After going through this week chapter on the topic of crisis management, I realised that unlike what most people think, crisis management is not to merely react to the situation. By this I mean that the PR practitioners not only need to react to the crisis only when it had happened. A crisis had to be planned for.
There are a lot of different crisis that can happen, man-made disaster like terrorism or Mother Nature unleashing her wrath. Situation like having to recall defective products or changes to the leadership can also be a crisis.
As I had mentioned earlier, a crisis had to be planned for, having a plan in advance make it easier for the PR practitioner to deal with the crisis. You can respond to the crisis faster and not waste too much time thinking of what to do.
An important element in handling a crisis, in my opinion, is the need for an organisation to be transparent with the way that they are dealing with the crisis at hand. The organisation need to be open and honest with the stakeholders involved in the crisis. If not, it will lead to the stakeholders losing all their faith in the organisation.
In the chapter on PR and the Third sector, we learned that NGOs also need to make smart use of the power of PR to help them achieve their goals. These kinds of organisation are often different from others, in that they are not driven by profits, but instead fighting for a cause. A NGO does not want to sell you anything, they want you to listen to them and help them in their cause. They are trying to push a message across. In this age, PR can be used effectively to help improve the image of NGOs to the public.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Typical PR progam
For this week, we looked at an article taken from “The new Australian and New Zealand public relations manual”.
This article showed us how a typical PR program looks like. Reading through it, I find that I can relate a number of elements to what we had talked about in this course so far.
-The need for strategy and planning.
-Setting objectives and target audiences.
-Doing research.
-The use of media in the PR campaign.
-Evaluation of results.
I find this article to be very helpful in planning for the final assignment. With that being said, I cannot find anything else to write about for this blog, the next post will be on crisis management.
This article showed us how a typical PR program looks like. Reading through it, I find that I can relate a number of elements to what we had talked about in this course so far.
-The need for strategy and planning.
-Setting objectives and target audiences.
-Doing research.
-The use of media in the PR campaign.
-Evaluation of results.
I find this article to be very helpful in planning for the final assignment. With that being said, I cannot find anything else to write about for this blog, the next post will be on crisis management.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Sponsorship & Even management + Research & Evaluation
Sponsorship of events is something that we see all the time but do not really understand. A sponsorship is not the same as a donation, the key difference being that a sponsorship except a ‘return’. The ‘return’ can mostly come in the form of improving and enhancing the image and brand visibility of the company. The sponsorship can also serve to generate goodwill with the public.
Some of the more commonly sponsored events are those of a sport or music nature. The nature of the company or organisation sponsoring the event may or may not be related to the event. Take for example, major telecommunication companies sponsoring sports teams and events, or beer and alcohol brand sponsoring motorsports event. Although I personally do question the wisdom behind the latter, think drink-driving.
This led us to the idea of matching the correct event to the sponsoring company.
For example,
-Sports brand like Nike or Addias sponsoring sports event like a marathon.
-A motorsports event being sponsored by a car company or tyre company.
A sponsorship of an event can also coincide with the launch of a product; an example would be Nokia and the Mosaic music festival. Although not the only sponsor of the event, Nokia has its own ‘Nokia Music Station’ at the outdoor theatre of the Esplanade. Visitor can listen to the performances put up by local and overseas bands for free. There is also a Nokia booth where visitor can have their photos taken by the new Nokia 5800 phone and get a free print. I think this is a case where it makes sense for the sponsorship; because Nokia can showcase the capability of the new phone (one of the main strength touted is music) to the visitors, because they are likely to be music fans.
Research; therefore also play an important part in the equation.
Research itself can take several different forms,
-Input research, where research is done beforehand on the situation, public and strategies.
-Output research is where research is done as the plan is being implemented, so as to enable the PR practitioner to fine tune the plan.
-Outcome research is use to find out the effectiveness of the plan, and results can be used as references for future campaigns.
The two main approaches, qualitative and quantitative, provide a framework and basis for the research. Research techniques like interviews, focus groups and surveys are also useful in the data collection. Therefore, I am glad that I learned about these in another course on audiences studies.
Using the research’s results can most certainly help the PR practitioner at the different stages of the campaign.
Some of the more commonly sponsored events are those of a sport or music nature. The nature of the company or organisation sponsoring the event may or may not be related to the event. Take for example, major telecommunication companies sponsoring sports teams and events, or beer and alcohol brand sponsoring motorsports event. Although I personally do question the wisdom behind the latter, think drink-driving.
This led us to the idea of matching the correct event to the sponsoring company.
For example,
-Sports brand like Nike or Addias sponsoring sports event like a marathon.
-A motorsports event being sponsored by a car company or tyre company.
A sponsorship of an event can also coincide with the launch of a product; an example would be Nokia and the Mosaic music festival. Although not the only sponsor of the event, Nokia has its own ‘Nokia Music Station’ at the outdoor theatre of the Esplanade. Visitor can listen to the performances put up by local and overseas bands for free. There is also a Nokia booth where visitor can have their photos taken by the new Nokia 5800 phone and get a free print. I think this is a case where it makes sense for the sponsorship; because Nokia can showcase the capability of the new phone (one of the main strength touted is music) to the visitors, because they are likely to be music fans.
Research; therefore also play an important part in the equation.
Research itself can take several different forms,
-Input research, where research is done beforehand on the situation, public and strategies.
-Output research is where research is done as the plan is being implemented, so as to enable the PR practitioner to fine tune the plan.
-Outcome research is use to find out the effectiveness of the plan, and results can be used as references for future campaigns.
The two main approaches, qualitative and quantitative, provide a framework and basis for the research. Research techniques like interviews, focus groups and surveys are also useful in the data collection. Therefore, I am glad that I learned about these in another course on audiences studies.
Using the research’s results can most certainly help the PR practitioner at the different stages of the campaign.
Friday, March 13, 2009
PR in Business
PR & Business
The Public Relations practitioners can be an important source of information on how people regard the organization. This brings us back to the first post where I said that PR is a gateway between the organization and the public. The public here can be used to refer to both the internal and external public. We had already gone through the reasons for forming and maintaining good relationships with the public in the previous post on community relations.
Now, a business is an organization that strives to generate profits, through the providing of products or services. And with any business, consumers are the one providing the business with the profits. Therefore we can see the need for them to receive accurate and timely information of the company, information which would affect how they think of the company. Although of course, the role of PR are not limited to only information providing, as we already know from some of the previous posts on this blog.
Talking about businesses, there are also companies that are listed on the stock market, and this means that shares of the companies can be bought or sold by the public. This means that investors and stock traders would have an impact on the business. Hence, listed companies have another reason to use PR to manage information that could influence the investors in how they make their investing decisions.
Information can be in the form of the Annual Report or financial information, although the PR practitioners are most definitely not restricted to only these methods.
The Public Relations practitioners can be an important source of information on how people regard the organization. This brings us back to the first post where I said that PR is a gateway between the organization and the public. The public here can be used to refer to both the internal and external public. We had already gone through the reasons for forming and maintaining good relationships with the public in the previous post on community relations.
Now, a business is an organization that strives to generate profits, through the providing of products or services. And with any business, consumers are the one providing the business with the profits. Therefore we can see the need for them to receive accurate and timely information of the company, information which would affect how they think of the company. Although of course, the role of PR are not limited to only information providing, as we already know from some of the previous posts on this blog.
Talking about businesses, there are also companies that are listed on the stock market, and this means that shares of the companies can be bought or sold by the public. This means that investors and stock traders would have an impact on the business. Hence, listed companies have another reason to use PR to manage information that could influence the investors in how they make their investing decisions.
Information can be in the form of the Annual Report or financial information, although the PR practitioners are most definitely not restricted to only these methods.
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