The 2013 Calendar - where to hang your PR campaign hat

The illustration for the 2013 Calendar is by Kevin ("KAL") Kallaugher, The Economist's editorial cartoonistAll good public relations strategies look at the timing of campaigns. Just think about the planning needed by your local fine-dinning restaurant and jewelry store to prepare for valentines, or the toy manufacturer to plan for the holiday period.

And, it has been known, for brands without too much real news, to latch hold of an event on a calendar and milk it for all it is worth. 

So what can we look forward to in 2013? Well, with a little help from our calendar, and a recent article in the Economist, we present you options for the upcoming year:

JANUARY

• Ireland takes over the presidency of the European Union. Sláinte.
• Britain takes over the presidency of the G8 club of industrial powers. Cheers.
• London marks the 150th anniversary of the world’s first underground passenger railway, running through King’s Cross. Mind the gap.
• In Washington, DC, the US president is inaugurated, beginning his four-year term.

FEBRUARY

• South Africa hosts football’s 29th African Cup of Nations. ag man.
• New Orleans stages the 47th Super Bowl. Touchdown.
• Hollywood lays out the red carpet for the 85th Academy Awards.
• Chinese around the world welcome the Year of the Snake, associated with grace, intelligence and material gain. Say 'red envelope'.
• It’s carnival season, from Rio de Janeiro to Trinidad and Tobago. Woo Hooo!

MARCH

• Smile, please, on March 20th for the inaugural UN-sponsored International Happiness Day; and from March 27th at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
• China’s parliament holds its annual session, and formally appoints the country’s new president and prime minister.
• Kenya is due to hold presidential and parliamentary elections.
• Marbles-enthusiasts flock to the Greyhound pub in Tinsley Green, Sussex, for the 79th World Marbles Championships. Reall... marbles?
• Boston hosts the 44th World Irish Dancing Championships. It's actually a Feis.

APRIL

• Download “Happy Birthday to You”: Apple’s iTunes Store is ten years old.
• Ecuadoreans vote in the presidential run-off.
• The First Tech Challenge world championships take place in St Louis, featuring lots of robots.

MAY

• Finland and Sweden host the 77th World Ice Hockey Championships. Dive!
• America’s grandest horse race, the Kentucky Derby, takes place in Louisville; Europe’s biggest football game, the UEFA Champions League final, kicks off in London.
• The Indian film industry marks its centenary: the first full-length Indian feature film, “Raja Harishchandra”, was released in 1913.
• The Peking to Paris Motor Challenge begins. First organized in 1907, this is the fourth time the race for vintage and classic cars has been run.

JUNE

• Iran holds a presidential election.
• Cyclists begin three weeks of agony as the 100th Tour de France starts for the first time in Corsica.

JULY

• Croatia becomes the 28th member of the European Union; Lithuania takes over the EU’s presidency.
• Watch out for flying saucers on World UFO day; and for raging animals during the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Which is more strange?

AUGUST

• Fans of the King head to Memphis for Elvis Week. "Thank you, thank you very much".
• Arts-lovers, meanwhile, go to Edinburgh for its annual festival. Slàinte mhath.

SEPTEMBER

• Germans, Austrians and Norwegians vote.
• Artists and athletes from 86 (more or less) French-speaking countries gather in Nice for the Francophone games; the International Olympic Committee meets in Buenos Aires to announce the host of the 2020 summer games. Parlez-vous Français?
• Yachtsmen (and billionaires) compete in the 34th America’s Cup in San Francisco.
• The annual Mask Dance Festival is held in Andong, South Korea.
• Russia’s Vladimir Putin welcomes world leaders to St Petersburg for the G20 summit. Budem zdorovy.

OCTOBER

• Leaders from Spain, Portugal and Latin America meet in Panama for their annual summit, the Cumbre Iberoamericana.
• Azerbaijan holds a presidential election.
• British aristocrats take to the countryside for the start of the pheasant-shooting season.

NOVEMBER

• Mystery and conspiracy theories linger on as America marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John Kennedy; Americans also mark the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
• NASA hopes to launch the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (Maven) spacecraft on its year-long journey to the red planet.
• More than 50 countries compete in the World Cheerleading Championships in Thailand. Book early for this one!
• Commonwealth heads of government gather in Sri Lanka for their biennial summit.

DECEMBER

• The latest deadline arrives for a high-speed rail link between France and Spain; construction of a much-delayed high-speed rail system in California is due to have started.
• The crossword puzzle is 100 years old.

If the list above doesn't work for your PR planning needs, then at the very least it should act as a pretty good vacation planning sheet to ensure you're in the right place at the right time. Enjoy!

Useful and believable promises

Seth Godin blogged something interesting yesterday.

Useful and believable promises is another way to think about marketing.

We only sign up/pay attention to/pay for offers from marketers when:

• What's promised is something we think is worth more than it costs

and

• We believe you're the best person to keep that promise.

This applies to resumes, meetings and even the kid raking your lawn.

If your marketing isn't working, it's either because your promises aren't useful (and big) enough or we don't believe you're the one to keep them.

Then we come to public relations, which is widely thought to be the go-to marketing promotion to build credibility. 

Bottom line, if you need your organization, company, brand or service to be believable, then you need to build credibility... so you need a strong public relations strategy in place.

Marketers with power

Great insight today from Seth Godin - who just gets it:

I know that I have to fill out this form before the doctor will see me, but the way you behave when you design the form and the way you ask me to fill it out will change the way I think about everything else you'd like me to do.

I know that I have to go to that meeting or pay that tax or listen to this lecture, but, right here, in this moment when you have power, you are going to to establish the way I feel about your entire organization.

If a marketer works hard to provide a positive experience when the customer has no choice, the benefit of the doubt that's earned is worth far more than it costs.

Redesign that form, change your attitude, adjust your fees and bend over backwards to be grateful. It'll be rewarded.

....

Thanks Seth!

When we think PR, this is often the starting block of the race for a customer.  It is the first a new customer knows, learns and then interacts with you.  So get it right.  Get the PR right.  Make sure that message holds the power and right brnd for your organization.

Taking a Stakeholders Approach to Public Relations

Who’s your target?  A vitally important question, and not asked nearly enough in the world of PR strategy.  Sure, we often find out their geographical target, languages spoken, what industry they are in, job position or even social-economic indicators, but there is another, possibly more beneficial, way to view this.

According to the classic writings of Edward Freeman, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, there are three types of stakes:

1. Equity stakes: have a direct ‘ownership’ in the company, such as shareholders, directors or minority interest owners.
2. Economic (or market) stakes: held by those who have economic (but not ownership) interest in the organization, including employees, customers, suppliers and competitors.
3. Influencer stakes: from various groups (economic or moral in nature) for example, consumer advocates, environmental groups, trade organizations and government agencies.

Right from the offset it is clear for any PR pro to see that these different stakeholders require different, often specialized, public relations (such as internal communications or public affairs).

At NettResults we like to consider a simple stakeholder analysis (or reflection) to make communications more efficient:

1. Who are the organization’s stakeholders?
2. What are their stakes?
3. What opportunities and challenges are presented to the organization in relation to these stakeholders?
4. What responsibilities (economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic) does the organization have to all its stakeholders?
5. In what way can the organization best communicate with and respond to these stakeholders and address these stakeholder challenges and opportunities.

Next, to aid tactical priority, we look at the stakeholder salience. In other words, how visible or prominent a stakeholder is to the organization based upon the stakeholder possessing one or more of three attributes:

1. Power: the power of the stakeholder group upon the organization.
2. Legitimacy: the legitimacy of the claim laid upon the organization.
3. Urgency: the degree to which stakeholder claims call for immediate action.

The more salient or prominent stakeholders have priority and therefore need to be actively communicated with.  Smaller or hardly salient stakeholders have less priority and it is less important for an organization to communicate with them on an ongoing basis.

Without getting all MBA’ish on you and drawing out a Venn diagram (remember those three overlapping circles?), it’s probably evident that with three saliency variables there are seven different types of stakeholders – the stakeholder that falls in the center which has power, legitimacy and urgency is clearly the priority and where the PR effort should be focused.

Target your stakeholder.