Public Relations - The Communication Cycle - Essay Example

Public Relations - The Communication Cycle Contents Contents A)Practical Portfolio 4 B)Theory 13 Executive summary 13 Background 13 Methodology and Findings 14 1.Messaging:- 14 2.Targeting: 15 3.Distributing: 15 4.Monitoring and measurement: 16 5.Assessment: 16 Model name 18 Type of communication 18 Model characteristics 18 Less is more: 20 Why PR? 21 Crisis management 21 Conclusion 21 References 22 A) Practical Portfolio Placement: The clipping appeared as a lead story in morning news. Audience reach: Across the globe. Length: 2.5 by 3.5 cms. Context: News story. Content: Shift of consumer electronics company to telecommunications realm. Tone: Positive Stakeholders: In this news story, view point of corporate investor has been identified. Placement: News was stuck between sports and weather news and had an image to create impact. Audience reach: Size of target audience approximately 1000 to 2000. Length: 2.6 by 3.9 cms Context: Editorial piece Content: Allegations on chief executive of Apple for not following tax strategy of the country. Tone: Negative Stakeholders: Viewpoint of an influencer observed in the clippings. Placement: Observed in front page of newspaper with no such image. Audience reach: The newspaper clipping was circulated in four countries. Length: 2.1 by 3.3 cms Context: News story. Content: The revenue forecasts of Apple surge in second quarter. Tone: Positive Stakeholders: Viewpoint of a corporate investor observed in the clippings. Placement: Observed as a lead story in newspapers. Audience reach: Reached many people across the globe. Length: 2.06 by 4 cms Context: News story. Content: Apple’s stock climbed more than 7%. Tone: Positive Stakeholders: Influencer through blog posted one’s opinion. (Source: Bevins and OBrien, 2013) Placement: This clipping was a cover story in newspapers as well as broadcasted through television. Audience reach: Reached target audience in Brazilian market and American market. Length: 2.26 by 3.5 cms Context: Neutral story. Content: Apple’s faces a tough competition in Brazilian market Tone: Negative Stakeholders: Views of corporate investor observed in the clipping. (Source: OBrien, 2013) Placement: This story though was highly influential was stuck between weather and sports news. Audience reach: It was mainly broadcasted in home market and Chinese market. Length: 2.11 by 3.6 cms Context: Investigative piece. Content: Apple Inc has finalized on selling iPhone by utilizing distribution channel of China Mobile. Tone: Positive. Stakeholders: Corporate investor’s viewpoint observed in the clippings. (Source: OBrien, 2013) Placement: This clipping appeared as the lead story in the newspaper. Audience reach: It reach large base of target audience located across the world. Length: 2 by 3 cms Context: Investigative piece. Content: Apple Inc was awarded $290 million by federal jury for Samsung’s patent case. Tone: Positive. Stakeholders: Viewpoint of influencer through blog. Placement: This news story disappeared between climate, entertainment and sports news. Audience reach: Reached television audience as well was clippings were spread in multiple countries. Length: 3 by 3 cms Context: News story. Content: Apple Inc signs a contractual deal with Amazon, Snapdeal and Flipkart in order to cut iPhone 5S’s online price. Tone: Neutral. Stakeholders: Viewpoint of corporate investor included in the clipping. (Source: Reuters, 2014) Placement: This clipping appeared in television channel as news between sports and other news. Audience reach: Only home market was reached through this piece of news. Length: 1.9 by 4 cms. Context: News story. Content: Apple Inc has decided on a potential bond sale and plans to meet investors. Tone: Neutral. Stakeholders: An influencer’s viewpoint observed in the clipping. (Source: Aulakh, 2014) Placement: This clipping appeared in the front page of newspaper. Audience reach: The target audience was mainly belonging to Indian market. Length: 1.8 by 3.8 cms. Context: Editorial. Content: Apple Inc has been witnessed to sell more than million iPhones in India per year Tone: Positive. Stakeholders: Viewpoints of corporate investor encompassed in the clipping. B) Theory Executive summary The current project aims at identifying the role of communication cycle in public relations. As part of it various stages in communication cycle has been considered and how each of these stages is relevant to the company chosen is considered. Then the effectiveness of public relations have been discussed like how it has been measured over the years, starting from subjective analysis back in the 18th century to financial analysis in the current scenario. The company considered over here is Apple and how the effectiveness of PR strategy with respect to Apple has been considered like how it tries to communicate information to its stakeholders. Background Apple is a multinational company belonging to the technology sector and subsector computers manufacturing. It engages itself in computer, mobile phone, tablet manufacturing and developing software. It is best known worldwide for its computer brand Imac, tablet computer ipad, mobile phone brand iphone. As a company belonging to the IT sector it comes 2nd after Samsung electronics. It was named as the most valuable company in the United States in 2003, a place which it acquired by surpassing Coca cola. Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1977 and by 2013 has a market capitalization of 170 billion dollar (Apple Inc., 2014). Apple belongs to a sector which is experiencing very rapid changes, particularly in field of innovation. The number of consumers having a mobile device now days has increased tremendously (Hoskisson, Michael, Ireland, & Harrison, 2007). The threat of a new entrant bringing in a new technology is too high these days. So no company in this particular sector can just sit back on its laurels and accolades and relax. Even for a Company like apple, if it stops innovating and comes out with newer product lines or innovation some other player will bring in a new product. Another factor that plagues companies like apple is that its designs may easily be copied by some other company and used to produce a similar phone at a much cheaper price range. In fact there have been instances in the past where Samsung has allegedly violated copyright restrictions of apple’s designs and the two companies have engaged themselves in legal battle. So to successfully hold its position in today’s market Apple needs to: 1. Trend of innovating newer product lines and there by entering virgin markets. 2. Build a strong association with its customer base (Scott, 2013). 3. Build its reputation in the field of customer service and designing products that reflect its individuality and are meant to last. Methodology and Findings Any company needs to build a strong connection with its various stakeholders. It has to ensure that it is able to effective disseminate the information that it wants to send out to its various stakeholders. A good PR strategy in this regard would be to effectively distribute the information to the public. To be able to effectively design a strategy for public relation a simple methods that can be followed is public relations. The following are parts of the communication cycle (Stromback & Kiousis, 2011):- 1. Messaging:- Before designing a strategy for public relation that fast thing that has to be considered is what is the message that is to be conveyed? If the company is not clear about the message that it needs to convey and the key point that it needs to focus on the company won’t be able to design a strategy to effectively achieve the task. The next thing to be decided in line is what should be the medium of communication? Will it be in the form of video? Press release? Keynote release? Apple’s public relation department is expert in this domain. Before every press release or key note express the PR team religiously scans every detail; Starting from who will be invited, who is going to sit at what place, what needs to be done at emergency scenario, the lighting arrangement, etc. The PR also keeps an eye on the media to understand the expectations of the public regarding new product and accordingly releases selective information to tamper expectations that won’t match with the release. 2. Targeting: As with sales it is very important to identify the target receivers of the PR information. There are many stakeholders who are associated with the company with various expectations. So before releasing and information the company should identify who is the meant recipient of the information, i.e. whether it is the customers, investors or any new partners. So, before commencing with information release the company should identify who is the intended recipient, where he is located and what information source does he use to derive information. 3. Distributing: Next in the line of thought would be determined the way the company wants to disseminate information. Whereas some methods are simple and cheap like sending mass email to targeted group of intended recipient but their reach is limited. So the customer at large or rather the stake holders at large remain in the dark. Other methods may include press release where a group of news reporters are invited and information is distributed to them. These reporters in turn help to propagate the information further. But this is a costly method. Now days a cheap and effective method has been the use of social media. Social media can be effectively used to spread the information required. It also helps in engaging in two way communication. Apple uses different media to communicate effectively with the public. They use key note addresses, press release, using social media to create a buzz like; Sending out specific product related information to key bloggers who mostly write positive blogs about the company, releasing to media tantalizing hints about to new product just to create a buzz around the new product, etc. 4. Monitoring and measurement: Measurement and monitoring is a key area that should be focussed on to try and understand the effectiveness of the campaign. Under this task it is important to find out whether the campaign has generated enough hypes has been circulated enough and the intended recipients have been able to get the message clearly. 5. Assessment: The last thing that should be considered is has the PR campaign been successful? What are the things that should be learned from the campaign? The important questions that should be considered are: was the message clearly understood? If not, then ensuring clarity the next time. Did it reach the intended recipients? If not then change the communication tools. Was the message properly covered by media? If not change the media partners for the next time (Oliver, 2004). For example although apple’s campaign and key note releases has been successful most of the times, it faced a glitch one time when during a presentation there was a sudden malfunction and the presentation stopped unexpectedly. The presenter and the PR team in the background were left sweating. It is important to measure the effectiveness of the Public relation practice and the measurement of the effectiveness of the public relations campaign has remained a major area since 1970’s. In 2008, a Delphi study found that the top research topics in the field of public relation domain were related to measuring, expression of value and usefulness of public relation for an organization (Watson, 2008, p. 111). The evaluation of public relations is not a new concept and its implementation can be traced back to 18th century and was practiced in USA and Germany (Lamme & Russell, 2010; Watson 2012a.). By the dawn of 20th century Edward L. Bernays and Arthur W. Page used opinion research for the purpose of evaluating public opinion and accordingly design communication methodologies strategies (Ewen, 1996). Then came a time when evaluators of public relations started considering media coverage as an effective tool to determine the effectiveness of public relation campaigns. By media coverage they started measuring the frequency with which the media discussed issues relating to a company and the length of the reports and its tonality (Plackard & Blackmon, 2009). By late 1960s and1970s books and articles addressing the issue of public relations started appearing. Robinson’s public relation and survey research was published in 1969 where Robinson stated that practitioners would no longer measure success of a PR campaign on subjective lines but they “would begin to use more systematic measures of success, primarily social science methods such as survey research” (Robinson, 2009). A major researcher in the field A Grunig has stated four models of public relations. They are: Model name Type of communication Model characteristics Press agency/publicity model One-way communication Using persuasion and manipulation for influencing the targeted audience to act as the company wants. Public Information model One-way communication Using press releases to distribute organizational information. One-way asymmetrical model One-way communication Using persuasion and manipulation for influencing the targeted audience to act as the company wants. The public’s feeling about the organization is not taken into consideration. Two-way symmetrical model Two-way communication This can be considered as the best strategy in that it emphasises on two way communications between the public and the company to resolve conflict understand their expectation and promote mutual understanding. (Duhe, 2007) In current scenario effectiveness of the PR campaign is measured in financial terms by measuring the impact of public relation campaign on the bottom line of the company. To measure the impact, often the technique that is used is Return on investment.ROI is measured in terms of return on capital employed by dividing earnings by the summation of various capital that are used to generate these earnings. ROCE= EARNING BEFORE INTEREST AND TAXES/ CAPITAL EMLOYED Capital employed is defined as the summation of shareholder’s equity and long term debt. To measure ROI for Public relation activity would be to measure the benefits that are to be derived from public relation activities divided by the cost involved in the activity. However Public relations and ROI are related rather loosely and has no direct relation. Often it is very difficult to measure the impact of a public relation campaign (Watson & Noble, 2007). The benefits derived can come over a long period of time where as the cost involved is immediate. Sam Black a British writer on public relations once said that although it was okay to measure the effectiveness of a business in terms of ROI, “but in the field of public relations it has little significance” (Black, 2009). In case Of Apple for example the PR activities generally focuses on its customers. The communications that apple sends out are targeted mainly to its customers regarding new product launches. Before launching a new product the PR team of APPLE is all up in action and they undertake the PR campaign and its preparation almost as a meticulously planned scientific regime. The PR stuff looks after anything and everything leading to the event starting from who will be presenting the key note address to the position of lighting. The PR team also chalks out the list of persons to be invited for the event including media persons, bloggers etc. Before the PR event the team also releases tentative hints regarding the product leading to creation of hype about the product. The PR team also checks out for any media leaks about the product for any wrong information that is being circulated about the product and to release press release accordingly to rectify the wrong information. Sometimes the PR generated especially through news agencies and website details about the financial health of the company or any new sector or market the company is going to enter into. This is done to lure in new investors to invest in the stock of Apple and also as a disclosure for all the shareholders of the company (Newsom, Turk & Kruckeberg, 2012). That apple has used PR effectively is evident from the fact there was a time in the past when Apple was about to go out of the business. But due to successful PR handling by people at the helm such as Steve jobs and Katie Cotton the company has been able to become the most valuable company. Another measure of the success of the PR campaign by apple is the fact that there are large and long queues in front of every apple store before every product launches. Through its effective PR strategies the company has been able to generate a breed of loyal customers and a whole lot of others who view it as the standard as the benchmark for any technology company. There are a few salient features of the PR campaign used by apple. They are: Less is more: Apple has always been able to effectively generate and sustain an aura of suspense around it. By divulging fewer details about the company it has created a niche for itself. Cotton followed in the lines of Jobes and practiced what can be termed as anti PR. She did not entertain reporters. Seldom returned their calls and only divulged information that the company wanted to divulge. What they did at apple is pretty simple. They did not return calls, did not reply to emails or the rare occasions on which they picked up phone was just said to read a three sentence script which did not satisfy queries. This art of secrecy actually worked very well for the fact evident from the fact that it became the most valued company in United States. It enjoys a position globally that other companies can only aspire to become. Why PR? Apple organised big press events only when it had to do a big product launch. In those events too it invited only selective breed of reporters from top business agencies or blogger4s who would write positive reviews about the product. In this way actually it advertised about the product through the press release and that too for free. Apple has always asked the question is my PR campaign going to bring in new business for me? Crisis management In cases of crisis situation too apple’s PR were equally secretive, whether it was regarding mass suicide at its factory in china or concerns about the health of Steve Jobs, Apple disclosed only the information that it felt like disclosing and carefully guarded, stonewalled or bypassed other queries (Anthonissen, 2008). Conclusion The project discusses the challenges and stages faced by a public relation activity. It takes into consideration how PR activities have been evaluated over the years starting from subjective analysis in the past to financial models in the current days. It considers the various steps in a communication cycle and the role of analysis in the communication cycle. For its analysis it considers a particular company; here apple; and analyses how different PR tools are utilized by the company what are its intended recipients and what are its impacts. Also considered are the challenges being faced by the industry in which apple operates and the challenges faced by that industry and how apple can overcome it? In this context news clippings of Apple about its various press releases have been considered to act as a source of secondary data to analyze and correlate with the actual theory. It was found that Apple’s PR strategies are quite effective in the way the company intends to project itself. The company has been successfully able to create an aura of difference and specialty about the company. It has been able to create hype about the company and its products and so it can be said that Apple’s PR strategies has been successful in general. 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Journal of Communication Management. 12(2), pp. 104-123. Read More