Chapter 8
Strategic Management in PR
Practice
This is PR 11th Edition
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Objectives
• To understand the environment of PR work
• To appreciate the need to see or create the big
picture and attend to details
• To interpret PR’s role in terms of the organization’s
purpose
• To develop or strengthen and support strategic
communications
• To provide counsel and creative services as a
member of the management team
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PR’s Role in the Organizational
Structure
• Has grown with technology
• Increased value of communication and ability to
handle crises
• Considered essential, not optional
• Valued for its strategic contributions to solving
problems, recognizing issues, advising
management on how to handle problems and
issues
• Parallels between profit and nonprofit sectors
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Organizational Categories
• Government
• Profit/corporate
• Nonprofit
• Distinctive communication climate within
each
• Each also has a distinct culture that reflects
its values
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Organizational Mission and
PR
• Mission statements articulate what
organizations want to accomplish
• PR plan must begin with taking into account
an organization’s mission and purpose
• PR has a role in evaluating, revising, writing
the organization's mission statement
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Mission Statements
• Set tone for organization
• Establish organizational character
• Define parameters of an organization’s
activities
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Vision Statements
• The way an organization wants its various
publics to view it
• May include core value statements that
suggest ethics of the organization
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Identifying Statements
• Objective in substance
• Tell what the organization is and does
• Often used as the last or “boilerplate”
paragraph in a news release
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Goals and Objectives
• Sometimes defined as synonyms
• Generally, goals are long term
• Objectives follow from goals
• Objectives are short term efforts to achieve
longer term goals
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Publics and Organizational
Relationships
• PR is responsible for an organization’s
relationships, but not for all of an
organization's products, projects, programs
and activities
• Good long-term relationships are critical
• Components of relationships are a major
factor in determining satisfaction: control,
trust, commitment, exchange, communality
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Public Relations and Trust
• Founded in beliefs about an organization
– Integrity (fair and just behavior)
– Dependability (does what it says it will do)
– Competence (has the ability to do what it
says it will do)
– Communal relationship, not just an
exchange
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Monitoring, Measuring, Reporting
• PR is the best monitor of what is or isn’t happening
• PR is well situated to evaluate how different publics
are responding to various actions, messages, etc.
• PR must evaluate its own efforts, results, cost
effectiveness and the match between self
perception and what publics think
• PR must evaluate role of social media
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Good Public Relations
Management
• Is strategic
• Reports directly to senior management
• All PR functions are integrated within one
unit or are carefully coordinated
• PR is a separate management function
• PR is headed by a manager, not a
technician
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Good Public Relations
Management (cont.)
• Two-way symmetrical model of PR is used
• A symmetrical system of internal communication is
used
• The staff is comprised of PR pros
• There is diversity of race, gender, ethnicity
• Organizational context for excellence exists
(participatory, not authoritarian)
• Public relations serves as counsel to management
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Issues Monitoring and Managing
for Organizations
• Watching the global horizon for issues is
one of the most important functions of
strategic PR management
• Environmental scanning, with environment
broadly defined
• Risk management
• Identifying issues, then monitoring them,
then keeping management aware
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Planning and Managing PR Work
• Helping develop a formal mission statement
• Counseling management on publics and
strategies to reach objectives
• Monitoring the environmental
• Hiring good talent, both internally and
externally
• Budgeting resources (not just money)
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Strategies for Planning and
Problem Solving
• RACE formula (Marston)
– Research
– Action
– Communication
– Evaluation
• ROPE formula (Hendrix after Cutlip and Center)
– Research
– Objectives
– Programming
– Evaluation
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Strategies for Planning and
Problem Solving (cont.)
• ROSIE (Broom and Dozier)
– Research
– Objectives
– Strategies
– Implementation
– Evaluation
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Procedures for Handling a
Problem
• Define, identify problem
• Perform situation analysis
• Set program goals
• Identify publics
• Set program objectives
• Plan action program for each public
• Set media and message strategies
• Implement the program
• Evaluate the program
• Provide program recommendations
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PR Departments as Source and
Resource
• PR can supply information and work to
other divisions of an organization
• PR can provide advice and feedback to all
levels of the organization
• PR is an important source of information to
internal and external audiences
• PR internally prepares backgrounders,
position papers, crisis plans and reports
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Managing and Working with PR
People
• PR people are creative, work under
continuous pressure, face frequent criticism
because their work is so visible
• PR people are often more committed to
their profession than to their current
organization
• PR people communicate better with an
organization’s publics than with each other
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PR and the Global Perspective
• Some business principles in other parts of
the world conflict with personal beliefs,
values of US practitioners
• Constant attention needs to be paid to
messages, nuances to be sure we are not
imposing our values and views on others
• Government and global relationships can
impede understanding
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Using a Public Relations Firm
• Know and understand its structure and size
• Know and understand what the contract
says regarding chargeable and
nonchargeable expenses
• Realize that the larger the firm, the more
specialized each person on the team will be
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Transparency and
Translucency
• Complete transparency not always possible
– Gives facts that may not be the same thing as
truth
– Information can be taken out of context
– May cause emotional damage unnecessarily
• Translucency reason to not tell everything
– Support for being authentic
This is PR 11th Edition
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