Brittany’s Blog!

-”Now, more than ever before in human history, more people are coming into contact with people from cultures other than their own.” -Robert Gibson

-In successful cross-cultural communication, senders must understand how a message will be decoded before they can effectively encode it (the message should ideally reamin shaped by values that unite the organization.)

-Achieve successful cross-cultural PR:

1. Awareness: can include studying a foreign language, liberal arts courses

2. Commitment: Personal & Organization’s commitment

3. Research: Reading cultural magazines, websites, books, etc.

4. Local Partnership: Consider bringing a member of that culture into organization’s communications team

5. Diversity: if PR team is diverse it can ensure successful cross cultural PR

6. Testing: Test relationship-building tactics on trusted members of culture you plan to address

7. Evaluation: Look for effectiveness

8. Advocacy: Persistent focus

The definition of a crisis is a matter of scope:  One might refer to a “flat tire” as a crisis while others are referring to a whole city being destroyed by a hurricane as a crisis.  Therefore is important to understand the dynamics of a crisis to understand when one is occurring:

1. Warning stage-still possible to avoid trouble

2. Point of no return-crisis is unavoidable

3. Cleanup phase-how long will the crisis last?

4. Things return to Normal

-Crises can bring new opportunity because people can be changed to think about and create new strategies as well as competitive edges can arise.

-Crisis communication planning:

1. Assessment of potential risks

2. Developing a plan as well as identifying stakeholders

3. Responding by training employees to act appropriately in the crisis

4. Recovery and evaluating why the crisis occurred.

1. Controlled vs. Uncontrolled:

-Controlled: advertising, employee newsletters, speeches, brochures and websites, we control the words and images but we also control when the message is sent and how often it’s repeated, special events and relationship PR personnel often use controlled media

-Uncontrolled: TV, radio stations, web sites, newspapers, magazines, can’t control what they publish

2. Tactics & Traditional Publics

-part of written plan that is tied to values-based mission

-target publics one at a time

-based on research

-send a clear message

-evaluated as they’re preformed

3. Publics:

-Employees tactics: face to face meetings, newsletters, magazines, videos, bulletin boards, speeches, intranets, email, instant messaging, special events

-News Media tactics: news release (unbiased news story that PR practitioner writes to distribute to news media), media kits (use to publicize stories), media advisories (issued to remind news media about events they may want to overcome), pitch letters, video news releases, actualities, news conferences, etc.

-Investors: newsletters and magazines, letters, annual meetings, annual reports, web sites

-Community groups: volunteering, donations and sponsorships, cause marketing, speeches, open houses/tours, face to face meetings

-Governments: lobbies and lobbysits, grassroots lobbying, political action committees, soft money, disclosure documents

-customers: product oriented news releases and media kits, special events, open houses and tours, responses to customer contacts, bill inserts, cell phone text messaging

-Constituents

-Businesses: magazines, stories in trade magazines, extranets

1. Different Kinds of PR Plans: PR practitioners devise different types of plans to reach their goals

-Ad Hoc Plans: ends misperceptions, “for this purpose only”, it is an important but only temporary plan

-Standing Plans:ongoing and long term plans to nurture relationships.  They can be dangerous if they last too long.  For example, if something becomes tradition and people no longer look for the best way to do things because they assume they should just keep doing the old way.

-Contingency Plans: “what if” scenarios, spot issues that may require addressing if they become more powerful

2. Why Do We Plan?

-to keep our actions in line with our organization’s values-based mission: prevents pointless actions

-to help us control our destiny

-to help us better understand and focus our research: does the relationship require an adjustment? does our organization want to make the adjustment? how will the public react to our proposed action? do we have adequate resources to implement the action successfully?

-to help us achieve consensus: take input as they plan

-to allow effective management of resources: resources are finite

3. How Do We plan?

-consensus building: have to have agreement on the action

-brainstorming: ask questions and ponder in terms of publics, values, messages, and media.

4. The Written Plan

-Goals: what you hope the outcome of your planning will consist of

-Objectives: define ambitions

-Tactics: begin with verbs, it is common to give:

*brief description

*deadline

*budget

*special requirements

*supervisor

1. “Public”=any group whose members have a common interest or common values in a particular situation:

-types of publics:

-(non) traditional, aware, intervening, primary/secondary, internal/external, domestic/international

-stakeholder-has an interest in the same organization, can substitute for the word public

-we need relationships with publics to fulfill values and resources of the organization

2. What we need to know about each public:

-how much can the public influence our organization’s ability to achieve our goals

-what is the public’s stake, value, in its relationship with our organization

-who are the opinion leaders (advice givers) for the public

-demographic profile of public

-psychological profile of public

-public’s opinion of our organization

-public’s opinions of the issue in question

3. The traditional Publics: publics with which organizations have long term, ongoing relationships:

-employees (often the most important)

-news media

-governments

1. Public Relations, advertising, and marketing work together. These are three main pillars of IMC. They have a lot in common but some differences also.

-advertising-use of controlled media in an attempt to influence the actions of targeted publics.

-marketing-process of researching, creating and promoting product or service and distributing that product to targeted consumers.

-public relations-values driven management of relationships between an organization and the publics that can affect its success.

2. The Decline of mass marketing and growth of consumer focus marketing: Marketing focuses on consumers. It used to be that mass marketing was in because when companies wanted to sell something they simply brought commercials on certain television. Now, there are so many channels that one channel no longer delivers the message efficiently. Audiences continue to fragment and new media are now supplementing the old. Now, organizations are decreasing their dependence on media.

3. A Closer look at marketing: marketing makes the consumer want to buy your product. The marketing mix consists of different aspects. The four Ps of marketing are product, price, place and promotion. Public Relations comes into marketing by selling the consumers a certain type of publicity. Together PR and marketing persuades consumers to buy the product.  Marketing also helps send the customers one clear message.