Strategic Issues Management

FINDING YOUR AUDIENCE

through the media

There are lots of media options:

How do you choose the right channel?

How do you get heard?

How do you mix content?

In a perfect PR world

everything is news

Unfortunately, it is not a

perfect world

What journalists want:

New events

Changes

Surprising stories

Things with big impact

Drama

Controversy

Interesting people

Emotion

What journalists get:

Same old events

Little change

Predictable stories

Things with minimal impact

Manufactured drama

People afraid to rock the boat

Boring people

Not much emotion

But news matters • News media aren‘t able to control what people think, but

they influence the public on what to think about (McCombs &

Shaw, 1972 and various later studies).

• People will take more notice if the issue is relevant to them

and if unsure about their position on the issue (uncertainty).

• All news content (every message) is framed by the media.

• Framing is a process in which communicators, consciously

or unconsciously, act to construct a point of view that

encourages the facts of a given situation to be interpreted by

others in a particular manner.

How do you work with

the media? • Media relations involves working with uncontrolled media.

• PR practitioners can PITCH the story but have NO CONTROL over what they

do with it – the media are a conduit, a way to reach our desired audience.

• A good news-angle is of interest to the journalist‘s readers / viewers. The

better the news angle, the more audience interest.

• PR aims to package the news angle to suit the journalist (and therefore their

audience) at a time that suits them.

• We contact journalists by phone or email to pitch a news story (even SMS).

• Then we send them info in a media release and/or supporting info.

• Then we cross our fingers and hope they use it!

Enemies? Not really

• In Australia, at least 50% of all news media content

originates directly or indirectly from PR efforts.

That‘s a huge amount!

• This is known as an ―information subsidy‖ – we are

doing creative work finding news angles free for

them.

• (But we have to work hard for coverage because we

are competing against a lot of other PR practitioners

for that 50%.)

In a busy

marketplace for

stories, getting

yours heard

above the noise

is very difficult

The search for ‗eyeballs‘

Indonesia: 2nd in Asia for online video

2nd is Asia for mobile video

62% use social media to inform purchases

Declining TV-only viewing

Alternatives

You can deal less with traditional

media and deal more with social,

owned and created media forms

People are not taking train

safety seriously

THE PROBLEM

What is the problem?

• Over a period of three months, three people were

killed around trains while 12 were seriously injured

• In the next three months (just before you launch

your campaign) four people are killed and seven

seriously injured

Specific goals

• 1 Increase public awareness and engagement with rail safety (there

was not sufficient data to provide us with a benchmark

• 2 prior to this campaign. This campaign was designed to set

measurable objectives in terms of awareness & engagement)

• 3 Generate PR, buzz and sharing around our message about rail safety.

Although an exact Key Performance Indicator (kpi) could not be

determined there was an expectation that the campaign would generate

earned media on and offline.

• 4 Invite a commitment to be safe (we a drew a line in the sand and

looked to get 10,000 local pledges on our website) in a 12-month period

• 5 See a reduction of near misses and accidents at level crossings and

station platforms over 12 months by 10 per cent.

• The First Game: Went to number one in 31

countries, and has 97 million downloads and has

been played 1.6b times.

• Second Game: number one in 83 countries on the

iPad and over 50 countries on the iPhone

• In 2013, they put out 11 different Dumb Ways to Die

pieces of film content which collectively add up to

25m views

VIRAL SUCCESS

• The campaign had 43 per cent awareness amongst

16-64 year olds across Australia, according to

research.

• 70 per cent of kids in Australia are aware of the

campaign and 67 per cent have been actively

involved in engaging with the campaign.

• But the target market was18-29 year olds, of which

only 46 per cent reported having seen the

campaign.

Evaluation measures

Your challenge:

Create a viral

shopping

campaign

You represent EEKO, a Korean Clothing brand looking to

enter Jakarta.

The clothing is very bright and fashionable — new styles

come in every five weeks and all the styles are limited so if

customers don‘t get in fast, they miss out. In other markets,

this has led to lots of attention around limited-edition styles.

Sometimes people buy far more than they need of a

popular style to sell online later once they have run out in

the shops. A T-shirt by one designer last year was selling

for the equivalent of IDR400,000 in shops but online was

selling for as much as IDR1,000,000.

The store is anxious to get very strong demand in its first

month of operation: in fact, they want to see queues that

go around the block. They are targeting wealthy women

under 30 with their designer line and young middle-income

men and women aged 17-25 with their general clothing

line.

They have a large budget for public relations and are open

to different options to launch their program.

• Question 1. What is your audience

— and what do they want? What

are they interested in? What do

they need?

• Question 2. What messages does

your audience want to hear?

• Question 3. What methods will you

use to communicate to them? Be

creative!

• Question 4. How will you know if

you have been successful?

• Question 5. How could you sustain

this success going forward?