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How Public Relations Can Help Your Business
Do you worry about certain behaviors among your most
important audiences because those behaviors are crucial to
achieving your organization’s objectives? If your answer is
yes, you need public relations.
The payoff? When those audiences do what you want them to
do, achieving your organizational objectives gets a lot
easier. That’s why this article is all about how to make
welcome, key-audience behavior a regular occurrence.
We learned long ago that people act on their own
perceptions of the facts, leading to predictable behaviors
about which something can be done. We call their cumulative
perceptions opinion…public opinion.
Public relations tries to create, change or reinforce that
opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-action the
very people whose behaviors affect your organization.
That’s why it’s quality planning, and the degree of
perception and behavioral change it produces, that defines
the success or failure of a public relations program.
Those Painful Behaviors
Let’s look at some of those crucial perceptions (usually
leading to crucial behaviors) among target audiences that
can make you nervous. If you labor for an association, it
might be strong feedback that members perceive your
communications organs as devoid of informative material.
Or, for the regional manager with a motel chain, growing
email traffic suggesting that guests perceive rooms as dirty
would be unsettling. And for a brand manager, field reports
that fast food taste tests result in less than complimentary
consumer reactions might ruin his day.
Those kind of perceptions almost always lead to unhappy
behaviors such as loud complaints about association
communicators, cancelled reservations due to a motel chain’s
housekeeping mismanagement, or to falling sales because of
a fast food product’s poor taste.
What to do About Them
How can any organization prepare itself to prevent and deal
effectively with such key-audience opinion challenges?
Let’s start by walking through a perception challenge facing
a typical organization. Because public relations problems
are usually defined by what people THINK about a set of
facts, as opposed to the actual truth of the matter, one would be
well-advised to focus on three public relations realities:
1. People act on their perception of the facts;
2. Those perceptions lead to certain behaviors;
3. Something can be done about those perceptions and behaviors
that leads to achieving the organization’s objectives.
Awareness is Key
Those responsible for public relations in any organization
– let’s say it’s you for purposes of this article -- must be
constantly aware of counterproductive behaviors among the
organization’s key audiences – customers, prospects,
community activists, union leaders, competitors and others.
Remaining alert to these potentially damaging perceptions
and behaviors requires special vigilance. Among intelligence
gathering techniques are regular monitoring of headquarters
and field location media, staff activity reports, employee
and community feedback, regulatory and other local, state
and federal government activities involving your organization
and, especially these days, the Internet with its emails,
ezines, chatrooms and search engines.
What’s the Problem?
First, identify the key operating problem. Is it declining
sales in a specific product line or location? Is it an
allegation of wrongdoing? Is it a quality or performance
issue? Has an elected official spoken negatively about your
industry? Have you learned that a national activist group
may target a unit of your organization? Or, is there clear
evidence of negative behaviors among your key audiences?
Verify, Verify, Verify
Yes, determine through field staff, key customers, media
monitoring and, if resources allow, even opinion sampling,
just how serious the problem is. If an allegation, is it true
or false? If a drop-off in sales, gather and carefully
evaluate the possible causes. If a quality issue, probe
deeply for its probable or likely cause.
How Bad is it?
After an exhaustive review of all evidence surrounding the
behavioral problem you have identified, establish conclusively
the size and shape of the problem rating its
damage potential on a scale between an irritation and an
immediate emergency. Does it threaten employee or public
safety, financial stability, reputation, the organization’s
mission, or sales? The answers to such assessments help
determine the resources to be marshalled.
Worst Case?
Let’s assume that probing opinion through personal contact
and informal polling out in the market place, you determine
that, in fact, there IS a negative perception among a key
audience that the company’s largest customer is about to
switch suppliers which would seriously damage your company’s
operations. (In a non-profit, an equivalent perception and
behavioral problem might involve allegations that its
administrative costs far exceed the normally accepted level,
or that executive compensation is excessive).
Is it True?
Management quickly determines that, in fact, there is no
truth whatsoever to the rumor of a loss of the company’s
largest customer.
The Public Relations Goal
Therefore, because the PERCEPTION of a key customer
loss is now causing hiring problems (behavioral) within the
company, and, outside via concerns among suppliers and the
greater community and its leaders, you establish the public
relations goal as follows:
Change negative public perception of the company’s
largest account longevity from negative to positive,
thus correcting hiring and retention problems and
calming supplier and community concerns.
The Public Relations Strategy
Now, you must select one of three choices available to you
when you determine the public relations strategy. In this
example, you chose to CHANGE existing opinion rather than
CREATE
opinion where none exists, or REINFORCE an existing
opinion, both of which not applicable to this case.
With your perception and behavior modification goals, and
now the strategy, established, progress will be measured in
terms of altered behaviors – namely, a satisfactory reduction
in employee departures, an equally satisfactory increase in
the company’s overall employee retention rate as well as
reassured suppliers and communities-at-large. Such progress
markers can be set down, and agreed upon, once the negative
perceptions are truly understood, thus establishing the degree
of behavioral change that realistically can be expected.
Who do we Talk to?
Identifying key audiences and prioritizing them – a crucial
step in any public relations action planning – were identified
early on in this example as employees, suppliers and the
community-at-large and its leaders, in that priority order.
What do we Say?
Well, we prepare persuasive messages designed to disarm the
rumor of a ”large customer loss.” Bringing important target
audiences around to one’s way of thinking depends heavily
on the quality of the message prepared for each of them.
The messages must disarm the rumor with clear evidence such
as a forthright pronouncement by the chief executive officer,
and even a town meeting, should the discord reach high
levels. It might be necessary to seek a credible third-party,
public endorsement such as reassurance by the “large
customer” himself, or herself, that “we have no intention
of switching suppliers as long as the company continues to
provide the same superior quality, service and pricing it
now does.” Regular assessments of how opinion is currently
running among employees, suppliers and community leaders
should be performed. Finally, action-producing incentives
for individuals to feel reassured should be identified and
built into each message.
Those incentives might include the very strength of the
“large customer’s” forthright position on the issue,
possible plans for expansion that hold the promise of more
jobs and taxes, or even sponsorship of new employee sporting
events coverage on local cable channels.
It’s Tactics Time
Now, you select the most effective communications tactics
available to you, and commence action.
How will your three target audiences – especially in
various locations -- actually be reached? Choices include
face-to-face meetings, email, hand-placed feature articles
and broadcast appearances, special employee, supplier or
community briefings, news releases, announcement luncheons,
onsite media interviews, facility tours, promotional contests,
brochures and a host of other carefully targeted communications
tactics.
Special events are especially effective in reaching such
audiences with the message. They are newsworthy by definition
and, if sufficient locations are involved, include activities
such as financial roadshows, awards ceremonies, trade
conventions, celebrity appearances and open houses.
A Communications Bullseye
Your public relations effort effort can be accelerated, even
amplified by carefully selecting the most efficient tactics
among print or broadcast media, key podium presentations,
special events or top-level personal contacts because, when
these tools communicate with each target audience, they must
score direct bullseyes.
Especially important to the success of any action program is
the selection and perceived credibility of the actual
spokespeople who deliver the messages. They must speak with
authority and conviction if they are to be believed, and if
meaningful media coverage is to be achieved.
How are we Doing?
Obviously, you’ll want to monitor progress, seeking signs
of improvement in not only employee hiring and retention
levels, but in overall employee morale levels as well as
those of the company’s suppliers and communities-at-large.
You should speak regularly with members of each target
audience, monitor print and broadcast media for clear
evidence of the company’s messages or viewpoints, and conduct
a variety of ongoing interactions with key customers,
prospects and plant location influentials.
Indicators that the messages are moving employee, supplier
and community opinion in your organization’s direction will
start appearing. Indicators like comments in community
meetings, local newspaper editorials, e-mails from suppliers
as well as public references by political figures and local
celebrities.
The End Game
By this time, your action program should begin to gain and
hold the kind of employee, supplier and community understanding
that leads to the desired shifts in behavior – namely, the
unsettling rumor has been disarmed and operations return
to a normal pace.
You know you’ve arrived at the public relations end game
when the changes in behaviors become truly apparent through
the increased pace of positive media reports, encouraging supplier
and thought-leader comment, and increasingly upbeat employee
and community chatter.
When you clearly meet the original behavior modification
goal set when it all began, the public relations program can
be deemed a success. Executed correctly – compared
to doing little or nothing about the rumor -- we’re talking
about nothing less than the organization’s ongoing health
and, possibly, its survival.
In the end, a sound strategy combined with effective tactics
leads directly to the bottom line – altered perceptions,
modified behaviors, and a public relations homerun.
end
About the Author
Bob Kelly, public relations consultant, was director of public
relations for Pepsi-Cola Co.; AGM-Public Relations, Texaco Inc.;
VP-Public Relations, Olin Corp.; VP-Public Relations, Newport
News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.; director of communications,
U.S. Department of the Interior, and deputy assistant press
secretary, The White House. mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net
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