At the end of this unit, you should be able to:
Identify the need for planning your public relations programmes and activities Enumerate at least 6 reasons why you need to plan your public relations
programmes
Discuss the 3 key considerations necessary, prior to carrying out a public relations plan.
3.0 MAIN CONTENT
3.1 Public Relations Planning
You will understand the place of planning in public relations when you go back to the beginning of this course to refresh your memory on the definitions of public relations.
You recall the definition of the British Institute of Public Relations (BIPR) which begins by saying that public relations is ‘the deliberate plan and …. You also recall the definition of Frank Jefkins that public relations ‘consists of all forms of planned communications both inward and outward…. Let’s also call to mind the all-embracing Mexican statement which makes it clear that public relations is the art and social science…. The fact that it is social science means that everything about it is planned to the minutest detail. Nothing in public relations should be left to assumptions or hunches.
Careful planning leads to programmes that are proactive and preventative rather than to activities that are merely reactive, or remedial.
But the truth is that not every public relations practitioner plans, much less plans carefully. Yet another truth is that when you draw close to such practitioners you will see in the results of their work that there is a lack of depth or profundity. Some do not plan because they do not consider the time and money investment worth the while; however, they end up spending more time and money to cure the problems brought about by lack of planning.
3.2 Why Plan?
As humans, except we know the reasons why we must do a thing, we may not appreciate doing it; therefore we need to answer the question, why do we have to plan?
1. Planning is good for public relations: This perhaps is a most important reason for planning. Planning is good for public relations and public relations
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people as it contributes to the overall success of the totality of public relations activities. No doubt, it is sometimes not a very exciting or appealing process but in the long run the rewards are enormous. You still remember that old saying that proper preparation (planning) prevents poor performance, don’t you? Old as that saying may be, it is very relevant to us modern public relations practitioners.
2. Planning helps clarify your intentions: You don’t begin a journey, get midway and then ask yourself, ‘where am I going by the way, and what am I going to do there.’ Planning makes your intentions very clear from the start. You are not confused as to what your intentions are.
3. Planning focuses your efforts: You don’t want to scatter your energy when you carry out your public relations activities. You set out to direct all your energy in one direction. This is the way you can achieve effectiveness. Always note that scattered energy is wasted energy.
4. It improves effectiveness: When you plan, you achieve more because you know where you are going, how to get there, what to do when you get there and what to do with what you get from there. The end is determined from the beginning.
Planning helps you to have a programme to work with as well as the means to do the task.
5. Encourages long term view: With a good plan, you are able to project into the future of your work, envisage problems and proffer solutions to them even before they arise. Who knows, they may not even arise, and that guarantees you smooth ride.
6. Demonstrates value-for-money: An astute businessman would do all he can to maximise profit and minimise loss. The chances of achieving this with good planning are higher than without it.
7. Minimises mishap: Without a plan, you are not sure of anything, not even yourself. You are susceptible to the vagaries of uncertainty and the attendant dangers and mishaps. Public relations is better done with a well thought out plan that gets you result with minimal errors.
8. Reconciles conflicts: Very often in an organisation you witness conflicts among persons, processes, programmes and procedures. This often occurs when there are no laid out plans for achieving organisational and corporate goals. A good plan would prevent, eradicate or reconcile such conflicts.
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9. Facilitates Proactivity: The whole essence of good public relations is to be outgoing and proactive. You must take the first step or initiative towards your publics and what they stand for in relation to your organisation. It takes a good plan to be proactive.
Other reasons for planning include to keep our actions in line with our organisation’s missions and goals.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE:
Can you think of two other reasons why you need planning in public relations?
3.3 How Do We Plan?
Making up your mind to plan and setting the planning process in motion are not enough to guarantee success if you do not know how to plan. Good planning begins with having the right human resources to plan with. You need men and women who have some measure of experience in putting a good plan together. They must be people of positively critical minds. They must be people who are familiar with the company’s goals, missions, objectives and aspirations. They must be willing to approach the planning process dispassionately and objectively. It will not be out of place to have a devils advocate among your planning team. This person has the duty to point out the negative sides to every idea, and decision. He must however do it with sincerity and ultimate good intensions.
Secondly, you need consensus building i.e. agreement on an overall direction before planning can proceed. You must all agree that a problem exists and must and can be solved. Where some officials believe that it is not a bad problem that deserves all the efforts you are putting into it, or that it is one that would take care of itself with the passage of time, then the whole process would disintegrate. To create a good platform for consensus building, you may need to work with some empirical findings from research about your organisation, its publics and other variables. Also, your public relations plans must be clearly linked with the broader goals of the organisation.
A third point is brainstorming. This is the stage you ask down-to-earth questions about everything regarding the plan. It is a time to question the best of your ideals and plug all possible loopholes. The best of ideas come during your relaxed mood.
You may need to take your planning team off for a short retreat, just to get into a
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different atmosphere that can engender creativity. You could also adopt a planning grid which is fast becoming a common tool used by public relations practitioners for developing communication strategies. Whichever approach you adopt, your brainstorming must cover four vital areas namely:
Publics: Here you identify, isolate or demarcate which publics are involved in the issue. You identify the opinion leaders and decision makers of these publics.
Values: You need to highlight the interests, concerns and values of the various publics involved.
Message: Here you decide what message that would clearly address the publics’
values and attempt to get the appropriate responses needed to enable your organisation achieve the set public relations goals.
Media: A good message sent through the wrong or less appropriate media would achieve wrong or less desired results. Therefore, part of your mandate during the brainstorming session is to determine what media are best suited to get your message across to your organisation’s or client’s publics.
3.4 Qualities of a Good Plan
We are gradually approaching the crux of the subject of this unit: Developing a good public relations plan. But before we do that (though in another unit), let’s see what a good plan looks like. In essence what are the features of a good plan? The title of this segment also suggests that there are bad plans too. Indeed, there are some plans that are not worth more than the papers on which they are written. To achieve good success therefore, it’s imperative to make a good plan and it must have the following characteristics.
1. It seeks measurable results: A good plan is specific in what it intends to achieve.
It sets its goals in measurable terms. For instance it is easier to measure ‘5%
improved image by XYZ public’ than
‘better and enhanced image by XYZ public.’
2. Has specific deadlines for achieving its set goals and objectives. Any good plan is time bound i.e. it should be able to state that ‘such and such should have happened by such and such time. Working by deadlines helps everyone to know that they do not have forever to do the job and this engenders group dynamics and dependency.
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3. It is tied to specific goals of your organisation. A goal that does not gel with your organisation’s goals or that is at variance with them will not attract your organisation’s leader’s sympathy or support. Therefore, it pays to set goals that play a role in the ultimate fulfillment of some organisation’s goals.
4. It is realistic: A realistic goal is one that can be achieved within a specified period with the resources you have on your hand. Don’t make such plans that sound like ‘by faith, we shall….’ Faith is good but many times it is not within your control, especially when you are the only one that is exercising it among a lot of other staff.
5. It is flexible: It is only people in the cemetery who do not change their minds, and that is because they can’t. The only thing that is constant in the world is change. Change is imperative because you operate in a changing world with capricious humans. Much as you may not make radical changes in your plan, you would sometimes need to adjust the plans to meet with current realities.
6. It is win-win proposition: A good plan does not seek to achieve a winner takes all situation. Rather, it gives room for all parties involved to have some share of the win. This implies that the success of your plan should benefit your publics just as if benefits your organisation. Remember public relations is enlightened selfish interest. When you allow others to win along with you, you place yourself, your client or organisation in good stead to have a good and long run win.
4.0 CONCLUSION
We could have gone right into discussing the public relations plan in this unit but you will agree that it was worth the effort to see the need for planning as well as the attributes of a good plan as we have done. Most public relations plans today fail because the planners do not really understand the need for planning. They do it as a routine rather than a duty. Understanding the implications of planning as we have just done here would help us do better woks as we would be compelled to give more time to the whole process.
5.0 SUMMARY
In this unit, we examined reasons why we must plan our public relations programmes.
We saw that it is good for the whole public relations process, it helps us clarify our intensions, enables us to focus our efforts, it improves effectiveness, etc. We also saw that good plans have the quality of measurability and specificity of deadlines. They are realistic and flexible.