The Nature and Role of Information 2 страница

This chapter looks in more detail at the terms publicity and promotion and, finally, at some brief definitions of particular types of promotion such as advertising and public relations. Note, however, that words like advertising are not always used in the same way by everybody. Remember also that the word publicity is used here to include each and every statement made about an organisation.

Different perspectives on publicity

* Publicity may be controlled or non-controlled. All managers have to accept that some things are outside their control and there are situations (such as when a company's products are under discussion in a consumer magazine such as Which?) where publicity comes into this category. Advertising, of course, is controlled publicity.

Figure 2.1 shows an organisation's controlled publicity and fig. 2.2 shows its non-controlled publicity. Figure 2.3 shows all the aspects of publicity, both controlled and non-controlled, and indicates their relationship to each other and their effect on the company's image and performance. The word publics in these figures will be explained more fully later but, for now, it can be taken to mean any audiences which the company has.

* Publicity may use any media. It may be printed - for example, in newspapers or on posters. It may be broadcast - for example, on radio and television. It may be spoken - for example, at a meeting between a salesman and a client.

* Publicity may have different degrees of permanence. Advertisements in newspapers have a degree of permanence that broadcast announcements lack. A printed advertisement may survive for months, whereas a radio commercial lasts only for a few seconds - and a piece of 'sky-writing' will last only until the wind blows it away.

* Publicity may be authorised or unauthorised. Any statement that an organisation makes on its own behalf, pays an agent to make for it, or permits a third party to make about it is authorised.

However, any person is at liberty (within the law) to make unauthorised, and often unsolicited, statements about an organisation. The difference between unauthorised and unsolicited can give rise to misunderstanding, but generally a statement is unauthorised if it is made without the consent of the organisation under discussion.

* Publicity can he solicited or unsolicited. Organisations may go out of their way to solicit publicity. Public relations offers an example of this when a firm sends out a press release announcing a new product in the hope that the product will he beneficially mentioned in the media. Another example would be when film critics are invited to preview a film prior to its release. In each case the objective is to solicit favourable comments. If, however, the comments are highly critical, as when a reviewer says that a film is not worth seeing, they can be said to be unsolicited. The film company did not encourage such things to be said.

However, the negative film review could not be said to be unauthorised. If the film producers invite a panel of film critics to preview a film they are authorising the critics to express their honest opinions about it. The producers are deliberately exposing themselves to the possibility that the critics will not like their film. In such a case the negative reviews might be said to be authorised but not solicited and may be called an 'unsought consequence' (or unsolicited consequence) of authorising the critics to preview the film in the first place.

Unauthorised or unsolicited statements are, of course, not always critical. A commentator can, and often does, make quite generous comments about an organisation without being solicited to do so.

Fig.2.1. Controlled publicity

Fig. 2.2. Uncontrolled publicity

*The organisation's external and internal publics or audiences are free (within legal limits) to comment on the organisation. The things said by members of one public may in turn affect the attitudes and opinions of members of other publics. The organisation may attempt to influence these comments but ultimately it has no real control.

* Publicity may be friendly, neutral or hostile. We would expect any publicity that an organisation puts out on its own behalf to be friendly. Unauthorised and unsolicited statements may, however, be hostile and any organisation (business, charitable, political, or whatever) must expect to attract some hostile comment. Comments can, of course, be simply neutral.

* Publicity can be true or untrue. Not all statements made about an organisation are true. We are not talking about differences of opinion here, as when one reviewer castigates a film which another praises but about what is, or is not, actually a matter of fact. Sometimes false statements are made in good faith by people who have simply got their facts wrong and intend no malice or deceit. There are times, however, when the publication of untrue statements may be made by people who know that what they are saying is untrue. In such cases the statements are made with the intention to deceive (and sometimes by the companies themselves).

We must not make the mistake, however, of confusing 'hostile' with 'untrue'. Not all hostile comment is dishonest or untrue - the reviewers are not lying when they say that in their opinion a film is unworthy of the cinemagoer's attention.

Fig.2.3. The total publicity surround

NB The organisation is constantly surrounded by publicity. Not all of this is of the organisation's own making. The effect of this publicity is felt by both the organisation and its publics.

What do we mean by promotion?

Promotion is that part of the publicity surround that can be identified clearly as having been authorised, and paid for, by the organisation itself. This definition clearly rules out unauthorised, unsolicited and hostile publicity. Sadly, it does not rule out deliberate deception. There are several ways of looking at promotion.

Pro-active promotional activities

Pro-active promotional activities are activities carried out with some forward-looking objective in mind. We might say that pro-active promotions are designed to bring about some state of affairs which the organisation thinks to be desirable.

Such promotional activities might be carried out in support of the organisation as a whole, or of a division or branch of the organisation. They might be carried out in support of a single product (as when a book publisher decides to promote one book from a list of 40 titles). They might be carried out in support of some marketing activity (such as launching a new product) or some financial activity or some corporate policy such as care for the environment.

Different industries have their own distinctive pro-active activities - the film industry invites reviewers to a private showing, the publishing industry organises author-signing sessions and a conference venue may run facility visits to woo potential conference organisers.

Reactive promotional activities

Reactive promotional activities are concerned with reacting, or responding, to situations which arise and which are not within the original plan. For instance, if a manufacturer were to suffer a factory fire, it would be necessary to reassure suppliers and customers that the company could cope with such a disaster and that it would be 'business as normal'.

Strategic promotional activities

Strategic promotional activities tend to be long term and are usually concerned with the overall direction that a company might take over a period of time. Entering a foreign market for the first time would be a strategic objective related to a market-development policy. Launching a new range of products would be a strategic objective related to a product-development policy. Holding on to market share would be a strategic objective related to a consolidation policy. All these policies would require a great deal of strategic promotional support. Strategic promotional activities are pro-active.

Tactical promotional activities

Tactical promotional activities tend to be short term and concerned with some very specific objective such as shifting a surplus of slow-moving stock. Although such an objective might have only a limited impact on a company's overall situation, the combined effect of a series of tactical promotions will work together to take the company closer to its strategic objective - assuming, of course, that the company has an integrated plan in which tactical objectives are put in place to support strategic ones. Tactical promotional activities may be either pro-active or reactive.

Promotional activities and internal and external publics

Promotional activities may be directed outwards at external publics or inwards at internal publics. It is often necessary to sell an externally directed strategy internally before it can be made to work and changes in company policy and procedure have to be internally promoted also.

Different types of promotional activity

Advertising

An advertisement is a message aimed at a specific audience paid for by an identifiable person or organisation (the advertiser) and appearing in any of the recognised media, such as magazines or newspapers. It is controlled by the advertiser. The fact that some newspapers give advertising space away does not undermine the general principle of advertising as a paid-for message. An economist would just say that the newspaper proprietors had set a zero price on their advertising space.

Press relations (media relations)

Press relations is an activity closely related to public relations with which it is often associated, as in the phrase 'public and press relations'. Press (or media) relations is a method of promotion designed to get messages into the editorial content of the media and it does so by developing professional relationships with journalists to get companies and their products mentioned favourably.

Some people dismiss this as 'free publicity' or 'free advertising', but that is to misunderstand the nature of both advertising and press relations.

Public relations

Public relations is wider than just press relations which it is often defined to include. Public relations is concerned with the systematic development and maintenance of mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics. Getting an organisation or its products mentioned on the radio, for example, is only part of this process.

Another way of looking at public relations is to say that it is concerned with developing and sustaining a positive image of the company and its products. Public relations is sometimes thought of as a supporting activity to marketing and advertising, but it is much more than this. Investors, suppliers, local councils, trade unions and government departments can all be target audiences for a public relations campaign.

Conferences and exhibitions

Conferences and exhibitions are discussed together because they have a great deal in common. Generically, they are referred to as meetings or events. A meeting is a formal situation where two (or more) groups of people, buyers and sellers for example, can come together to discuss matters of mutual interest and, sometimes, to carry out business transactions.

Sponsorship

Sponsorship is often called business sponsorship because most sponsorship deals today are funded by businesses. It is not a charity. Sponsorship involves a company funding an activity such as a football match or a pop concert in order to generate beneficial publicity for itself. The success, from the sponsor's point of view, of a sponsorship deal is the amount of good publicity it attracts. Sponsorship may be used to promote a corporate image or as part of a marketing campaign or a public relations campaign. Sponsorship support is usually, but not necessarily, in the form of money.

Direct marketing

Direct marketing is a generic term that covers a variety of ways of promoting a product or service directly to its final consumer or user without going through an intermediary. It involves the use of direct mail, telephone sales and calling on people at home. It is often associated with home shopping - shopping from home either by mail or telephone, for example.

Sales promotion

Sales promotion is another generic term that covers a very wide variety of practices which generally aim to motivate people in the closing stages of the purchase process and which are designed to bring about a successful sale. Sales promotions can operate at three levels: on the sales force, the wholesale and retail trade and, of course, the consumer.

Business-to-business promotions

All the promotional activities discussed above can be targeted at members of the consuming public. They may, however, also be targeted at other businesses so that we can talk of business-to-business advertising, business-to-business direct mail and so on.

Points to note

Under control

It should be observed that circumstances are rarely either totally controllable or totally uncontrollable. Something can go wrong with the best laid plans (a technicians' strike on television can ruin a carefully thought out advertising campaign). But situations apparently outside the company's control can still be influenced - by good public relations, for example.

Above and below the line

The terms above the line and below the line are often used and have their origins in the development of the advertising agencies. Originally, agencies made their living by buying media space on behalf of their clients. They made no profit on this from the client but instead earned a commission from the media. As the agencies expanded they took on more work on behalf of the client (sales promotion, for example) and on this they had to make a profit out of the client. The line in question was the one drawn across the page to distinguish the charges for media space (above the line) from the other charges (below the line) and the terms passed into common usage.

Summary

· Publicity, a term which can have the widest usage, also includes promotion which has a narrower meaning.

· Publicity includes all the statements made about a company or its products.

· Publicity may be controlled or non-controlled.

· Publicity uses any media.

· Publicity has different degrees of permanence.

· Publicity may be authorised or unauthorised; solicited or unsolicited; friendly, neutral or hostile; true or untrue.

· Promotional activities are those activities undertaken by (or authorised by) a company to get it posotove publicity. It may be proactive or reactive, strategic or tactical, inwardly or outwardly directed.

Promotion itself further subdivides into a range of promotional activities often divided into above-the-line (media advertising) and below-the-line activities.

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Models of communication

Introduction

Communications are a part of the framework of policy and strategy. Some companies undertake a communications audit as part of their strategic analysis to see where their strengths and weaknesses lie in this area. A foreign language audit is a specialised form of communications audit which can be carried out by, say, a British firm thinking of entering the European market for the first time.

This book is about communication in a wide variety of forms and about the circumstances which influence the effectiveness of communication. We have already seen that communication about an organisation can originate from within the organisation or from some external source. Communications can be authorised by the organisation (this includes some externally originated messages) or unauthorised (even some internally originated messages can be unauthorised). Models of communication generally assume internally originated and authorised messages and that is what is assumed in this chapter. Unauthorised and externally originated messages will be built in to show the sort of effect that they can have.

In this chapter the word communication is virtually interchangeable with the word publicity but not entirely. All forms of publicity can be called communications, but not all forms of communication can be called publicity - instructions, requests for information, answers to such requests and formal reports are all communications which we would not want to call publicity. Models of communication, therefore, have a wider application than that which is under consideration here.

Communications objectives

Every communication must have a purpose in mind. Advertising objectives are often classified under the two headings of to inform and to persuade. These two headings cover all sorts of communication and it is difficult to think of any promotional activity that does not contain elements of each.

Inform

Target publics need to be informed of all manner of things: product specification, product availability, prices, after-sales service and many other items as well. When something new is being introduced to the market - a new product, a new service, a new branch of a retail chain - then the need to inform is very high. It is not only consumers who need to be informed and techniques such as public relations, direct mail and conferences can be used to inform employees, shareholders, local communities and government departments as well.

Persuade

Persuading is harder than informing. It may require the receiver of the message not only to understand what is being said but also to act on it in some way. Persuading may be at the level of simply changing somebody's perception of something (as in convincing worried employees that there are no redundancy plans in preparation) but usually we want people to do more than just change their minds. We want them to do something: buy a new product, carry on buying an old product, recommend the product to a friend and so on.

The relationship between informing and persuading is frequently summed up in what is sometimes called a hierarchical model. It is called hierarchical because it is believed that people begin at a lower-order level and move through progressively higher levels until they reach the highest-order level. In simple terms these would be:

· Cognitive. The lower-order level of simply knowing something.

· Affective. A higher-order level of letting what one knows influence what one actually thinks and believes.

· Behaviour. The highest-order level of translating what one thinks and believes into action.

In practice, it may not actually work out in such a neat hierarchical way. Some people do not progress beyond the cognitive stage. Others jump straight from the cognitive stage to the behaviour stage (the impulse factor). People at the behaviour stage may loop back to the affective stage to allow the experience of trying the product to modify what is understood and believed. They may even loop back to the cognitive stage because now they have tried the product they have new information or knowledge about it which they did not have before. Nevertheless, the hierarchical model for all its imperfections produces a message model of communications objectives based on the ideas of:

· Messages which merely inform.

· Messages which aim to change opinions and attitudes.

· Messages which encourage action.

Share of mind, front of mind and share of market

These different types of messages are sometimes associated with the concepts of share of mind and front of mind. We do seem to be limited as to what we can take in. Some things get into our minds and others don't. Whatever gets in has a 'share' of our minds and the more we think about things the greater the share they have. We are said to push things to the back of our minds when we do not wish to think about them, but this is the opposite of what the advertiser wants. The advertiser wants things at the front of our minds so 'share of mind' is often associated with the allied concept of 'front of mind'. The first two 'message models' listed above - messages that inform and messages that change opinions - are designed to get this share of mind/front of mind awareness. Because the third model is to do with action (actually buying something, for example),

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Public relations

Introduction

Public relations (PR) is often taken to include press relations. Here they are treated in two separate chapters. For a full understanding, chapters 14 and 15 should be read together.

Any organisation has a great number of publics with it will have a variety of relationships. Some of those publics will be of very great significance and able materially to affect the success or otherwise of the organisation. Some will be less significant. Some of the relationships will be of a steady and unchanging sort and others may be more volatile and even hostile. Every organisation needs to be aware of the nature and extent of its significant publics and of the quality and status of its relationships with them.

Public relations can be defined as the development and maintenance of positive relationships between an organisation and its publics. The word development places the responsibility on the shoulders of the organisation and the word maintenance identifies public relations as an on-going and continuous process.

Publics are sometimes referred to as audiences, but this implies an interest on the part of the publics, which they may not always have. They are sometimes reluctant audiences and the organisation may have to work hard to secure their interest. Publics are also sometimes identified with consumers and consumers are certainly an important public. Consumers are not, however, the only public.

Public relations is a communications activity that is unusual in being both a professional, highly skilled function on the one hand and something which everybody in the organisation can do on the other. In this chapter we are concerned with the profession of PR, but we should not ignore the other aspect.

Public relations as a non-specialist activity

Everyone in an organisation performs some sort of public relations function whether aware of it or not. To this comment can be added that every act of communication performs some sort of public relations function as well. Public relations as a separate specialist business function can succeed best if these two propositions are properly understood by everybody. In fact many external PR campaigns have to begin with changing the attitudes and behaviour of people inside the organisation and getting their support. The poor attitudes and behaviour of some people inside an organisation may actually be thought of as 'bad public relations' and be contributory causes to any PR problems the company has.

Every message sent out (whether oral or written) has a PR dimension regardless of its actual purpose - it may be well or badly written, well or badly designed, or both. Poorly designed sales literature, impolite receptionists, trucculent deliverymen, offensive advertisements - all create bad impressions. Professional PR cannot take the responsibility for all these failures, but neither can it be seen in isolation as though everything else that is done or said has no impact on the company's image and reputation. People not directly involved in PR might well be reminded that 'everything you do and everything you say tells somebody else something about what sort of organisation this is'. The formal recognition of this fact is seen when companies include public relations in the policy and decision-making process.

Public relations and corporate and business policy

Policy decisions always carry with them public relations implications. Some decisions can be anticipated to be unpopular and public relations can be of assistance in such situations in both pointing out the source and strength of possible resistance and in proposing ways of neutralising it. 'Public relations problems' are identified and 'public relations solutions' are proposed at the policy-making stage.

On the other hand, the policy decision may create 'public relations opportunities' of which the decision makers are unaware. In this case, public relations has the role of identifying such opportunities and proposing ways of exploiting them. The appointment of a new marketing director, the installation of new machinery, the launch of a new product' and the decision to relocate the company head office all offer public relations opportunities.

Where public relations expertise is involved at every stage of the decision-making process, PR problems and PR opportunities can be identified early and PR solutions and programmes put in place in a thoughtful and systematic way. This is what we call pro-active public relations: thinking ahead and defusing trouble or planning for maximum beneficial publicity.

Unfortunately, some companies have not always thought so positively about the public relations function and have tended to treat it more as a 'fire-fighting' function to be brought in to deal with problems if and when they arise or as a 'window dressing' operation designed to make the company look good regardless of the facts. This attitude to public relations is not acceptable.

It is not the role of public relations to make corporate or business policy decisions nor to sort out business problems and crises. These are management functions which must be carried out by those in charge. The role of public relations is to develop and protect the company's image during the policy- and decision-making stage and subsequently throughout the implementation period and beyond.

Managers may make decisions of which public relations practitioners do not approve, but beyond making their reservations clear and pointing out the public relations pitfalls they can only carry out their client's or employer's wishes unless, of course, they feel strongly enough to resign.

The variety of publics

As we have observed, consumers are an important public. But there are other marketing publics to be considered. Suppliers at the backward end of the value chain and wholesalers and retailers at the forward end are also important. The necessity of developing and maintaining good relationships with these is self-evident and relationship marketing which emphasises supplier and customer retention over the long term recognises this. It takes time and it costs money to develop a customer or a supplier and to lose them through poor relationship management is inexcusable.

Throwing a wider circle around the organisation, we can identify as publics the community at large, groups such as trade associations, trade unions, government departments and consumer associations and individuals such as members of Parliament, local government officials and the media.

The company's own employees form a significant internal public. Their co-operation and goodwill also needs to be developed and they also will, from time to time, need to be persuaded and reassured about company policy.

Hostile, friendly and neutral publics

A simple distinction is between friendly and hostile publics. A manufacturer should be able to regard such publics as consumers, suppliers and so on as friendly, although their goodwill should never be taken for granted. Any manufacturer, however, may also arouse, however innocently or unwittingly, the hostility of publics. Manufacturers of cosmetics have attracted the hostility of animal rights groups, tobacco companies have lived with hostility for decades now and some manufacturers of children's products, particularly electronic games and confectionery, have attracted the anger of some parents, educationalists and some of the medical profession.