shaping the impact and effectiveness of a message. When deciding which to use, the following factors are taken in account
Emails are good for an instantaneous way to communicate short sharp messages delivered to the addressee, but they also run the risk of being classified as spam and can be easily deleted.Printed materials such as leaflets and brochures are useful when detail, persuasion or a lasting document is required, but they rely on skilful execution to compel an audience to pick them up and read them. Another effective tactic is the newsletter. This is useful especially for internal publics. It is a form of on-going communication building a good relationship with its readers. It is also cost effective, though frequently it is only appropriate for a extremely specific target audience.
Therefore the strategies and tactics in PR campaigns must be selected, keeing in mind the consideration to targeted addressees, their suitability, advantages and disadvantages and the available budget.
'Sponsorship and event management'
Philanthropic sponsorship is basically a contribution to a community-based cause, which can develop a positive view of a company in its publics.
Corporate sponsorship is when a company sponsors an event not linked to their business, such as a drinks brand sponsoring a sporting event, to gain high-profile exposure.
Marketing sponsorship is used to create increased revenue by giving cash and goods to, e, a high profile celebrity or person like a film star.
Ambush marketing is when a company tell stories about itself of being associated with an event when it has no official, legal or moral rights to do so. The most common paths for event ambushing are:
The readings urge that sponsorship also provides potential sales for businesses through marketing their brand or product in ways that are highly visible to a target or mass group which may contain potential consumers.
For example, Toshiba shared these objectives and attempted to achieve this through exclusivity, image association, signing rights, trading and media coverage.
Event management is also a key part of a PR practitioner’s job, which covers a broad range of events. According to my reading, events management needs strong leadership, defined objectives and a strong event theme and image. Event management is shown to be a tactic, which requires the maximum attention to point detail and extensive planning of all things. There are numerous incentives for holding events including media coverage, product demonstration and revenue generation. To gain all these incentives practitioners must be creative enough to manage the events. In order to achieve the best media coverage a media release is generally issued that talk about the event and sponsorship. Media functions are stuffed within the main event and event handbooks are distributed to the media with the sponsor’s logo. Events involve the implementation of strong crisis and issues management practices and also a focus on risk management. It is helpful to predict failure and negative occurrences and pre-preparing a plan to solve these.
Even Event management needs extensive planning, evaluation and consideration in order to achieve the successful execution of an event. The range of case studies discussed in the readings also exhibits the point of PR’s creativeness in sponsorship and event management is a must for a hit show.
The potential for marketing tactics always hurdles up the sponsorship proposals. It is something a PR practitioner must be aware of as a successful ambush may diminish the effectiveness of the main sponsors.
Apart from Reading, the week’s presentation also provided me with some nice example about the reading. But I still remained confused till the end of the debate about the issue of fight. Both the sides discussed about the good and bad impacts of sponsorship. I want to raise one question, ‘if you don’t have a sponsorship at all, my dear negative side, then how would you be able to see your favourite sports matches?’ I still have no answer for this.
Media Writing
The readings for this week focused on media writing.
"Writing is one of the foundations of a successful public relations practitioner and the ability to communicate messages clearly and concisely is one of their differentiating skills." (Treadwell and Treadwell, 2004)
I think the key point for this week's readings is that it is very important to form healthy working relationships with journalists in order to have success in media relations. But the journalists are very doubtful when dealing with public relations practitioners because most of them believe there is always some ulterior motive to contacting them. Also the readings highlight that overall; journalists find writing by practitioners to be meagre and missing the proper aspects to make a story newsworthy. The individual preferences of journalists regarding the way they are contacted and what is sent to them ensures that journalists look out for your information rather than thinking of seeing it turn up in their inbox. Press releases or media releases were already discussed in the professional writing course, so the reading for the week became much clearer. Another point raised in the readings was the disparaging attitudes amongst journalists when it comes to public relations. Practitioners need to target specific media in a much similar way to what they do in targeting their external and internal stakeholders etc. A media person, who is a PR or a journalist, should always be working on improving my writing and should work towards building good relationships with each other.
Media conference is also an important part of media relation as it allows a wide dissemination of a story, to give all media access at once, to allow journalists to ask follow-up questions. The media releases, news styles, Media kits, Fact sheets, articles etc. are just some tools in the hand of media to achieve their right relation with the public to solve their purpose.
chapter 4 also talks about The Trade Practice Act 1974(Cth), which helps in:
Working with legal input, public relation practitioners can move towards a systematic approach to dealing with the law. Organisations should move towards developing a legal strategy for their area specialty, setting benchmarks of best practice in potential problem areas, such as contract law, intellectual property, defamation, contempt and consumer protection law. Developing a legal strategy and compliance systems will not eliminate legal problems, but will go a long way towards minimising harm arising from the problems.
'Ethical Practice'
According to Johnston & Zawawi ethics refer to the personal values which underpin the behaviour and moral choices made by individual in response to a specific situation. Ethics are standards of integrity- in a nutshell ethics is about doing the right thing.
In a business, ethics is is about prioritising moral values for an organisation and ensuring its behaviours are aligned with those values. In a Public relation practice, ethical behaviour relates both to the practitioner and to organisation. The practitioners also need to serve public interest. He needs to ask 'will my decision benefit society, even if I hurt myself, my client, my employer or my profession?' Seib and Fitzpatrick (1995) talk about the five duties of public relations professionals as being to oneself, the client, the employer, the profession and society.
The potter boxidentifies ethics in situation, values, principles and loyalties. Three basic ethical doctrines (109). Deontology is the doctrine that ethics is duty-based and relies on moral obligation regardless of the consequences. This system depends on the morals and self-discipline of the individual, however, it will change from person to person depending on their cultural and traditional biases.
PR practice takes care of connection between both ethics and PR by upholding moral and ethical ideals. PR practitioners build a positive image and create a respected organisation throughout the many publics.
Though, the ethical dilemmas, at times become hard to crack the challenges. The challenges can be divided down into three aspects:-
Most ethical dilemmas come from social responsibility issues and from the relationship issues. These dilemmas usually the result of a poor relationship, inadequate corporate standards and conflicting obligations.
The purpose of PR is to build strong relationships with organisations and different publics to create a pleasant environment in which varying businesses, organisations etc can operate. This conducive environment can only be fully up and running with the help of law and ethics.
Johnston & Zawawi explains "As ethics is important to organisational excellence on the one hand and to public relations on the other, practitioners should be at the forefront of the movement for ethical organisational conduct."
A connection between both ethics and PR is cruical for a PR practice. By upholding moral and ethical ideals PR practitioners build a positive image and create a respected organisation throughout the many publics.The role of a PR practitioner does not remain till this extent. He needs to work as
There is a common perception about the PR people that they are the ones who are out to benefit their organisations first and foremost, though no one realises that there are many legal and ethical codes and statutes in place that help govern such behaviour, the common stereotype is somewhat outdated as legal consequences are more common in our age of litigation, therefore making practitioners and their job more socially responsible.
This week’s reading discusses about strategy, and the plan that integrates an organisation's
major goals, policies and action. The chapter covers a wide ranging critical areas of public relations practice. The strategic communication thinking recognises the cause and effect relationship between our communication activities and the achievements of organisation's mission. It talks about the creation of campaigns within a public relation job via strategies, planning and scheduling.
Part of a good strategy is the development of a vision and mission statement. The reading also majorly focuses on the theory by Johnston & Zawawi saying, "There is a cause and effect relationship between communication activities and the achievement of an organisation's mission. It means that communication programs support successful completion o the organisation's strategic activity in a measurable way."
The reading also discussed different both sort of strategies
I understood from the reading that the strategic system and systematic design of public relations plans is vital to the effective identification, implementation and management of public relations goals and objectives that complement and support organisational goals.
The strategic public relation plan and budgets can firmly establish the goals and objectives of a firm.
The reading later also discuss briefly the roles of
strategic planning
in a strategic planning of public relation. Key Performance Indicators should also be identified to measure the progress of the company towards its mission. PR strategies, to my understanding, are very important and useful skills to have in this industry for creating a firm organisation.
Public Relation is indeed a really hard job. It requires many skills and talents. Some of the really interesting skills which the reading reveals are:
