Where you likely have heard some things about public relations

What is public relations?

Who uses public relations?

Differences between marketing, advertising, and public relations

Marketing

• Systematic process and planning of an organization's promotional efforts
• Focused on the promotion of products and/or services in order to drive sales
• Audience is primarily customers or potential buyers
• Paid media: companies have to pay for marketing efforts
• Often works in tandem with public relations and advertising

Public Relations

• Focused on creating a favorable public image with stakeholders through relationship building and reputation management
• Audiences are not just customers, both other stakeholders like community members, investors, employees and public officials
• Not a component of marketing, but works with marketing
• Earned media: Publicity achieved through pitching or convincing journalists to cover your client or organization
• Assists with risk and crisis management planning and messaging

Advertising

• Focused on drawing attention to the product through strategic placement and imagery
• Not a component of marketing, but works with marketing
• Paid media: companies have to pay for advertisement creation
• Audience is primarily customers or potential buyers

The importance of stakeholders

Public relations is the practice of managing the flow of information between an individual or an organization and the public.  To be more accurate, most public relations doesn't focus on reaching out to an amorphous "public" -- instead it attempts to reach various groups who have specific connections to the public relations client. These various groups are known as "stakeholders."  Public relations, then, works within an ecology (or an interconnected system) of stakeholders with the aim of persuading these differing audiences (e.g. investors, employees, shareholders) to maintain or adjust their beliefs, predispositions and/or actions in ways that can attain mutual benefits.  

Four models of public relations

Grunig and Hunt (1984) developed four models of public relations that describe the field’s various management and organizational practices. These models are good reference points for public relations practitioners as they create programs, strategies, and tactics.  Public relations activities often flow back and forth among these four models.

  [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="721"] "Four Models of PR” by Michael Shiflet and Jasmine Roberts is licensed under CC BY 2.0[/caption] In the press agent/publicity model, communications professionals use persuasion to shape the thoughts and opinions of key audiences. In this model, achieving awareness is more important than complete accuracy, and organizations do not seek audience feedback or conduct audience analysis research. It is a one-way form of communication. One example would be a public relations campaign to help advance the sale of concert tickets for a celebrity musician's comeback tour. The public information model moves away from the hype tactics used in the press agent model and presents more accurate information. However, the communication pattern is still one-way. Practitioners do not conduct audience analysis research to guide their strategies and tactics. Some press releases and newsletters are created based on this model, when audiences are not necessarily targeted or researched beforehand. Another example of this model is the one-way communication that a government office uses, in the midst of a pandemic, to inform and instruct members of a community about how to lower their risks of contracting a deadly virus. The two-way asymmetrical model  features public relations professionals conducting research to better understand the various audiences' attitudes and behaviors which, in turn, informs the message strategy and creation. Still, persuasive communication is used in this model to benefit the organization more so than audiences; therefore, it is considered asymmetrical or unbalanced.  An example of this is a rideshare company researching how various demographics uses their service so that they can make adjustments and improvements and then sending out messages to those various demographics about these adjustments. Finally, the two-way symmetrical model argues that the public relations practitioner should serve as a liaison between the organization and key publics, rather than serving solely as a persuader. Here, practitioners are negotiators/facilitators and use communication to ensure that all involved parties benefit, not just the organization that employs the public relations professional. The term “symmetrical” is used because the model attempts to create a mutually beneficial situation. The two-way symmetrical model is deemed the most ethical model, one that professionals should aspire to use in their everyday tactics and strategies (Simpson, 2014). An example of this would be a fast-fashion company that seeks out feedback from their audiences about what changes they need to make to be more environmentally friendly (e.g., enhancing the durability of their products, using less natural resources to create their products). The company's adjustments would be communicated to the audiences with the intent of getting more feedback and making additional changes to their business model.

General roles in public relations

According to Smith (2014), public relations practitioners can be placed in two groups based on responsibilities: communication managers and communication technicians. Communication managers assist in the strategic planning of an organization’s communication efforts. The broad term “communication manager” includes several similar public relations positions: expert prescriber, communication facilitator, and problem-solving facilitator (Broom & Sha, 2013).  Problem-solving facilitators provide crisis management to an organization during an obstacle. Liaisons speak on behalf of the brand and facilitate communication between the organization and its key publics. Before entering a managerial role, most public relations practitioners begin their career as a communication technician. This can refer to a variety of entry-level positions, including public relations specialist, communication assistant, and junior account executive. Communication technicians write press releases, pitches, feature articles, and other communication materials and assist in event planning.

Expert prescribers do more with strategic planning than communication technicians. They are seen as an authority on public relations and develop specific communication plans and roll out tactics to help achieve organizational goals.  Because management perceives       this role as "owning" public relations, practitioners in this role need to be aware that a particular downside of this role is that other managers and workers in the organization may not see the roles they play in advancing good relations with stakeholders.  Instead, public   relations concerns and approaches can be simply routed to the expert prescriber, off-loading the wider public relations responsibilities to the expert prescriber.

The communication facilitator role focuses on serving as a broker between the PR client and its audiences. This role is more about the exchange of information between the organization and its audiences.  This role is not primarily focused on problem-solving but on facilitating the exchange of ideas and information. Problem-solving facilitators are part of the "C" suite planning team.  They consult management on the nature of the problem and how to approach it in ways that help advance the organization's goals while also addressing the attitudes and needs of the stakeholders. This role is often filled by senior public relations people. Together, communication managers and technicians play a vital role in relationship building. They are all vitally  important and a public relations professional, over the course of their career, will likely advance from communication technician to problem-solving facilitator. However, even a senior public relations person will often fufill the other roles at various times. It's not unusual to see a senior practitioner help in problem-solving planning, and then move into helping write a part of the annual report (communication technician) or lead a focus group (communication facilitator).

PR functions

Either private PR companies or in-house communications staffers or PR firms carry out PR functions. A PR group generally handles all aspects of an organization’s or individual’s media presence, including company publications and press releases. Such a group can range from just one person to dozens of employees, depending on the size and scope of the organization. The chart below shows most of the key roles that PR people carry out (with the surprising omission of risk and crisis communication).

Public Relations' Components and Roles

Components of Public Relations	Explanations of Role
Counseling	Providing advice to management concerning policies, relationships, and communications
Research	Determining the attitudes and behaviors of groups to plan public relations strategies. Such research can be used to generate mutual understanding or influence and persuade publics.
Media Relations	Working with mass media (television, web sites, newspapers, magazines, and the like) by seeking publicity or responding to their interests in the organization.
Publicity	Disseminating planned messages through selected  media to further an organization’s interests.
Employee Member Relations	Responding to concerns, informing, and motivating and organization’s current employees or members.
Community Relations	Undertaking activities within a community to maintain an environment that benefits both an organization and the community .
Public Affairs	Developing effective involvement in public policy and helping an organization adapt to public expectations. The term “public affairs” is also used by government agencies to describe their public relations activities and by many corporations as an umbrella term to describe multiple public relation activities.
Government Affairs	Relating directly with legislatures and regulatory agencies on behalf of an organization. Lobbying can be part of a government affairs program.
Issue Management	Identifying and addressing issues of public concern that affect an organization.
Financial Relations	Creating and maintaining investor confidence and building good relationships with financial community.
Industry Relations	Relating with other firms in the industry of an organization and with trade associations.
Development/Fund-Raising	Demonstrating the need for and encouraging the public support charitable organization primarily through financial contributions.
Multicultural Relations/Workplace Diversity	Communicating with individuals and groups in various cultural groups.
Special Events	Stimulating an interest in a person, product, or organization by means of focused “happenings” as well as other activities designed to encourage interacting with publics and listening to them.
Marketing Communications	Employing a combination of activities, designed to sell a product, service, or idea, including advertising, collateral materials, publicity, promotions, direct mail, trade shows, and special events.

Anatomy of a public relations campaign

Not everything in public relations is about campaigns.  Sometimes public relations people put out important announcements about breaking news (e.g., the appointment of a new CEO) or help management find out what employees and stakeholders are thinking about through focus groups, interviews, and management by walking around (walking the workroom floor to see what is happening or visiting with news media contacts). However, it is important to understand the dynamics of a public relations campaign because a) it will sharpen your thinking about how public relations makes a difference for clients and b) it will prepare you to take on the larger inter-connected components that more senior public relations people need to manage.

Research phase

Action Planning (or "strategy") phase

Communication (or "tactics") phase

Evaluation phase

Public relations and risk and crisis management

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="201"] "Extra Strength Tylenol and Tylenol PM" by Ragesoss is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0..[/caption] As mentioned at the start of this chapter, the general public is often aware of public relations through its efforts to manage risk and crisis. Although it is beyond the scope of this book, it is important to understand a few important elements of this part of public relations. In 1982, Johnson & Johnson's Tylenol medication commanded 35% of the US over-the-counter analgesic market and represented 15% of the company's profits. Unfortunately, one individual succeeded in lacing the drug with cyanide. Seven people died as a result, so a panic ensued about how widespread the contamination might be. By the end of the episode, everyone knew that Tylenol was associated with the scare. The company's market value fell by $1 billion as a result. When the same situation happened again in 1986, the company had learned its lesson. It quickly ordered that Tylenol be recalled from every outlet, not just those in the state where it had been tampered with. The company also decided that the product would not be re-established on the shelves until something had been done to provide better product protection. As a result, Johnson & Johnson developed the tamperproof packaging that would make it much more difficult for a similar incident to occur in the future. The best way to build good PR is to carefully maintain a good reputation over time and to avoid behaviors as an individual, company or corporation that might harm others. In other words, avoid actions that present undue risk to the organization and its stakeholders. At a basic level, prevention against bad PR calls on your organization to follow your industry's ethical codes and you to follow the ethical codes of public relations (the Public Relations Society of America provide an excellent set of codes for the PR profession). Even if you and your organization do this, you might face a crisis. For example, a politician might decide to target your brand regardless of whether your business practices are ethical. The first rule of crisis communications is to plan ahead by anticipating the kinds of problems your company might have. Chemical companies should prepare for chemical spills. Sports teams will probably not prepare for environmental disasters, but they may have to prepare for the social media scandals that players sometimes land themselves in. If there is a disaster, the advice is to “be truthful and transparent,” to not say too much, and to correct any exaggerations that emerge in the news media and on social media, within reason. The major, overarching goals of PR efforts during a crisis is to fix the problem, do better, and, in the process, help people forget there ever was a crisis. Journalists often have the opposite interest because reporting on conflict is interesting. Helping people to survive is one of the primary functions of journalism. This explains why negative news gets so much more attention than positive news. No one dies when people do their jobs salting the roads and drivers maneuver safely in snowstorms. When people crash, that, sadly, is news. Journalists know that people care about safety perhaps more than any other issue, so they focus on safety concerns during times of crisis. At these times, PR and journalism can be at odds, but truth and transparency are still advisable to the PR professional. You do not legally have to tell journalists everything that has happened (and, in fact, there may be legal reasons to not tell everything you know about the crisis) but if journalists discover a negative impact that you failed to disclose, they will wonder what else you are hiding, and they may give your critics and detractors extra consideration and attention. In any emergency situation, it is imperative that a company put the public interest ahead of the organization's interest. The company's first responsibility is to the safety and well-being of the people involved. Once safety has been restored, the company needs to face the public and face the facts. The company should never try to minimize a serious problem or "smooth it over" in the hope that no one will notice. Conversely, don't blow minor incidents out of proportion or allow others to do so. Social media has accelerated the speed at which information about a crisis can spread; the viral affect of social networks such as Twitter means that stakeholders can break news faster than traditional media, which makes managing a crisis harder. However, a company should not speculate; if they don't know the facts, they should say so and promise to get back to the media as soon as possible. Finally, in PR there is the need to learn from mistakes and to analyze a company or corporation's crisis responses. As difficult as it might be to go back and discuss where communication failed, it is essential. Reflection is a critical step in learning and corporations are like any other social institution. They need to learn to survive and to thrive. Ultimately, one of the core lessons of risk and crisis management is this: you and your organization don't determine if a risk has elevated into a crisis — your stakeholders do.

Public relations and branding

[caption id="attachment_78" align="alignright" width="199"] "Public Relations NYPD Style" by Dave Hamster is licensed under CC BY 2.0.[/caption] Pioneered by such companies as Procter & Gamble during the 1930s, the older, advertising-centric model of branding focused on the product, using advertisements to associate a particular branded good with quality or some other positive cultural value. Yet, as consumers became exposed to ever-increasing numbers of advertisements, traditional advertising’s effectiveness dwindled. The ubiquity of modern advertising means the public is skeptical of—or even ignores—claims advertisers make about their products. This credibility gap can be overcome, however, when PR professionals using good promotional strategies step in. The new PR-oriented model of branding focuses on the overall image of the company rather than on the specific merits of the product (see the NYPD's outreach bus, at right). This branding model seeks to associate an organization or company with specific personal and cultural values that hold meaning for consumers. In the early 1990s, for example, car company Saturn marketed its automobiles not as a means of transportation but as a form of culture. PR campaigns promoted the image of the Saturn family, associating the company with powerful American values and giving Saturn owners a sense of community. Events such as the 1994 Saturn homecoming sought to encourage this sense of belonging. Some 45,000 people turned out for this event; families gave up their beach holidays simply to come to a Saturn manufacturing plant in Tennessee to socialize with other Saturn owners and tour the facility. Toyota faced a crisis when it instituted a massive recall based on safety issues. To counter the bad press, the company launched a series of commercials featuring top Toyota executives, urging the public to keep their faith in the brand (Bernstein, 2010). Toyota used a style of self-awareness to market its automobiles. The positive PR campaign presented Toyotas as cars with a high standard of excellence, backed by a company striving to meet customers’ needs.

Branding backlashes (or, be true to who you are)

An important part of maintaining a consistent brand is preserving the emotional attachment consumers have to that brand. Just as PR campaigns build brands, PR crises can damage them. For example, the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010 became a PR nightmare for BP, an oil company that had been using PR to rebrand itself as an environmentally friendly energy company. In 2000, BP began a campaign presenting itself as “Beyond Petroleum,” rather than British Petroleum, the company’s original name. By acquiring a major solar company, BP became the world leader in solar production and in 2005 announced it would invest $8 billion in alternative energy over the following 10 years. BP’s marketing firm developed a PR campaign that, at least on the surface, emulated the forward-looking, two-way symmetric PR model. The campaign conducted interviews with consumers, giving them an opportunity to air their grievances and publicize energy policy issues. BP’s website featured a carbon footprint calculator consumers could use to calculate the size of their environmental impact (Solman, 2008). The single explosion on BP’s deep-water oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico essentially nullified the PR work of the previous 10 years, immediately putting BP at the bottom of the list of environmentally concerned companies. A company’s control over what its brand symbolizes can also lead to branding issues. The Body Shop, a cosmetics company that gained popularity during the 1980s and early 1990s, used PR to build its image as a company that created natural products and took a stand on issues of corporate ethics. The company teamed up with Greenpeace and other environmental groups to promote green issues and increase its natural image. By the mid-1990s, however, revelations about the unethical treatment of franchise owners called this image into serious question. The Body Shop had spent a great deal of time and money creating its progressive, spontaneous image. Stories of travels to exotic locations to research and develop cosmetics were completely fabricated, as was the company’s reputation for charitable contributions. Even the origins of the company had been made up as a PR tool: The idea, name, and even product list had been ripped off from a small California chain called the Body Shop that was later given a settlement to keep quiet. The PR campaign of the Body Shop made it one of the great success stories of the early 1990s, but the unfounded nature of its PR claims undermined its image dramatically. Competitor L’Oréal eventually bought the Body Shop for a fraction of its previous value (Entine, 2007).

Branding as a part of public relations

That so many different groups have adopted branding as a means of communication is a testament to its ubiquity. Even anticommercial, antibrand groups such as Adbusters have created brands to send messages. Social media sites have also encouraged branding techniques by allowing users to create profiles of themselves that they use to communicate their core values. This personal application is perhaps the greatest evidence of the impact of PR on modern culture. Branding, once a technique used by companies to sell their products, has become an everyday means of communication. Branding focuses on the lifestyles and values inherent in a brand’s image as opposed to the products that are manufactured. Ultimately, however, public relations is about more than branding. This is because branding is always associated with a performative element; it is concerned with how well a product or service connect with the values, attitudes, and lifestyles of key audience. Public relations certainly addresses these elements, but it encompasses more.  Public relations works to help clients adjust their policies, organizational culture and their mission/goals so that they come into some degree of alignment with the concerns and ambitions of key publics.

References

Broom, G. & Sha, B-L. (2013) Effective Public Relations (11th edition). New York: Pearson. Grunig, J. & Hunt, T. (1984). Managing Public Relations. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston. Smith, R. (2013). Public Relations: The Basics. New York: Routledge

Image Attribution

"The differences and relationships among marketing, public relations, and advertising", by Jasmine Roberts and Michael Shiflet is licensed under CC BY 2.0. “Stakeholder” by Grochim is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. "Four Models of PR” by Michael Shiflet and Jasmine Roberts is licensed under CC BY 2.0. "Extra Strength Tylenol and Tylenol PM" by Ragesoss is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. "Public Relations NYPD Style" by Dave Hamster is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

• It's not in the budget.
• We don't have enough time for it.
• We're not going to evaluate the campaign, so why bother doing upfront research either?
• We don't pay you for research, we pay you to get things done.
• Let's see how things go this time and, if everything works out OK, then we can do research next time.
• We don't have the right people to do the research.
• We have the right people, but they are busy on other tasks and project.

Real State/Ideal State Analysis

• It is written in the present tense. It describes the current situation without going into any suggestions about what could or should be done.
• It points out what is the source of the concern.
• It points to where the problem is most visible.
• It indicates when the problem occurs. [caption id="attachment_110" align="alignright" width="300"] Untitled by Geralt is licensed under CC0.[/caption]
• It describes who is involved or affected
• It clearly states why this is a concern, both for the client and its stakeholders.

Research modes

• Social media metrics: tracking and assigning numerical values to level of activities, followers and interactions.
• Content analysis:  tracking and assigning numerical values to text and associated imagery and where/how the content appears. This involves training coders using a coding book; usually agreement between the coders of about 80 percent is required for validity of the results. This process does NOT code for audience attention or retention of the content.
• Surveys: these are queries of audiences who are subsets of a wider population.  To be valid, samplings within this wider population must be randomized--that is, everyone within a subset population must have an equal probablity of being asked to participate in the doing the survey.  Surveys can beadministered through email, traditional mail or via the phone. Online surveys can be conducted in a way that is randomized, but careful thought must be taken to make sure they are truly randomized.
• Databanks: organizations and governments track large sets of data. For example, for-profit organizations may track retails sales, numbers of customer inquiries and customer traffic in a bricks and motor store. Governments tracks traffic patterns, demographics and labor output.

• [caption id="attachment_113" align="alignright" width="300"] "Food Innovation 1" by Penn State is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.[/caption] Personal observation: this simply involves doing direct observations.  For example, you may want to visit with customers and/or employees in your workplace. This is often referred to as "Management by Walking Around." This approach allows you to see directly what is happening and how people talk about it.  This also includes going to community meetings and trade association events, or even visiting with stakeholders where it is most convenient to them.
• Focus groups: this approach calls for bringing about 6-12 people together to get their impressions about a subject, issue, product, or service. Focus groups normally involve one facilitator who helps lead the discussion and another person who captures the threadlines of the participants' observations.
• Key informants and one-on-one interviews: this approach is less formalized than the focus group; this often involves finding out the perspectives of opinion leaders like mentors, civic leaders, academics, social movement leaders and clergy. Such meetings can be one-on-one, or in small groups.  This approach, however, normally works best when the information gathering is done through one-on-one interviews
• Community forums: consider these to be like a focus group on steroids. Normally, the number of people can be much higher than the 12 maximum for a focus group. This is because the attendees at a forum, unlike those at a focus group, may already be well versed on the subject to be discussed and are motivated to approach the matter in a particular way.  Thiink of town hall meetings where a client may be seeking info on, for example, where to locate a new facility.
• Advisory committees: unlike a focus group, advisory committees consist of interested and motivated community members who see that they have direct stake in your organization. They operate as an advise and consult group; organizations may choose to use this forum to share ideas about new products and services or to ask committee members to provide ideas about solutions to problems both internal and external to the organization.
• Call-in telephone lines: these are normally toll-free and can be offered to customers in a more passive way (e.g., the number is offered as a customer service line, and is often printed on the packaging of the product) or can be offered in a more high-profile way (e.g., a server points out the number on your restaurant receipt, or you see a "How's my driving?" sign on the back of a delivery vehicle, with the phone number clearly displayed. [caption id="attachment_112" align="alignright" width="300"] One-on-one interviews are a valuable qualitative research approach. "Job Interview" is licensed under a Pixabay license.[/caption]
• Thematic analysis: as opposed to content analysis, this approach calls for tracking major thematic elements that appear in the information you have gathered. Rather than counting the appearances of certain items, this approach calls for segmenting information into various "buckets" (e.g., researching a company newsletter for over a four-year span has found that three major themes covered have been: 1) financial responsiblity, 2) employee commitment and 3) customer satisfaction).  The buckets of information are then analyzed for thematic insights.
• Field reports: this approach is similar to "Management by Walking Around," but it calls for a more structured approach. For example, field managers can observe processes/procedures/norms in a workplace and then draft a formal report. This approach should be paired with one of the others above, particularly quantiative approaches like surveys or databanks, as field reports can tend to be written with overly positive or negative observations with an eye to getting the client to react a certain way.

Positioning research for action planning

References

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Goals

Objective statements

Audience messaging

Moving from storytelling planning to storytelling execution

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• Use media and other distribution formats that the audiences are most likely to use.
• Make sure that the vehicle for communication is seen as highly credible to the audience.
• Minimize differences between what your client wants to communicate and the views of the stakeholder audiences.
• As events develop, modify the message as needed.

• Understand how the audience sees the impact of your client's messages and actions
• Focus on the proximity of the content of the messaging; that is, how much does what you are conveying relate to audience's day-to-day lives?
• Consider the timeliness of the messaging -- is what your addressing relevant now, or has the time passed your client by?
• What is the prominence of the matter you are addressing? Is it well-known or obscure?
• Is there some novelty to what you are communicating? The offbeat and/or unusual more readily captures audiences' attentions.
• Is there some kind of conflict or drama in the situation you are addressing?  Tension of this sort can make for ready-made attention among your stakeholders.

The importance of words

Understanding the five stages of adoption

• Awareness: Pete is aware that there are several types of electronic and hybrid cars available. As he reads some more about these cars, he's come to the conclusion that he wants a fully-electric vehicle that can have a range of 250 miles on a fully-charged battery.
• Interest: He reads up on about eight vehicles that seem to fit his requirement. He continues to gather specs about these vehicles and what auto reviewers say about each of them.
• Evaluation: He compares all the information that he has found about these vehicles and narrows them down to three vehciles that appear to be a good fit for him.
• Trial: He test drives the three vehicles and notices more of what he likes and doesn't like about each. He sees one vehicle as standing out above the others.
• Adoption: Pete purchases that vehicle.

The Seven Cs of public relations communication

• Credibility: How believable is the originator of the messages?  If the messages are coming directly from the organization, how credibile the organization regarding the subject matter? If the message is being primarily carried by a third-party (e.g., a celebrity, a high-profile person in the community, a subject matter expert), how believable is that third party on the subject matter?  If your stakeholder audiences don't have confidence in the organization and/or third-party messengers, the public relations campaign is hampered from the outset.
• Context: Is the environment conducive for individuals receiving the messaging?  That is, how well do the messages of the campaign square with the lived experience of the various stakeholder groups?
• Content: How well are the messages relevant and useful to the stakeholder groups? Moreover, how compatible are these messages to the values of each stakeholder group?  Messages that are not meaningful and pertinent to these audiences will likely be ignored.
• Clarity: How clear is the messaging? Do the words have the same meaning for the sender as for the stakeholders (e.g., differences between connotations and denotations)? Can the messages be readily conveyed with brevity and, for example, be offered as themes or slogans?
• Continuity (and consistency): Can the messages be repetitively communicated and done so with one voice? If so, does the message have sufficient consistency?
• Channels (or vehicles): Can the messages be relayed through communication channels that stakeholders use and find credible? Different channels (e.g., social media, print, video) have different strengths and weaknesses regarding the encoding of the campaign's messages and the various stakeholder groups' decoding of the messages. Be wary about trying to convince a stakeholder group who normally uses print to find your messaging on social media. Understand what your target audiences find most valuable for a communication channel and structure your messages for that channel.
• Capability (of the audience):  Can the messages be readily decoded by the audience, or are they filled with jargon or technical or abstract elements that stretches the capability of the stakeholders? If the messaging requires signficant discretionary effort on the part of the stakeholders, the campaign will likely struggle.

Common communication tactics

• Flyers and brochures.
• Inserts into newsletters, statements, or bills.
• Bulletin boards.
• Telephone hotlines.
• Email (note: this approach can be difficult as emails may be caught in recipients' spam filters).
• Streaming video (either pre-recorded or live)

References

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• Not wanting the client/boss to know that they don't have the skills to do evaluation.
• Avoiding asking the boss for more money in the budget to do evaluation.
• No knowing where to find existing mechanisms that can provide low-or-no cost evaluation.
• Playing to the client's/boss's inclination to focus on activities not measurements.
• Wanting to impress the client/boss that public relations is something mystical that really can't be thoroughly measured and, therefore, the public relations manager can avoid a higher level of accountability.

Three broad areas of evaluation

• How well did we prepare this campaign?
• How appropriate was the messaging?
• How technically sound were the messaging and events?

• How many messages were distributed?
• How many messages actually appeared?
• How many people were potentially exposed to the messages?
• How many people actually paid attention to the messages?

• How many people learned and/or retained the messages?
• How many people changed their opinion based on the messages?
• How many people changed their attitude or inclination based on the messages?
• How many people acted on the messages?
• How many people continued this behavior?
• What long-term societal/cultural changes may be apparent from the campaign?

• How well did we identify the key data points that came from our research?  For example, we didn't get sales data per square feet of each retail outlet; did we need that?
• Did the statistical data we focused on -- sales trends -- allow us to make the best decisions about our messaging?
• Did the slogan we develop for our campaign align well with our research findings and our goals?
• When we used a YouTube video to help launch our campaign, how well was it edited for optimal viewing?

• What was the complete count of social messaging posts we put up on FB and Instragram?
• How well did those message get picked up by local and regional news outlets?
• What was the potential reach of the messages through news outlets that carried our message?
• Is our survey data about stakeholder awareness of our message comprehensive, or did we miss some key audiences?

• What do our stakeholder surveys tell us about how positively key audiences now see us?
• What do we know about what influences people's viewpoints of us?
• What do we know about how inclined various stakeholder groups are to visit our restaurants?
• What are the sales trends since the end of the campaign?
• What are our competitors doing in reaction to our campaign?

The importance of pairing quantitative evaluation with qualitative findings

• A PR campaign needs both qualitative and quantitative evaluation.
• The PR people running the campaign need to have both sets of data when talking with senior management.
• If the PR people don't have qualitative measurements, others can claim they are responsible for the ostensible successes of the PR campaign.
• Other staff managers (e.g., those over marketing, human resources, and financing) may make such claims because they want more resources and/or prestige.
• It's best to not do what the marketing manager did and avoid asking questions you don't have an answer for.

A word about AVE

• It's a readily accessible way of demonstrating a "big numbers" numerical effect of the campaign
• It speaks to client's concerns about return on investment in the campaign
• It's a clear way of demonstrating why public relations, and not advertising, should receive more resources
• It allows the practitioner to hold down evaluation costs for the campaign
• It's a way for a PR person with little understanding of evaluation to still deliver some quantitative "results."

• Advertising is NOT public relations; therefore AVE is not measuring PR's efforts.
• AVE measures cost, not the value that the campaign is delivering
• AVE doesn't measure place or position of the messaging
• AVE dosen't measure the prominence of the messaging (is it central to the news piece, or tangential?).
• AVE doesn't measure if how much "share of voice" (depth of coverage) the client received.
• AVE doesn't measure exactly what messages were conveyed.
• AVE doesn't account for collaterals to the messaging, like photos, video,  and logos.

References

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