Steps of a PR campaign

Surveys on successful PR campaigns indicate the fact that a campaign must always enlighten its publics, by telling them something they didn't know or by offering them a different perspective on something they knew or they thought they knew.

Even if we talk about encouraging someone to buy the company's newly introduced furniture range, to keep their holdings in the company or to speak up for the company when it is under attack, there are several steps along the way to influencing attitudes.

1 . Identification and analysis of the needs, objectives and possibilities of the organization and of the publics. At this point it is important to say that every company has a declaration of principles that governs its actions, functions as a basis and has a certain target. PR practitioners act according to this declaration.

The initial research represents an analysis of the situation for the organization, of its goals, of the provided product/service/idea, of the various media (tools and tactics) and of the former experience related to communication elements.

The organization's goals include the goals of the entire corporation program and the modality in which they will be achieved by the campaign. The publics are taken into consideration depending on priority, in terms of the behavior desired for each segment and, the same time, relying on elements as the domain and periods of time.

Once the analysis is made and the organization's goals are approached from the point of view of the analysis and of the publics studied, the size of the entire budget for the communication campaign is revised.

A temporary budget is elaborated and parts of it are dedicated for communication elements as public information, advertising, promotion or marketing, but also for monitoring each element during the campaign. The objectives of action for communication are set out for each public in general terms and specifically for the segments of priority publics.

2. Planning the campaign by elaborating the appropriate strategy and choosing the communication channels. PR practitioners elaborate the strategy, position and the format of the message presenting the organization in the way it wants to be seen by its publics. Tactics are elaborated in order to use the specific media within a message distribution plan that includes all the events and all the publics.

The success or the failure of a PR campaign depends on how creative practitioners are when they choose the various media and when they have to use them. The choice of the various medias depend on the publics the PR practitioner needs to touch and on the message they have to send.

3. Implementing the PR campaign by adapting and applying the tactics according to the strategy and taking into consideration timescales and budgets.

PR practitioners choose the messages and the communication channels relying on the solutions that the research has indicated as being the best ones. They use tactics to create specific messages for each type of public in order to achieve the target they've set.

When considering timescales two key factors must be observed: deadlines that should be identified so that the tasks associated with a project can be completed in time and the right resources that need to be allocated so that the tasks in hand can be completed. Budget also plays an important role as the practitioner needs to adapt the PR campaign cost to it.

We should also underline that the internal publics need to be constantly informed about the PR projects, because when we talk about a PR team the members may be able to solve positively a situation that can occur.

4. Evaluation of the PR campaign

According to Newsom and co. (2003:582) there are two types of evaluation in a campaign: monitoring and final evaluation. A continuous system of monitoring is essential for all the main PR activities and especially for campaigns, as allocation of resources might be needed in another direction or priorities should be changed. For example, practitioners will be regularly monitoring the media relations element of the program by making a monthly analysis of the media coverage in order to focus more effort on particular messages.

Similarly, at the end of a specific campaign, practitioners will make a final evaluation. What was good, what went wrong, what could have been done better? To answer these questions, practitioners must undertake formal research and evaluate the results including: the impact on publics, the effect on the objectives and the mission of the organization or the effect on the publics' attitudes. So if the objective was to prevent the closure of a factory, you will have a clear cut indication of the result at the end! The campaign has either succeeded or failed!

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