Communication Ammo, by Sean Williams

The new reality of corporate communication is a smaller staff than five years ago, new expectations about what constitutes success and a burgeoning requirement to measure communication impact on business results.  You’ve begun working on articulating measurable objectives, but for what audiences?

Some public relations people don’t even like the word, audiences. It implies a passive receiver for whatever messages the sender wants to send.  Publics is a word used mainly by academics these days, and stakeholders sounds like a bit part in a vampire movie.  Whatever we call the people who receive our messages, from whom we solicit feedback and engage in productive dialogue, they play more than a small role in our communication strategy.

One good method for beginning a strategic plan is to exhaustively list out all the various groups of people who are important to our organization. The “general public” is too broad a designation, as is “employees.” We need to dig deeply into groups and sub-groups with an eye toward understanding what exactly we want them to think, feel or do as a consequence of our communication activities.

That’s the path to developing communication plans that are: a) most relevant; b) measurable; and c) strategic.  I’ve heard fellow communicators complain that strategic planning is too general, or too disconnected from everyday activities, or even (in one notable case) a waste of time in a changing world. Let’s tackle these objections one by one:

• Too general: Audience analysis forces specific focus — coupled with objective-setting, audience analysis provides both a destination and a road map that addresses real business problems, not pie-in-the-sky, idealistic matters.

• Too disconnected: When the corporate communications team is too far away from the business, esoterica can take us over. This doesn’t mean that, for example, the concerns of the corporate-Wall Street-HR-Purchasing-IT support structure of the company are unimportant. It just means that fostering a connection to the revenue-producing side of the business makes for more measurable objectives. FedEx is a largely decentralized communication environment, but the communications staff are renowned problem-solvers and facilitators, not just scribes. Building effective relationships is crucial (as we’ll learn later in this series), and including all audiences in our analysis is important.

• Too static: The difference between a tactical and strategic plan is…anyone? Anyone? The strategy is a map, objectives are a destination and tactics are the car.  In this type of business environment, a list of specific initiatives may be too restrictive — promises may be unkept. But the strategy merely outlines the path we’re taking to the objectives, and it should allow for some ongoing adjustments as circumstances dictate.

Here’s a list of sample audiences:

• Managers
• Supervisors
• Team leaders
• Executives (C-Suite)
• National Media (divided into print/broadcast)
• Local Media (divided into print/broadcast)
• Trade Media
• Plant Managers
• Plant PR directors
• Plant town politicians
• Union leaders (international and plant)
• Trade associations
• Retirees
• Current wholesale customers
• Current retail customers
• Friends and family of employees, customers
• Plant town residents
• Lobbyists
• Activist organizations
• Plant town chambers of commerce

What would your objectives be for each of these?

Obviously, there will be overlap, and just because we list out an audience doesn’t necessarily mean we will plan for that audience. Making that decision — who do we most need to engage? — is the foundation of our communication strategy.

Judging the impact of each audience on our ability to attain our business objectives is an exercise in prioritization. That effort starts with understanding the business problems associated with each audience, so as to gauge the potential positive and negative impact each represents.

It’s an analytical exercise that can really be a challenge in a downsized staff — but there is no other way of ensuring that our strategy is spot-on accurate. It’s just too important to get right.

Note: for great information on prioritizing stakeholders, see Dr. Brad Rawlins Gold Standard paper, available free from the Institute for Public Relations.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 11:09 am and is filed under Measurement, Public Relations, Social Media, Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.