Reference no: EM132675084

Please respond to the following:

• Imagine that you are developing a public relations plan for a business you frequently patronize. Identify a problem or opportunity facing that business. Explain in detail how you might apply each of the four basic steps of a public relations plan (see " Conceptualizing the Public Relations Plan" in Chapter 5) when developing a plan for that business to address the problem or opportunity.
• Chapter 5, "Implementing Public Relations Programs," discusses a number of public relations duties. Choose the most challenging of these duties and explain why it is more difficult than the others.

Information you might need for discussion 1: 1st bullet point (Chapter 5 in ebook)

Conceptualizing the Public Relations Plan Strategic planning for public relations is an essential part of management. Planning is critical not only to know where a particular campaign is headed but also to win the support of top management. Indeed, one of the most frequent complaints about public relations is that it is too much a "seat-of-the-pants" activity, impossible to plan and difficult to measure. Management's perspective is, "How do we know the public relations group will deliver and fully leverage the resources they're asking for?" They must see a plan.5 With proper planning, public relations professionals can indeed defend and account for their actions. Before organizing for public relations work, practitioners must consider objectives and strategies, planning and budgets, and research and evaluation. The broad environment in which the organization operates must dictate the overall business objectives. These, in turn, dictate specific public relations objectives and strategies. Once these have been defined, the task of organizing for a public relations program should flow naturally. Setting objectives, formulating strategies, and planning are essential if the public relations function is to be considered equal in stature to other management processes. Traditionally, the public relations management process involves four steps: Defining the problem or opportunity. This requires researching current attitudes and opinions about the issue, product, candidate, or company in question and determining the essence of the problem. Programming. This is the formal planning stage, which addresses key constituent publics, strategies, tactics, and goals. Action. This is the communications phase, when the program is implemented. Evaluation. The final step in the process is the assessment of what worked, what didn't, and how to improve in the future.6 Each of these four process steps is important. Most essential is starting with a firm base of research and a solid foundation of planning. All planning requires thinking. Planning a short-term public relations program to promote a new service may require less thought and time than planning a long-term campaign to win support for a public policy issue. However, in each case, the public relations plan must include clear-cut objectives to achieve organizational goals, targeted strategies to reach those objectives, specific tactics to implement the strategies, and measurement methods to determine whether the tactics worked. PR Ethics Mini-Case Perils of an Out-of-the-Shadows PR CEO Traditionally, public relations advisors have been "the power behind the throne." Their role is to stay in the shadows, counseling the client on the best public course. Conversely, when the public relations advisor becomes the focus of attention, bad things are sure to happen. That's precisely what occurred in the spring of 2008, when Democratic presidential primary candidate Hillary Clinton's chief advisor, Mark Penn, became a lightning rod for controversy. Penn, who headed Clinton's counselors even while he maintained his "day job" as CEO of the Burson-Marsteller public relations counseling firm, suddenly found himself in the media soup when his two roles came into conflict. Specifically, as the primary campaign reached a particularly difficult juncture, The Wall Street Journal reported that Penn, as Burson CEO, had met with officials of the Colombian government, which had hired the firm to help it pass a proposed free-trade pact. This free-trade pact was vehemently opposed by candidate Clinton.  

Information you might need for discussion 1: 2nd bullet point  (Chapter 5 in ebook)  

Implementing Public Relations Programs The duties and responsibilities of public relations practitioners are as diverse as the publics with whom different institutions deal. Specific public relations tasks are as varied as the organizations served. Here is a partial list of public relations duties: Media relations: Coordinating relationships with the online, print, and electronic media, which includes arranging and monitoring press interviews, writing news releases and related press materials, organizing press conferences, and answering media inquiries and requests. A good deal of media relations work consists of attempting to gain favorable news coverage for the firm. Social network marketing: The digital revolution has introduced a whole new component to public relations skills sets. Web 2.0 has transformed the publication of information into a legitimate two-way street. Marketing via social networking sites, from MySpace to Facebook to Friendster to all the rest has become a frontline responsibility of public relations agencies. So, too, has been counsel on when and how to use blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, and all the other Internet-based communications tools that help organizations communicate and market. Internal communications: Informing employees and principals through a variety of means, including intranet, newsletters, television, and meetings. Traditionally, this role has emphasized news-oriented communications rather than benefits-oriented ones, which are usually the province of personnel departments. Government relations and public affairs: Coordinating activities with legislators on local, state, and federal levels. This includes legislative research activities and public policy formation. Community relations: Orchestrating interaction with the community, perhaps including open houses, tours, and employee volunteer efforts designed to reflect the supportive nature of the organization to the community. Investor relations: Managing relations with the investment community, including the firm's present and potential stockholders. This task emphasizes personal contact with securities analysts, institutional investors, and private investors. Consumer relations: Supporting activities with customers and potential customers, with activities ranging from hard-sell product promotion activities to "soft" consumer advisory services. Public relations research: Conducting opinion research, which involves assisting in the public policy formation process through the coordination and interpretation of attitudinal studies of key publics. Public relations writing: Coordinating the institution's printed voice with its public through reprints of speeches, annual reports, quarterly statements, and product and company brochures. Special publics relations: Coordinating relationships with outside specialty groups, such as suppliers, educators, students, nonprofit organizations, and competitors. Institutional advertising: Managing the institutional-or nonproduct-advertising image as well as being called on increasingly to assist in the management of more traditional product advertising. Graphics: Coordinating the graphic and photographic services of the organization. To do this task well requires knowledge of desktop publishing, typography, layout, and art. Web site management: Coordinating the organization's online "face," including Web site design and ongoing counsel, updating, and even management of the site. Philanthropy: Managing the gift-giving apparatus, which ordinarily consists of screening and evaluating philanthropic proposals and allocating the organization's available resources. Special events: Coordinating special events, including travel for company management, corporate celebrations and exhibits, dinners, groundbreakings, and grand openings. Management counseling: Advising managers on alternative options and recommended choices in light of public responsibilities. Again, this is but a partial list of the tasks ordinarily assigned to public relations professionals. Public relations managers frequently use the visualization tools of Gantt and PERT charts to control and administer these project tasks. The Gantt chart, developed by Charles Gantt in 1917, focuses on the sequence of tasks necessary for completion of the project at hand. Each task on a Gantt chart is represented as a single horizontal bar. The length of each bar corresponds to the time necessary for completion. Arrows connecting independent tasks reflect the relationships between the tasks. PERT (program evaluation and review technique) charts were first developed in the 1950s by the Navy to help manage complex projects with a high degree of intertask dependency. The PERT chart shows the relationship between each activity. These relationships create pathways through the process. The "critical path" is a series of tasks that must be completed in a certain time period for the project to be completed on schedule