A Successful Strategy for Griffin Wind Farm - Essay Example

Abstract

The proposal below is to Griffin wind farm built by Siemens Wind Power. The location of the wind farm is in Aberfeldy, approximately 19 miles in the northwest of the city of Perth in Scotland. The company generates, transmits, distributes, and supplies electricity in the production, storage, distribution, and supply of gas in other energy services. The paper focuses on a proposal to communicate the UK announcement that SSE wishes to extend Griffin wind farm in Scotland. Our agency decided to write the proposal because of the brief of the company that I came across. I have devised the public relations strategy to maintain a successful PR strategy for Griffin wind farm. The stakeholders that I plan to work with are the residents. The proposal covers all the sets of PR recommendations including both tactical and strategic to cover the residents. The proposal incorporates 15 sources from various authors who talk about public relations.

Overview

From the information, the extension of the wind farm would include 50 new turbines with a maximum capacity of 160MW. Additionally, the best part is that it will create close to 100 jobs during the construction and 20 permanent jobs upon completion.

Your firm should choose us because we take pleasure in providing you with the opportunity to have operational convenience, an active, healthy, public image that will help in the growth and progress of your company. The paragraphs below offer a range of environmental scanning, PR challenges, and opportunities, stakeholder analysis, PR objectives and strategies, as well as the planned evaluation. We are pleased to work hand in hand with your company to ensure that the growth is sustainable. The reason for submitting the proposal is in a response to the brief of your business.

Environmental scanning

For the environmental scan analysis, our agency looked at all the factors that are both external and internal. Knowing the needs of an organization is important when conducting an environmental scan (Zhang 2010, page 723). The first process will be that we create an environmental scan team. The responsibility of the team members will be to research one or more external or internal factors of the firm, prepare a list of data that that supports the factors they have researched, and then the members share the list of all the elements.

More to the point, in environmental scanning, we will need to conduct a strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis. As Haines (2016, page 93) explains, agencies ought to do an environmental scan on a quarterly basis to guide the implementation of the plan. The groups of people who will help me to carry out the SWOT analysis are the management together with other top leaders in our agencies. Acquiring as much information as possible about the company is a vital process in environmental scanning (Zhang 2010, page 722). The method that will get the team thinking about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is giving the team members new sheets to give out their thoughts before coming together as a group.

The strengths and weaknesses will be the internal factors that affect the farm while opportunities and threats will be the external factors. For example, the shortcomings of the surrounding the firm are concerns such as noise, landscape, and visual effects. The strengths include the fact that the completion of the project will allow for the generation of electricity in up to 8000 homes. The opportunities include the jobs that the project would create during and after completion. Regarding threats, ecological damage and impact of the firm on wildlife are inclusive.

Vascellari (2014, page 1) advises that it is mandatory to conduct an environmental scan helps agencies to define their objectives later on in the planning process. Ecological and strategic scanning ensures PR companies collect information concerning events, trends, and dynamics of the external environment of the organization (Lesca 2013, page 2). Strategic scanning helps to cope with the issues of diversity and globalization.

PR challenges and opportunities

In the project, our focus is delivering value. However, in the expansion of Griffin wind farm, we have challenges as well as opportunities. James (n.d page 137) points out that the biggest challenge facing PR agencies is the impact of new media, especially the internet. The author adds that practitioners fear technology and do not embrace the new media. PR professionals have a challenge of coping with legal affairs and government limits (Liu and Levenshus 2010, page 2). Additionally, politics restricts the creativity and innovation of communication (Liu and Levenshus 2010, page 2).

Challenges

The challenge we face in the project include in the project is finding talented employees. Recently, we began looking for fresh graduates from the University who have sophisticated views of the business challenges facing any of our clients.

Furthermore, another challenge we have is the continued search for the best communication channels to reach our stakeholders. The increasing globalization and diversity have been a great challenge. However, with some of the professionals in our agency, we will ensure that we scrutinize, estimate, and assess all the compound problems.

Opportunities

In contrary, the opportunities that we face in the project are trust. We are a step ahead to ensure that we advise you on the threats and opportunities of the project. We have trusted advisors who know how to handle the world of media.

Moreover, another opportunity that we have is expanding our capabilities and focus on problem-solving for clients rather than media relations. In the project, we will ensure that we do away with the threats and weaknesses that surround it.

Besides that, we have a significant opportunity to be the driving force to deliver thinking that transcends towards the success of the project. We ensure that with all our clients we work with, creativity is the key thing.

Stakeholder analysis

In the stakeholder analysis, we will use the social network theory to the stakeholder management. Application of the stakeholder theory describes how the aspects of the agency’s stakeholder network, for example, the network density and focal organization’s centrality have an impact on the response of the group to stakeholder demands (Missonier and Loufrani-Fedida 2014, page 1109). As Reed, Graves, Dandy, Posthumus, Hubacek, Morris, Prell, Quinn, and Stringer (2009, page 1934) assert, stakeholder analysis empowers marginal stakeholders to influence decision-making processes. When an agency conducts a stakeholder analysis, they increase the complexity and difficulties of research and consider new conflicting and diverse agendas (Reed, Graves, Dandy, Posthumus, Hubacek, Morris, Prell, Quinn, and Stringer 2009, page 1934).

The potential stakeholders for the project are

• Residents – the residents will be those living in the town nearest to Griffin, Aberfeldy. About 2000 residents are living in Aberfeldy. Additionally, other residents include local communities, which the wind farm affected including the ones living in Dull and Weem, Dunkeld and Brirnam, Kenmore, District and Mid Athol, as well as those in Strathay and Grandtully.

• Local politicians – since Griffin is in the Perth and North Perthshire constituency for the Scottish parliament, the district council for Griffin and Kinross Council will be some of the stakeholders under local politicians.

• SSE employees at Griffin wind farm – here, we will include all the 14 full-time employees at Griffin wind farm and all the 14 full-time contractors at the site by Siemens Energy Service Renewable.

The stakeholders that we prefer to work with directly are the residents. The key message that we would recommend to the stakeholders is that we work together to ensure that the project becomes a success.

Possible communication channel

The best channel of communication that we will use is advertising. We will use advertising all the way through during campaigns and all social networks, radio, as well as television. Yeshin (2012, page 166) indicates that agencies should keep in mind that interactions with marketing objectives influence advertising decisions and their effectiveness.

Budget

In the project, the expected budget will be 100,000 Euros. The reason why we chose 100,000 Euros is its excellent flexibility for a broad range of scope of activity. The table below shows how we plan to spend the budget.

Category

Estimated Subtotal

Advertising

40,000 Euros

Retargeting

10,000 Euros

PR firm

30,000 Euros

Campaign

10,000 Euros

Miscellaneous

10,000 Euros

Total

100, 000 Euros

Timetable

We plan to make an announcement for the project in 2017 during spring.

PR objectives

The overall aim of the proposal is to help create support for the pronouncement to make Griffin wind farm bigger. Other targets include

• To ensure that the residents receive the news of the announcement

• To make the news of the announcement minimal for the probability of criticism

• To offer the opportunity for the inhabitants to show their support

PR strategy

When agencies properly manage and measure the PR strategies, it creates a new area for opportunities that lead to the generation of revenue and brand elevation (Saxe 2016, page 1). Conducting client research before the launch of the project is important before the agency moves to the step of campaigns (Conner 2016, page 1).

The PR strategies that we will be using are

• Collaboration with influencers – it will be one of the tactics that we will use in our campaign. We will be using word of mouth, endorsements, and press coverage to earn credibility among other individuals and stakeholders.

• Use ‘why’ communication – our agency will come up with core values that will make the campaign more relatable to the audience. We will explain why we have decided to do things the way we do.

• Giving press exclusivity – we will ensure that the agency finds the appropriate outlets to tell each aspect of the project.

Planned evaluation

The planning process will involve Perth and Kinross Council. Consequently, the Scottish ministers will give the final consent for the expansion of Griffin wind farm.

When evaluating the campaign, we will look at the outputs, our takes, and the results. We are there to help you with new ideas that we would like to become a success. PR works to ensure the protection of the interests of the clients and creating a mutual understanding among groups and institutions (Al-Jenaibi 2014, page 22). Our agency will be there all the step of the way from the idea face to the stages of development, and then the success of the project.

Another way that our agency plans to evaluate the campaign is through the reach of audience. We will do this by measuring the number of people that will be in the campaign. Our agency will be keen on the readership and circulation of all the publications that cover the campaign.

As well, our agency will evaluate the campaign by looking at the frequency. We will ensure that our brand marketers communicate the message with the recipients on many occasions to make sure that it has an impact. For example, we will know that about 40% of residents in Scotland have seen the message immediately we communicated it. We will combine all the aspects of frequency and reach to ensure that the target audience has seen our campaign.

Lastly, since our agency will be incorporating advertising as the channel of communication, we will evaluate the campaign by assigning the financial value. Butterick (2011, page 137) asserts that when an agency fails to evaluate the campaign, they will not be able to demonstrate value for money. We will calculate the equivalent of our value to the campaign.

Carson (2015, page 1) articulates that using the tactics mentioned above to evaluate the campaign will ensure the success of the PR. For the evaluation, PR agencies ought to set out clear and agreeable objectives with the client (Talking Tactics 2014, page 1). Yeshin (2012, page 264) states that the areas that need evaluation during PR campaigns include a shift in awareness, growth in inquiries, reduction in the level of complaints, a capacity of coverage in target media, and improvement in share price.

Recommendations

• We recommend that you remain patient through all the phases of the project to ensure its success.

• We should work hand in hand every step of the way to make sure that we eliminate all the threats in the project.

• Your company should consider our proposal and trust that we do a better job to deliver quality value.