Analysis of "This is PR..." (part 25)

Strategic Management in PR Practice (part 3)

by:

Charles Lamson

Monitoring, Measuring and Reporting

Even when many activities and countless forms of communication occur within an organization the public relations department usually occupies the best position for monitoring what is or is not happening and for evaluating how different publics are responding to various actions, messages and representatives of the organization. Technology is helpful in this process. Email messages can indicate responses as can a look at alternate Websites critical of the company and blogs are another resource.

Many organizational executives have been launching their own blogs to let their feelings as well as reasoning be known. Some of these, like opinion page pieces and letters to the editor, come from the public relations department as a part of managing the institution's message. Checking for responses to these is another aspect of issues or environmental monitoring. Like other units in the organization, the public relations department is responsible for evaluating the results of its own efforts. At budget time, someone will always ask, "What did you do? How much did it cost? What did we get for the investment? How cost-effective was it? How did it contribute to the bottom line?" However, in its evaluations, the public relations department is more interested in answering questions along the lines of, "What do our publics think of us? How does this match with what we think of ourselves? How are events, situations, attitudes, etc. going to affect us in the future?" Both types of monitoring and evaluation need to go on and both help the organization's leadership plan give day-to-day direction to the organization ("This is PR: The Realities of Public Relations 9th ed.;" by Doug Newsom, Judy VanSlyke Turk and Dean Kruckeberg; pgs. 219-220). 

Several commercially available computer software programs can be used to conduct a public relations situation analysis - setting objectives, writing a budget, developing a strategy, deciding on tactics, then evaluating results and reporting them.

In a global environment there is an element that perhaps could be included as part of diversity, but seems to stand alone because it involves understanding and respecting other cultures. That management role is preparing public relations practitioners for international assignments and sending them for long term stays. It is not always easy to send public relations people on long-term international assignments, but these are valuable to the organization in two ways. The person builds relationships with individuals in the other country and personalizes the organization, thereby extending the reach and influence as well as giving it some resources on which to draw. The other benefit is the person comes back to the organization with some real insight into another culture to share internally in the decision-making process. This often prevents some costly errors in judgement. The critical factor in this process is preparation for the assignment and giving the person the long-distance support needed to make the experience a good one for the one assigned and his or her spouse (Newsom, Turk, Kruckeberg; pg. 220).

Issue Monitoring and Managing for Organizations

Watching the global horizons for issues that seem to be developing is one of the most important functions of strategic public relations management. Sometimes it is just a news story about an incident or a proposed policy that catches a sharp practitioner's eye. It could be a rumor in an email or some comments in a chat room. That kind of environmental scanning is both an overwhelming and necessary task. What a practitioner is looking for is something that could affect the company's products, one of the public or the organization's way of doing business. Proposed regulations or suggested policies, sometimes just political "trial baloons" can capture public attention. The PR person needs to notice first before the nugget of information becomes an issue around which public opinion is formed (Newsom, Turk, Kruckeberg; pg. 221).

 A public relations practitioner cannot depend on catching each warning, regardless of how sensitive that person's antenna. So PR people work with others in the organization to see the organization from their perspectives. Obviously the risk-management division is helpful because experts there evaluate situations in terms of financial risks and insurance hazards. Attorneys are alert to rulings in new court cases that could affect the organization's regulatory environment. Because the law covers many specialties it is important to touch base with all of the specialties that the company calls on periodically for representation. Marketing is always sensitive to competitive threats and new product challenges. Transportation keeps up-to-date in delivery systems and this is much more complex now since many deliveries cross borders. Human resources is another area because those managers worry about compensation, health costs, policies that affect families, recruiting practices and a host of other things that affect individuals, such as fairness and equity issues. Depending on the organization, research may be yet another place where issues can be identified. Finding the issues is just the beginning. After identification comes monitoring. Each of these issues has to be watched as its potential threat to the organization increases or decreases. once the issue develops, publics line up on different sides of it and even new publics form around the issue. This is a sensitive management area because what benefits one public may be a disadvantage to another. The best management can hope for is some honest brokering with the different publics. So even though one public is not willing to concede a position at least it understands management's position and is sympathetic enough not to actively oppose it (Newsom, Turk, Kruckeberg; pg. 221).

The best PR managers keep top managers aware of issues. The balance is to keep management from being blindsided without worrying them with constant warnings that fail to materialize. If PR managers are not judicious in their notices to top management, when they see a really serious issue that could precipitate a crisis, management may consider their warning just another alert with no substance (Newsom, Turk, Kruckeberg; pg. 222).

End