Chapter 3 — Action Planning

Action Planning sometimes proves to be one of the hardest elements of the RACE approach.  In fact, during the Enron crisis of the early 2000s, prominent public relations practitioner Frasier Seitel was once asked a public relations conference about the lack of good public relations consulting for senior management at Enron.  Without hesitation, Seitel responded that it was not exactly a surprise that Enron was is an ongoing crisis mode.  “Frankly,” he said, “Too many senior public relations people, like at Enron make it to the upper levels of their organizations by telling their CEOS and Chief Operating Officers what they want to hear.” Seitel’s point was that this ability to ingratiate oneself with upper management does not necessarily correlate with the ability to do strategic planning and advising for a client.

The action planning element, therefore, does not come naturally for many in public relations.  It is not, however, some magic formula that is difficult to understand and then put in place. To the contrary, it is a vital part of the RACE process because it is fundamental to making linkages between and organization and its stakeholders. It involves these essential elements:

• Clearly stating the organization’s goal(s).
• Developing quantifiable objective statements to help realize those goals.
• Identifying key stakeholder groups and clearly stating a message for each group.

Goals

Goals are statements of intent; the real state/ideal state approach shown in Chapter 2 can help the client solidify where it wants to be. Here are some examples of goal statements:

“By the end of next year, we will be seen as the number one provider of smoking-cessation devices in the U.S.”

“Within two years, our non-profit will be seen as the preferred location for housing families who are escaping domestic violence.”

“Our intent is to have our slate of diverse, progressive entertainment offerings become a leading source of artistic discourse and creation.”

From these examples, it’s clear that goal statements point to where a client wants to be, normally within a specific period of time. Note that goal statements do NOT have specific measureables; such indicators appear within objective statements.

Objective statements

These statements are informed by the overarching goals of the organization. However, they offer more specificity by pointing to specific deliverables, or outcomes, that the public relations plan attempts to reach.  Every objective statement should point to one clear deliverable and indicate what is the timeframe for reaching that outcome. Here’s an example of how objective statements can be developed from the goal statement:

Goal Statement: Chipotle’s wants to be a market leader in fast-casual Mexican food.

Objective Statement #1: By the third quarter of this year, Chipotle’s total revenue will be up by 10 percent.

Objective Statement #2: By the fourth quarter of this year, random surveys will reveal that at least 60 percent of respondents will list Chipotle’s as one of their three favorite Mexican restaurants.

Objective Statement #3: By the end of the next calendar year, Chipotle’s stock market valuation will have increased 15 percent.

Objective statements aren’t arbitrarily created; they come from the real state/ideal state analysis and the subsequent information gathering that is performed in the Research element. From this hypothetical example, it is apparent that the work done in the research element points to data in these areas that management wants to address: 1) a flattening of revenue, 2) customers failing to indicate in survey research that Chipotle’s is a Mexican food provider of choice, and 3) a stagnation in Chipotle’s stock market valuation. Additionally, many objectives are not necessarily better. This example demonstrates the power of the “rule of three” — that we normally do better with focusing on, and retaining, pattern recognitions that have no more than three items.

One note: Objective statements should always point to something that can be quantified, otherwise clients will not know what exactly public relations indicates it can deliver to meet their needs. However, in the evaluation (or “E” element) section, you will see more information on how qualitative research (e.g., interviews, focus groups, etc.) can provide additional richness to the qualitative information indicated in the objective statements.

Audience messaging

Your research work should have provided you and your client insights as to what audiences need to be addressed to reach your goals and objectives. A substantive and meaningful public relations plan should never address an audience as a “general public.” Also, while the client’s employees may certainly be an important stakeholder audience, your client is never an audience — they are the managers of the messaging.

Deciding upon audiences to communicate with, like the identification and creation of objectives, is not arbitrary. This, too, comes from the real state/ideal state analysis and the review of information in the Research component. Staying with the Chipotle case, we’ve found, in our Research element, that Chipotle’s has seen a significant downturn in their revenue, with customers indicating that they don’t find the food to be as fresh as in previous years. Here is an example of stakeholder messaging developed for particular audiences:

Audience #1 — Mothers, ages 24-34: Chipotle’s is a provider of choice when it comes to fresh ingredients for your food choices.  Bring the whole family to see how Chipotle’s has the biggest selection of fresh ingredients for your food.

Audience #2 — College students, ages 18-22: Chipotle’s gives you the freshest ingredients for your food, at a price you can afford.

Audience #3 — Financial journalists: Chiptole’s is updating its supply chain to make sure we bring in the freshest ingredients, efficiently and at low cost. We are positioned to grow our business by more than 5 percent over the previous year.

Moving from storytelling planning to storytelling execution

Action Planning is primarily about getting the connections right with your identified audiences. The graphic at right presents three elements of the planning process (source, voice, intent) that then inform the format of your communications,

Source — these are the materials that you

have gathered in the Research component that you have begun to put into thematic elements. This could be information that you simply pulled, or “curated,” from other sources. Or this is information that you have created by, for example, doing your own research. Or, with aggregation, you have a compilation of research that you had curated and aggregated.

Voice — What is the tone of the messages you plan to communicate?  Is the tone mostly informed by the voice of the brand, or is it also complemented by the voice of third-party endorsers, and the consumer?

Intent — This is greatly linked to the audience messaging section immediately above.  Who are the people (the destination) that you are planning to reach?  Also, although this is primarily a function of the Communication component, you should have some initial thoughts abut how you would want to distribute the message.

Format — this is mostly a function of the communication element that will be discussed in the next chapter.

With the completion of the Action Planning section, the public relations person then presents options for communicating these key messages within the Communication element of RACE; the “C” element is the next chapter of this book.

Image Attribution

“USA Missouri age pyramid” by Artur Jan Fijałkowski is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5.

Storytelling by Beth Kanter is licensed under CC BY 2.0.