Establish Partnerships

Company - "McDonalds"

Elements of a Strategic Communications Plan

Step 1: Determine Goal

Identify and Profile Audience
Develop Messages
Select Communication Channels
Choose Activities and Materials
Establish Partnerships
Implement the Plan
Evaluate and Make Mid-Course Corrections

To initiate a successful and effective communications effort, start with an assessment of your current organizational goals. Examine what your organization stands for-its mission, values and beliefs. Look closely at who your organization is serving. This process will help narrow and sharpen the focus for your communication initiative(s).

What issue is most important to your organization right now?
Who is most affected by the issue stated above?
Who makes decisions about the issue?
What is the overall goal you want to achieve? (i.e., What change would you be able to observe?) (Be specific.)
What tangible outcomes would you like to achieve through a communications effort? i.e., How will you know you are achieving your goals? (Be specific. What would you see, hear, or have in-hand that would let you know you are making progress toward the goal?)

Step 2: Identify and Profile the Audiences

Once you've identified your key issues, it's time to identify and profile specific audiences to target with a communications initiative.

The reason for taking the time to look this closely at your audiences is that this kind of background information is essential in choosing the most effective ways to communicate with the audience. Madison Avenue has learned this lesson well, now we need to apply some of the same kind of thinking to communicating about your issue.

Audience Definition Worksheet

Of the audiences listed on the Step 1 worksheet, whose knowledge, attitudes and behavior must be changed in order to meet your goal? (These groups now become your primary audiences.)

Who else is affected if you succeed in your goal? (secondary audience)
Are there others who can influence primary and secondary audiences? (tertiary audiences) (You may wish to design a communication initiative to reach some of these audiences as well. Or you may see a role for these folks as "allies and partners".)
Now you are ready to complete worksheets for each of your audiences identified above. (see next page)

Audience Segmentation Worksheet
(Note: you will probably need to make multiple copies of this worksheet.)

Audience:
Describe what you know about this audience's knowledge, attitudes and behaviors as they relate to your issue:

What are the barriers to this audience fully supporting or participating in reaching your goal? What are the benefits if they do?

What are the characteristics of this audience? How do they spend their time? What is their gender, ethnicity and income level? How have they been educated? What are the language considerations? What or who are they influenced by? What makes new information credible for them? What or who could motivate change or action?

Step 3: Develop Messages

Your messages are closely tied to your goal and objectives. They deliver important information about the issue and compel the targeted audience to think, feel, or act. They can:

- Show the importance, urgency, or magnitude of the issue
- Show the relevance of the issue
- Put a "face" on the issue
- Be tied to specific audience values, beliefs, or interests of the audience
- Reflect an understanding of what would motivate the audience to think, feel, or act
- Be culturally relevant and sensitive
- Be Memorable

The messages you develop by using the worksheet provided in this section can be used in many ways. First, they are a set of statements that you and your team agree upon as conveying the key information for your initiative. They will not include all the detail and supporting ideas and data that you may use in printed materials or other forms of communication. The messages you develop in the worksheets can become the underlying themes for your materials and activities. You may develop slogans based on them. You may develop sets of talking points that members of your team will use in making presentations. And they easily become the basis for radio and print PSAs, the genesis for posters, and may suggest topics for fact sheets, drop-in articles, and even letters to the editor or newspaper editorials.

Before turning to the Message Development Worksheet, take a few moments to read "Considerations for Message Construction."

Considerations for Message Construction

Both the channel (the conduit for sending your message to the chosen target audience) and the purpose of communicating environmental information influence message design. Information may be designed to convey new facts, alter attitudes, change behavior, or encourage participation in decision-making. Some of these purposes overlap; often they are progressive. That is, for persuasion to work, the public must first receive information, then understand it, believe it, agree with it, and then act upon it. Regardless of the purpose, messages must be developed with consideration of the desired outcome.
Factors that help determine public acceptance include:

? Clarity-Messages must clearly convey information to assure the public's understanding and to limit the changes for misunderstanding or inappropriate action. Clear messages contain as few technical/scientific/bureaucratic terms as possible, and eliminate information that the audience does not need in order to make necessary decisions (such as unnecessarily detailed explanations). Readability tests can help determine the reading level required to understand drafted material and help writers to be conscientious about the selection of words and phrases.

? Consistency-In an ideal world there would be specific consensus on the meaning of new findings, and all messages on a particular topic would be consistent. Unfortunately, consistency is sometimes elusive. Experts tend to interpret new data differently, making consensus among government, industry, and public interest groups difficult.

? Main points-The main points should be stressed, repeated, and never hidden within less strategically important information.

? Tone and appeal-A message should be reassuring, alarming, challenging, or straightforward, depending upon the desired impact and the target audience. Messages should also be truthful, honest and as complete as possible.

? Credibility-The spokesperson and source of the information should be believable and trustworthy.

? Public need-For a message to break through the "information clutter" of society, messages should be based on what the target audience perceives as most important to them, what they want to know, and not what is most important or most interesting to the originating agency.

Prior to final production, messages should be pretested with the target audiences (and in some cases with channel "gatekeepers") to assure public understanding and other intended responses.

Message Worksheet

What are the barriers and benefits to your audience thinking, feeling, or acting on your issue?

What change in attitude (the way they feel about the issue) do you want to motivate in your audience to meet your goal?

What change in the behavior (day-to-day actions) of your audience are trying to achieve?

Now, based on what you know about your audience needs to hear in order to think, feel or act, what are the three most compelling sentences you could use to motivate the audience? These are your messages.

Step 4: Select Communication Channels

Communications channels carry the messages to the target audiences. Channels take many forms and there is an infinite list of possibilities. Answering some key questions will aid you in identifying the most effective channels for reaching your audiences.

Sample Channels

Television stations Radio stations Newspapers
Web sites Community centers Street festivals Laundromats
City government offices (e.g. Division of Motor Vehicles) Malls
Parks
Schools, colleges, vocational and language training centers Libraries
Recreation centers (e.g. basketball courts or soccer fields) Community non-profit offices
Transportation depots/stations Supermarkets
Fast food restaurants Literature Racks

Where or from whom does this audience get its information? Who do they find credible?

Where does this audience spend most of its time? Where are they most likely to give you their attention?

Complete list of channels your team wants to use to reach this audience:

Step 5: Choose Activities and Materials

What are the activities, events, and/or materials-to be used in your selected channels-that will most effectively carry your message to the intended audiences? In choosing these, you should consider:

- Appropriateness to audience, goal, and message
- Relevance to desired outcomes
- Timing
- Costs/Resources
- Climate of community toward the issue/activity
- Cultural appropriateness (including language)
- Environment-geographic considerations

Sample Activities
News conferences
Editorial board meetings at newspapers Radio talk or call-in shows
A benefit race Parades
Web links Conferences
One-on-one meetings Open houses Speeches
Hotlines Listservs Information Fair

Materials to Support Activities
News releases Fliers and brochures
Opinion editorials (op-eds) Letters to the editor Posters
Public service announcements (PSAs) Bookmarks
Video presentations Web pages
A float in a parade Buttons, pins, and ribbons
Promotional items and giveaways

Step 6: Establish Partnerships

Groups, organizations, or businesses may exist that would aid you in reaching your goal by providing funds, expertise, support, or other resources. Please list allies or partners who support or work with your audiences or share in your goals.

Step 7: Implement the Plan

There are many tools for organizing yourself around time, dollars, and staff needed to implement an initiative. One approach is given here as an example. Of course you should feel free to use your own tried and true management tools.

Use the following steps to determine time, budget and staffing needs:

1. List all activities
2. Under each activity, outline the steps, in order, that will lead to its completion
3. Assign a budget estimate to each step
4. Assign a staffing needs estimate to each step
5. Working backwards from the activity completion point, assign a date for each step in the activity.

You can plot your dates on calendar pages if you'd like, or you can organize them in another timeline such as a Gantt chart (date/timeline runs horizontally across page; tasks are listed in chronological order down left-hand side. A line extends across the page from each task, showing the date work begins and ends on that task or subtask).

Step 8: Evaluate and Make Mid-Course Corrections

- Specify times to take stock of progress in completing communications plan.

- Determine strengths and weaknesses.

- Identify obstacles.

- Create and implement new approaches for success.

- Consult with communications technical assistance advisors.

Campaign Planning Worksheet

Consider the following questions when planning a comprehensive communications campaign:

1. What are your short-term and long-term campaign objectives?

2. What is your timeline for completion of the campaign?

3. Who are your target audiences?

4. What are the key communications messages (no more than three, please)?

5. What are your staff and financial resources?

6. What materials and activities will best disseminate these messages?

7. What media have you targeted?

8. What specific roles have you identified for your spokespeople?

9. What role will consortium members, corporate partners, and staff play?

10. How will you evaluate your campaign?