Seat at the Table

In sports you often here about athletes having a mental picture of their victory and how they will achieve it.  Perhaps we could use a little more of that in public relations planning.

Public relations plans are often a list of the approaches we think will work (the strategy) and the tactics to be used to drive the program.  But why not create a model that shows how the market will receive the message?  After all, an experienced media relations person can give a fairly good picture of how a particular reporter might cover a product.  Why can a public relations strategist provide a picture of the overall market and reputation impact of public relations initiative around business moves such as a new CEO or a new product?

Business reputation planning and results modeling is an approach I’ve been working on that aims to provide this picture.  The following is a brief outline. 

Business Reputation Planning and Results Modeling
The modeling aligns reputation measurement with business planning by first understanding the reputation impact of any business decision.  This means forecasting how the market will receive a particular business message (from product to strategy) based on the communications program around that decision.   This may also include presenting alternative business moves and their likely impact.   The result is not only a more effective communications and measurement program, but a better understanding by senior management as to how communications can directly impact the success of a business decision.

Results modeling
Results modeling is forecasting expected tactical and strategic results based on an understanding of the market.  A results model consists of an influencer and audience research component as well as a company audit.  The process is as follows:

1. Determine a company’s strategic business and aligned reputation objectives.
2. Determine what a company is ready to do to achieve those objectives (time, proof points etc)
3. Conduct market research on influencers to project program output (what articles will be written, speeches secured)
4. Conduct market research to determine the opinion impact of these results (opinion surveys)
5. Identify potential holes and return to business and resource planning process to plug them.

Once we have laid out the model, we then track results and opinions to determine the accuracy of our forecast and the market reception of the business decision we are communicating.  In the coming months I will present examples of where we created a model and the result of that planning approach.