SCCA2073

Strategic Management
•Strategic management represents the open
systems approach to public relations rather that
the closed systems, reactive approach. It enables
any organisation to identify its long-term
opportunities and threats.
•In public relations, strategic planning involves
making decisions about program goals and
objectives, identifying key publics, setting policies
or rules to guide selection of strategy, and
determining which is the most effective one.
•There must be a close linkage between the overall
program goal, the objectives for each publics and
the strategies selected.
PR Planning and Programming

• Planning and programming refers to making

the basic strategic decisions about what will
be done in what order to response to or in
anticipation of a problem or opportunity.

• Planning and programming requires

strategic thinking. This involves predicting or
establishing future goals, determining the
forces that will help or hinder the movement
towards goals, and formulating a plan to
achieve the goals.
PR Planning and Programming
Public Relations Planning Process
Marston’s RACE Model
 Marston’s Model
A four-step model in planning a process:
• R – Research. Research attitudes about the
issues at hand.
• A – Action. Identify action of the client in the
public interest.
• C - Communication. Communicate that action to
gain understanding, acceptance and support.
• E – Evaluation. Evaluate communication to see if
opinion has been influenced.
 Research
• “Research is controlled, objective, and systematic
gathering of information for the purpose of
describing and understanding” (Wilcox & Cameron, 2012)
• Determine the Research Role and Scope
- Questions should be asked and answered:
• What is the problem?
• What kind of information needed?
• Who are the target audiences?
• How will the data be analyzed, reported or applied?
• How much is the research cost?
To achieve effective public relations, strategies must
rely on research findings. Research findings will help
in identifying problems or opportunities and then
build strategies.
A careful and far-sighted planning that takes into
consideration future developments will produce:
•An integrated program that can lead to the
achievement of specific goals.
•Increased management participation and support
•A program emphasis that is positive rather than
defensive
•Careful deliberation on choice of themes, timing and
tactics
Formative Research:
• Analyzing the Situation
• Analyzing the Organization
• Analyzing the Publics
 Action
A public relations plan must start from the organisation’s
mission statement.
• In order to come out with a viable plan, public relations
practitioners must study the situation concerned. A
situation analysis includes:
– A searching look backward
– A wide look around
– A deep look inside
– A long, long look ahead
• Use the data collected to build the problem statement
and situation analysis, and the program goal.
Planning an action
• Establishing Goals and Objectives
• Formulating Action and Response
Strategies
• Designing Effective Communication
 Communication
• The goals of communication process are to
inform, persuade, motivate, or achieve mutual
understanding.
• To create effective communication, a PR
practitioner must have the knowledge of:
– What constitutes communication – mass
communication or personalised communication,
controlled or uncontrolled media, interactive media or
otherwise.
– How people process information and change their
perceptions
– What media and tools are most appropriate for a
particular message.
Selecting Communication Tactics
- Specifically, the planner considers four
categories:
• face-to-face communication and opportunities
for personal involvement,
• organizational media (sometimes called
controlled media),
• news media (uncontrolled media);
• advertising and promotional media (another
form of controlled media).
 Evaluation
Evaluating the Strategic Plan
• It is the measurement of results against
established objectives set during the planning
process.
• It provides the opportunity to learn what was
done right and what was done wrong.
• Evaluation starts in the planning stage where
problems are broken down into measurable
goals and objectives. Results are measured
and assessed against goals after the program
is implemented.