A Manager's Guide to PR Projects

A Practical Approach

Patricia Parsons

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351596329
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Pubbliche relazioni
• Index: Business

A Manager's Guide to PR Projects, Second Edition picks up where classic public relations textbooks leave off. It provides hands-on guidance in planning the preliminary research for a public relations project and creating a plan to achieve specific goals, guiding the reader through managing the project's implementation. It contains worksheets that can be used for a visual representation of the planning process for both student edification and presentation to clients. The book is designed as a user-friendly guide to take the reader through the four-step public relations planning process from a number of vantage points. Intended as a learning tool for use in both the class and beyond, this book's approaches are based on real experiences in the management of communications projects designed to meet organizational goals through achieving public relations objectives.

This fully revised second edition offers PR students and practitioners new material that includes the following:

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• The impact of social media on each phase of the planning process.

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• Digital approaches to strategic and summative research, message dissemination and public engagement.

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• Strategies to enhance accountability.

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• Ethics considerations in the planning process.

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• Updated print and web-based resources for PR managers.

CHAPTER 1

PR Project Planning in the Twenty-first Century

VOCABULARY

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to define and discuss the following:

• public relations

• public relations process

• project planning

• systems

• subsystem

• input

• throughput

• output

• management

• integrity

• ethics

DEFINING PUBLIC RELATIONS

Public relations, as a field of practice, has been defined in many ways by many writers and public relations practitioners over the years. How you define public relations depends on a number of factors including the following:

• your specific educational background in the field (for example: journalism, English, marketing, public relations);

• your level of education in PR or related fields (for example: certificate, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree);

• the books, magazines, and journals you have read (for example public relations textbooks versus marketing textbooks);

• the professional associations to which you belong (for example: the International Association of Business Communicators, the Public Relations Society of America, the Public Relations Students’ Society of America, the American Academy of Advertising, the Canadian Public Relations Society, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations UK) or on the other hand, to which you do not belong;

• your experience in public relations and its related communication fields (for example: advertising, marketing, graphic design).

For you as an individual practitioner, these are some of the factors that provide you with a picture of precisely what public relations is and has been through history. However, much has changed in the world of communication-related fields over the past decade. In spite of these massive changes, specifically in communication technology, there are fundamental aspects of how we define public relations that have not changed. Let’s examine some of the formal definitions of public relations offered by our professional associations.

The Public Relation Society of America says that: “At its core, public relations is about influencing, engaging and building a relationship with key stakeholders to contribute to the way an organization is perceived” (www.prsa.org/about/about-pr/all-about-pr/). In this definition it is clear that the concepts of influence, engagement, and relationships continue to underpin both PR’s responsibilities and the value it adds to its organizations.

The Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS) defines public relations as follows: “Public relations is the strategic management of relationships between an organization and its diverse publics, through the use of communication, to achieve mutual understanding, realize organizational goals and serve the public interest” (www.cprs.ca/aboutus/mission.aspx).

CPRS also goes on to describe that strategic public relations practice is managed and accountable, aligned with the overall goals of the organization, intentional and deliberate, and measurable and relevant. This concept of public relations as a strategic function suggests that public relations activities must be purposeful, intentional, and above all, planned.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR UK) in the UK frames the practice slightly differently in their focus on reputation management. CIPR (UK) defines public relations as follows:

Public Relations is about reputation—the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you … Public Relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour [sic]. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation [sic] and its publics …

(www.cipr.co.uk/content/careers-advice/what-pr)

In spite of CIPR (UK)’s frame of reputation, you can see clearly that there is still an emphasis on influence and planning.

So, although these may at first glance appear to be differing perspectives on what public relations actually is, there are more commonalities than there are differences. This book is based on a number of commonly held beliefs about the practice of public relations:

• Public relations is a management function that assists the organization to reach its goals.

• Public relations is a strategic process of research, planning, implementation, and evaluation.

• Engagement and influence are two of the key components of the objectives of the PR/communication planning process.

• Public relations utilizes a variety of targeted communications tools and techniques to help organizations develop and maintain mutually beneficial relationships with publics of importance to them in reaching their goals.

• Public relations practice requires both managerial and technical skills, creativity, flexibility, and above all integrity.

These beliefs guide the management of public relations projects.

DEFINING MANAGEMENT

As a public relations manager, you will be required to be more than a technician. You will be required to do more than create content, monitor social media channels, and organize media conferences. You will be responsible for seeing the bigger picture.

Management as a term is a bit like the term “public relations”: there are as many definitions as there are managers. Most definitions again, however, have some commonalities. The following are some of those common factors:

• Management is a process of getting things done efficiently and effectively.

• Management accomplishes its goals through and with people and the strategic use of other organizational resources, including time and money.

• There are four fundamental activities that managers use to accomplish their goals. These are planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.

It’s worth noting that these sound a lot like the activities we will identify as part of the four-step public relations process—and they are. Thus, for our purposes, the public relations process itself is our fundamental management tool.

Whereas small organizations may have only one main manager, larger organizations— whether they are for-profit, not-for-profit, or government ventures—usually have a number of managers. A public relations manager may have a department of one to manage, or a department of many. Every project, however, whether carried out by one person or many, must be planned and managed for it to achieve its goals.

Here is the working definition of public relations that guides the process presented in this book:

MODERN PUBLIC RELATIONS is a management
function that uses a process of research,
planning, implementation, and evaluation to
help an organization achieve its communication
and relationship goals

DEFINING A “PROJECT”

This book is titled A Manager’s Guide to PR Projects. Clearly we need a working definition of the term project as we are using it in this context. The Oxford online dictionary defines a project as “… an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim …” (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/project). If we use this definition, a public relations project can be anything from the development of a simple media release (which begins as an idea in someone’s mind, is researched, outlined, written, and, at some point, evaluated) up to the most complex strategies for solving organizational problems that stem from external and/or internal relationships. In other words, an excellent public relations practitioner will use a project planning thought process for everything from the largest to the smallest project, rather than flying by the seat of his or her pants. Even a tweet needs to be planned. We have ample anecdotal evidence to understand that we use unplanned tweets at our peril.

As you become more experienced, you will begin to realize that you have internalized this process, and simple projects often no longer require a formal, written p...