Week 5

This weeks reading from 'Chapter 4 - A Typical Public Relations Program', In C. Tymson, P. Lazar, P and R. Lazar's 'The new Australian and New Zealand public relations manual'; has provided me with real insight towards the role or public relations practitioners in practice. Their ultimate position as "proactive" (playing an active role in voicing the communities perspectives), managerial, public relation practitioners. I was suprised to read that often a public relations program is formed without "clear objectives in mind" and that it is purely the role of public relations that designs and emphasises particular objectives/strategies. The points that I thought were those that were most important from this particular reading included:

• that "identification of target audiences is the first major step in program planning",


• that John Bulbeck states that there are three methods of researching current opinions of the populous. These include desk research (eg journals, online sources, library resources, existing research), field research (includes observational research or research through contacts) and formal research (hard research involving quantitative and qualitative research methods).


• that there are sound (quantitative, measurable, realistic, time-bounded) objectives and probably unsound (qualitative, unmeasurable, optimistic/pessimistic, time-extended) objectives.


• the process of media selection involves four steps: 1. to look at and divide your target audience 2. work out which forms of media are best suited to your campaign 3. "...process of media selection (involving) further definition of the media that have been selected." 4. to implement your media selections through tests to ensure that they are appropriate.


• Suprisingly some public relations practitioners do not believe in evaluating their campaign results. Personally I feel that this practice of public relations is lazy as evaluation is important to development and can increase one's skills through recognising negative and positive points within a project/campaign.


• that if the right public relation techniques and methods are used in a campaign then the success and results can be measured and effectively evaluated.

I found the case study 'AMP sponsorship of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Torch Relay' really helpful in broadening my perspective of strategy and method behind public relation campaigning. I also found the outline of the role of PR practitioners and the methods of campaigning described throughout the text to be helpful not only to the personal growth of my understanding, but also relevant to the annotated bibliography assessment (in reference to public relation tactics). Although dense in some areas, the text was successful in broadening my perspectives of PR campaigning.

The second reading for this week; "chp 7: strategy, planning and scheduling" from Johnston and Zawai's text 'Public Relations - Theory and Practice' became an insightful read and was inspirattional to my educational development. The points that I found to be most relevant from this reading were as follows:

• the strategic public relations program is a proactive method that "...recognises the cause and effect relationships between our communication activities and the achievement of the ogranisation's mission."
• For public relations to be effective, the practitioner needs to have direct communication with the "decision-making dominant coalition of the organisation."
• Public relations strategies are necessary for ALL target groups.
• The relevance of two-way communication not only through the action of a campaign, but also in the strategic development. The text focuses on internal communication between the Public Relations practitioners and the CEO or head office.
• I liked the text's definition of one particular role of Public Relations in beneficing communication and relationships; "Public Relations can further be explained as building, consolidating and maintaining relationships, centring the function more on the relationship and on communication as the tool that helps to achieve this relationship."
• A vision statement is defined as "...the future state of the organisation at a selected time." The text expresses that this is ideally developed through participation within a group.
• A mission statement describes and plans a number of practical steps for achieving the 'vision' set in the vision statement.
• Key performance indicators (KPI's) measure the progress of the mission in achieving the vision. As some areas of a public relations campaign can't be meausred (public relations is not often measured by quantifiable data), often KPI's are irrelevant to the measurement of progress.
• Lester Potter's (1997) 'ten-step strategic communication plan' portrays the basic structure of a communication plan. The steps include (in order and quoted from the text) executive summary, the communication process, background, situation analysis, main message statement, stakeholders, messages for key stakeholders, implementation, budget, monitoring and evaluation.
• According to McElreath (1997:158) "A budget is a plan for coordinating resources and expenses over a period of time by assigning costs to goals and objectives for specific activities." The text suggests that there are two tyoes of budgeting. These include financial budgets (gives the estimates of the incomes and spending for an organisation) and operating budgets (which "estimates the cost of the goods and services that the organisation will use for specific purposes."
• All Public Relations plans must involve dedicated scheduling to make it a successful campaign. Scheduling helps to ensure jobs are timely and identify a number of steps and strategies.

This readings made me think more about public relations theory and the design of a public relations campaign plan. The text emphasises the relevance of detail and precision in creating a designated campaign outline which justifies budget and strategy. The case studies provided relevant examples of a public relations plan in action and were insightful to the more systematic concerns of public relations practice.

The focus of both texts on the development and before math of proactive campaigning reveals the relevance of development in creating an external and internal, two-way communication strategy.

Thanks guys

Alyssa