Week 10.

Week 10.

This week's readings focus on how to practice strategic public relations with particular emphasis on how to implement a strategy through effective scheduling, planning and tactics.

Although I have already read chapter 7 and blogged about it in week 5, I found that re-reading this chapter clarified a lot of points for me. This was very beneficial for me, as it helped me to understand what is required for our major assessment.

Firstly, chapter 7 defines what a strategy is. According to Allert and Zawawi (2004) this is “ a series of planned activities designed and integrated to achieve a stated organisational goal.” (p.170).
This was helpful, as it made me think about public relations practice in that I learnt that public relations strategies must fit into an organisation’s overall operational strategy.

Zawawi and Allert (2004) reinforce this, as they make a valid statement: that public relations strategic planning must be influenced by the organisation’s corporate culture, ideology, values and beliefs, systems and business processes.

I think the key points to remember from this reading are the suggested steps in planning a public relations strategy . According to the Zawawi- Johnston strategic public relations plan, these steps include:
Formulating an executive study: a plan that summarises the situation that led to the need for the plan.
Creating Vision and mission statements: A vision statement describes the future state of the organisation at a selected time, its ultimate destination, however, a mission statement is formulated to help close the gap between the unsatisfactory present and the more perfect future. (Zawawi and Johnston, 2004).
Background and situation analysis: SWOT analysis.
Defining a strategy
Defining publics
Defining main message
Selecting tactics
Implementing and scheduling
Monitoring and evaluation
And finally, budgeting.

This chapter also broadened my understanding of public relations practice as I learnt that although public relations managers are only responsible for preparing their operational budgets, an understanding of their organisation’s budgets helps them to be more strategically effective.
As a result, it is important for me to understand that organisations usually operate under two different types of budgets. These are financial budgets and operating budgets.
A financial budget gives detailed estimates of income and expenditure for the entire organisation in a given period of time, however an operating budget estimates the costs of the goods and services that the organisation will use for specific purposes in terms of both actual costs and physical quantities.(Allert and Zawawi, 2004).

Scheduling is also accurately stressed within this chapter as being an important part of strategic public relations as without careful planning, it is impossible to ensure that the right tactics are implemented in the correct order at the right time. If this is not achieved, it will greatly reduce the effectiveness of the campaign. (Allert and Zawawi, 2004).

The key point I think to remember within this area of planning is that as a PR practitioner, you should make a list of activities that need to be completed before certain deadlines and the steps you need to undertake to achieve this. Staffing arrangements need to also be arranged so these targets can be reached in time and budgets prepared. (McElreath, 1997).

Chapter 8 however discusses tactics, which according to Hudson (2004), are tools used by PR practitioners to help achieve the strategic outcome of a PR campagin.
I believe it's important to remember that while there are a variety of tactics available to PR practitioners, they are divided into 2 categories. These are controlled and uncontrolled tactics.
According to Hudson (2004), controlled tactics are those which public relations practitioners maintain control over every aspect of the process- from message creation to distribution. Some of these include posters, advertorial and advertising.
Uncontrolled tactics however, include those that can be changed or simply disregarded. (Hudson, 2004). These include media releases, as whether the information makes it to publication is in the hands of the journalist.

This lead me to the question of who holds the most power in PR campaigns, PR practioners or journalists?
I am unsure of my opinion on this subject, as although Hudson (2004) suggests journalists have the most power in media campaigns as they can simply disregard media releases, PR practioners do hold the power over the dissemination of information ie) they control who receives what information. This means that PR practioners have the ability to present information to suit their desired angle. Horton,(2003) reinforces this as he claims PR practitioners have direct control over what is said on their organisation’s web sites and intranet along with the power to restrict what information is released to publications and other media. As a result, the information journalists are supplied with is constructed to convey the PR practitioner's desired message and therefore, it can be argued PR practioners have more power than journalists within media campaigns.

Finally, I also think a key point within this reading is that there are different methods of delivering tactics and each plays a critical role in determining the effectiveness of the campaign. These include mail, fax, email, video and news- distribution agencies

This week’s readings were very helpful, as they provided me with a clear understanding of the steps I need to take in creating a successful PR plan, thus broadening my understanding of PR practice.

This week I commented on Nicole Magriplis' blog.

References:
Allert, J and Zawawi, C. (2004). Strategy, planning and scheduling. In Johnston, J., & Zawawi, C. (Eds.), Public relations: Theory and practice.(2nd ed.)(pp.169-197). Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin.

Horton, J. (2003). Lead, follow and get out of the way: three roles of public relations. Retrieved August 25, 2007, from www.online-pr.com/Holding/ThreeRolesofPR.pdf

Hudson, M. (2004). Tactics. In Johnston, J., & Zawawi, C. (Eds.), Public relations: Theory and practice.(2nd ed.)(pp.169-197). Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin.

McElreath, M.P. (1997). Managing strategic and ethical public relations. (2nd ed.) Madison: Brown & Benchmark.