AK21103 PRINCIPLES OF

PUBLIC RELATIONS
LECTURE 5:
RESEARCH AND ACTION
PLAN IN PUBLIC
RELATIONS
 R.A.C.E 2

The Process of Strategic Communication Plan

RESEARCH
The needs to understand the current
1 2 ACTION
Planning stage. Translating the data
perception of your audience towards from the research into a meaningful,
your organization / brand / issue. workable action plan
Require complete understanding of
research concepts and process

EVALUATION 4 3 COMMUNICATION
Where all the action plan, message to message design, how to communicate
be evaluated to ascertain the to the target audience
effectiveness of the programme.
3
 SIGNIFICANCE OF RESEARCH 4

Why conducting research is important?

DEFINE AUDIENCE ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING

To define target audience and Monitoring competitors,
audience segmentation anticipating crisis, scanning
public opinion.

1 2 3 4 5
RESPONSIBILITY MESSAGE DESIGN PUBLICITY & EFFECTIVENESS
The need for PR to Assisting in message design Research can be used to
demonstrate responsibility and and appropriateness generate publicity as well as to
justify existence. Demonstrate measure programme
RoI effectiveness
TYPE OF QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH 5

SURVEY
1 Good at measuring people’s perception, understanding
knowledge, attitude and behavior of audience.

CONTENT ANALYSIS
2 Great at understanding media’s portrayal of the organization,
brand or issue.

EXPERIMENT
3 Rarely use in public relations but it offers robust analysis on
understanding cause-effect relationship.
TYPE OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH 6

FOCUS GROUPS
1 Can be used to gauge your target audience opinion on issue,
messages, plan, brand etc.

PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION / ETHNOGRAPHY

2 Can be used to observe how people react. Time consuming

IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW
3 Offer better understanding on a small scale, something that
survey is not able to do
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 ACTION PLAN 8

A document that will keep you on the track

ACTION PLAN
A document that explain on the entire campaign / 08 01
communication programme from A - Z EVALUATION SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS

07 02
FINANCE OBJECTIVES

06 03
CALENDAR AUDIENCE
Who / Where / What
is their KAP

05 04
TACTICS STRATEGY
.
 SMART OBJECTIVES 9

Objectives that will keep you on track

TIMED SPECIFIC
Staged approach, with mid and longer- Detail what is to be achieved. Exact
term objectives, timeframe. not vague language

TARGETTED
MEASURABLE
Relate to an identified public.
Baseline based. Quantifiable. How
achievement can be measured

RELEVANT ACHIEVABLE
Problem statement informs objectives Attainable within relevant time and
that clearly address issue or other constraints
opportunity at hand.
REALISTIC
Reasonable given available resources
(people, financial & time)
 Timeframe 10

SPECIFIC

COMMUNICATION OBJECTIVES BEHAVIOURAL EXAMPLE INDICATORS

FACTORS
ADDRESSED
Within the next three months, all households in Knowledge Percentage of households that know
Community X will know the importance of washing about the importance of washing
hands with soap to stop the spread of cholera. their hands with soap.
Within the next six months, handwashing with soap Behaviours Percentage of households washing
among households in Community X will have their hands with soap
increased from 55% to 95%.

MEASURABLE

TARGET
 TIPS FOR DEVELOPING SMART OBJECTIVES 11

EVIDENCE BASED PRIORITIZE BEHAVIOUR

Objective need to be formulated What are the behavior that will need to be
based on the formative research. addressed. This is normally based on the outcome
from the research

DIFFERENT OBJECTIVES ACTION VERB

Some changes may require longer Only ONE action verb, if there are
time-frame, hence need to write several verb, it implies several action to
different objectives. be accomplished.

RESOURCES AVAILABLE BE SPECIFIC

Always consider the availability of target population and desired behavior
resources. change.