The phrase, “play the game before it plays you” can relate to creating an effective public relations campaign. Creating and executing a compelling and organized campaign takes hours of prep work and a desire to go above and beyond to create goals, objectives and strategies which will be successful.
One way to guarantee success, or at least prevent failure or an unmanageable PR crisis is to stay proactive. In proactive measure, “the organization can launch a communication program under the conditions and according to the timeline that seem to best fit the organization’s interests. Conversely, a reactive measure responds to influences and opportunities from its environment” (Smith, 82).
While reactive strategies can have benefit, they are best used by experience PR professionals to capitalize on influences and opportunities by unforeseen circumstances or crisis management. There are some events where the PR team crashes under pressure and delivers weak apology statements or insensitive remarks which cause more chaos and confusion. However, there are some companies who have recovered from a PR crisis so well they look like they planned it on purpose.
KFC’s FCK Bucket
If you follow KFC, you know and love them, especially their Twitter account. When they were faced with the crisis of running out of chicken, yes a chicken joint run-in out of chicken…they were able to create a genius PR recovery out of it. They did “everything transparently, swiftly, and true to their brand voice, which made everyone put their torches away and celebrate their humility" (Hickman, 2021).
Proactive Public Relations Strategies
While reactive strategies can be fun and adrenaline producing, the most effective strategy is a proactive one. “Proactive action strategies include the enhancement of organizational performance, audience participation and special events" (Smith, 82).
Due to the influx of technology, the need to be proactive is increasing with the speed of news, reels, social media, and PR crises. The speed and breadth of social media channels throws up particular challenges. "You need a good story and a lot of resources to keep interesting ideas coming," says Giles Fraser, co-founder of Brands2Life. "This is a big jump for a lot of brands when they are also tight on budget" (Hill, 2014). Regardless of the challenges, it is still crucial to keep up or else the company will drown.
One way to have a proactive approach is to define goals, strategies and objectives before the campaign starts, so when a crisis comes up the company can fall back to their fundamental objectives when releasing statements or deciding to add or replace aspects of the campaign.
5 Bridges Reactive Strategies
Our strategies are based on creating action and communication (Smith, 83).
We first wrote our reputation management, campaign management and task management goals. The key publics are women ages 22-27 employed in Fortune 500 companies, men in Fortune 500 companies and CEO/ business owners in Fortune 500 companies. Through writing benefit statements and corresponding objectives for each target group, the next step is to break the objectives down to implement them through strategies.
In the upcoming assignment, we will create several strategies for the objectives with a proactive approach to guarantee the team PR agency are equipped to handle a crisis and effectively implement the campaign.
Sources:
Hickman, A. (2021, May 6). The crisis comms lesson behind KFC's 'FCK bucket'. PR Week. Retrieved March 5, 2022, from https://www.prweek.com/article/1498405/crisis-comms-lesson-behind-kfcs-fck-bucket
Hill, A. (2014, June 11). Comms directors survey: Are you reactive or proactive? PR Week. Retrieved March 5, 2022, from https://www.prweek.com/article/1298298/comms-directors-survey-reactive-proactive
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