In this lesson, I'd like us to marinate a bit and what it means to be strategic and public relations rather than tactical. It's natural for us to think tactically, but this limits what we can do with communication. As we talked about in previous modules, public relations is defined by some key terms, like two-way symmetrical communication, mutually beneficial, focused on relationship building and should be used as a management function. For your reference, I've included some good reads in this area of strategy and public relations. Unlike advertising, strategy is embedded in everything about public relations. In the advertising process, strategy is its own thing, it's own part of the process. But in public relations, from start to finish, we must be strategic. We want to communicate our brand's mission and advocate for the core values so that our key audience knows what to expect from our brand. It's our job to create that master narrative for the various stakeholders of the brand. For instance, internal employees are concerned about different issues than shareholders. Then we must plan for that and we must be strategic in the messaging we are communicating to these different audiences. Through storytelling, we are communicating our brand. This is where public relations can be creative. We want to make sure our stakeholders, our brand ambassadors and they are sticking to the talking points that we want for our brand or that master narrative. Thus, it's all about strategy and what will produce the word of mouth that we want. What will connect with audiences in a way that is pleasing to them? How can we increase our brand value so that consumers don't mind paying extra for that cup of coffee, like Starbucks and me every morning. Very important and public relations has this kind of power. By now, you probably think I'm beating a dead horse with this management function thing. But this is what ultimately is limiting public relations and industry practice. Many are using public relations tactically and are missing the strategic planning aspect which harnesses the true power of persuasion. The management function is all about strategic planning. It clarifies the objectives that need to be met to help the brand achieve its mission. Strategic planning helps to analyze and gather information and includes the internal and external resource assessment. Strategic planning can provide an overall direction to the core management of the organization, while also providing specific direction to areas like financial strategy, marketing strategy, organizational development strategy, human resource strategy, etc. to achieve success. This is the management function. Understanding where the brand wants to go and what it wants to achieve, and then being a counselor to help the brain succeed. A good example is the recent IHOP campaign, the IHOb campaign, international house of burgers. Did you see this campaign, maybe a commercial? If you investigate a little bit, read the IHOP mission, there's nothing in it about burgers. Instead, everything in the mission statement is about breakfast and pancakes. Thus creating an IHOb campaign is merely a stunt. The communication is not helping the brand to realize its mission or to achieve its objectives. Instead, the campaign is aimed at stealing headlines and increasing sales. However, this is a short-term goal. It does not support the brand's long-term mission of breakfast and pancakes. As public relations practitioners, we should understand how moving management from tactical thinking to strategic thinking is better for the success of the brand. That's why I get so agitated when people call public relations stunts or buzz or spin or publicity. These are all short-sighted views of public relations. As we see the rise of word of mouth, we see the decline of advertising. Budgets can only be stretched so far and organizations are having to decide how to spend their promotional money. We are starting to see advertising agencies leave their lane to come over to public relations, offering clients headlines and publicity. But this is why advertisers should not practice public relations. The field of public relations is much more sophisticated than given credit for. Many people misunderstand it because they think tactically and not strategically.
