STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT – The Art of Public Relations?

Often times than not communication practitioners will set out to undertake stakeholder engagement but eventually find themselves throwing in a big chunk of public relations in the mix.

In some instances, practitioners may set out to manage a crisis but realise they need to undertake public relations and stakeholder engagement to get the intended outcome from the management of the crisis. Even though semantically diverse, this exemplifies the cross-cutting nature of these practices in the field of communication - there is a negligible divide in practice. For example, your Public Relations strategy may include advertising, events, media relations (news mentions, press release, etc) among others. In principle, these may be essential to your Public Relations strategy, but in practice they cut across all other components of audience activation and engagement, including stakeholder engagement, and crisis management.

Organizations allocate a good spend establishing teams to facilitate stakeholder engagement and build a customer centric mindset. Essentially delivering public relations with a personalised approach - in the process, ensuring issues are managed before they turn into crises, especially in the modern crisis prone business operating environment.

In addition, advances in technology have taken stakeholder or customer engagement practices to another level. The razor thin divide between humans and machine allows customers or clients to interact with Artificial Intelligence to get their inquiries delt with. Organisations have made it easy for themselves by allowing bots to muster and master their businesses and be able to keep customers updated and their problems sorted. However, many a time, bots are found wanting at a certain stage of the engagement, and that can be frustrating for a customer. This is why human interaction remains paramount in stakeholder engagement because of the emotional element that underlies stakeholder engagement, and the opportunity to establish a connection, a working relationship, and a human feel with your public.

So, what should practitioners do when engaging the modern consumer or customer? Well, methods may have changed and advanced, but the playing field remains the same – it is the same turf where strategies are commensurate with organisations strategic business goals. It is the same place where practitioners deal with customer or consumer emotions, in one way or the other, when handling customer issues. Successful engagement still exudes elements of human intelligence and public relations. Often, stakeholder engagement (and that includes infusion of Public Relations and in Crisis Management) is not devoid of emotional engagement and public relations– the how of dealing with these elements places practitioners apart from each other.

In the many years of practice in communication, I have encountered and observed practitioners resorting to straight jacketing stakeholder engagement into a logical exercise than an exercise of engaging with customer or consumer emotions. This is where I teach and inspire many practitioners to churn their engagement to achieve a seamless and longer lasting relationship with their stakeholders. Organisation ought to ensure their engagement teams are well rounded in the most important elements of stakeholder engagement, public relations, and crisis management for a positive customer experience and creating a community which is on your side.

It is important to craft a well thought out communication strategy that synchronises the arts of Public relations, Stakeholder engagement, Crisis management and any accessories to the delivery an effective communication for your organisation whilst fostering a positive emotional engagement with your audience.

When we understand your business, we at pjelwyns.com tailor these elements to suit your business objectives, and help you achieve your strategic goals.

#communicationstrategy #Publicrelations #Stakeholderengagement, #projectcommunication #Crisismanagement #strategicplanning

Who Is On Your Side?

It is not a secret that for any organisation or corporation to remain vibrant and thrive – it needs the goodwill of those that have or may potentially hold an influence or stake in its existence and service industry. These includes employees, consumers, investors, competitors, interest groups, and the public – among others, that affect and can be affected by the ramifications of an organisation or corporation policies. They therefore, have an underlying influence on an organisations’ policy direction eventuating in having an influence on how an organisation’s or corporation delivers its services.

So, why should organisations or corporations be preoccupied with garnering for goodwill from its stakeholders base? Well, creating a goodwill from your stakeholder base is relevant in ensuring organisations or corporation continue to advance their interest or agenda in collaboration with its various stakeholders – ensuring business is conducted in a favourable environment and for continuity. By cultivating goodwill from stakeholders, organisations and corporations create a soft-spot for its business interest, as well as generating a network of symbiotic support, at both policy and operational levels.

Cultivating goodwill from stakeholders is as essential and as critical an undertaking that organisations or corporations requires to invest in. It therefore, should form a significant part of the elements in packaging strategic plans for business operations. A well thought-out strategic business plan aligns its stakeholder engagement plan at the same level of importance with all other business plans. When strategised and executed effectively, stakeholder engagement plans have the audacity to minimises organisations’ or corporations’ marketing, advertising, and communications budget spend, as businesses and brands can benefit on the goodwill and influence from its stakeholder base. In addition, organisations or corporations that have a favourable relationship with its stakeholders, receive strong support when their reputation or brands face difficult times.

So, how should organisations or corporations go for its stakeholders? In identifying stakeholders, organisations or corporations need to understand that different targeted stakeholder audiences are at different levels of influence and existence. As such, organisations or corporations ought to make sure they neatly map-out targeted audiences in accordance with the dynamics the identified targets would offer or bring-in to the advancement of the organisations’ interest. Mapping enables for the evaluation of the strategic importance, influence, and the value identified stakeholder would have in the collaboration. In principle, mapping and identifying stakeholders allows for your organisation or corporation to sort its earmarked stakeholder groups accordingly whilst facilitating for a tailored strategic engagement approach suitable for each of the stakeholders.

An effective stakeholder engagement strategy and plan works in acknowledgement and mutual sustenance of other existing business strategies and plans. It has to be implemented reflective of an organisation’s public relations, issues and crisis management approaches, where necessary. Such a symbiotic approach unifies strategic efficiency and effectiveness in delivering an overall organisation’s strategic plan, and in delivering business objectives.

So, who is on your side?

#StrategicPlanning #StakeholderEngagement

Public Relations? What Public Relations?

If I can confidently say that every business transaction begin with public relations, then I should be comfortable to mention that every business profit is a result of good public relations - the statement also holds true when it comes to an organisation establishing and maintaining those business connections for organisation's success and continuity.

Over the years, Public Relations has been buoyed by growing necessity for governments and organisations to improve relationships with stakeholder publics. Organisations are making every effort to establish and maintain strong relationships with those publics identified as important to organisational survival and growth. Governments and corporations invest in great public relations campaigns to create buy-ins; be it selling a not-so-popular war that attract public outrage, or building strong brand relations with the customer base to retain market leadership (respectively).

It is clear that public relations is quintessentially core to the strategic direction of an organisation, and for effective organisational management. Not only is public relations seen as a function for managing organisational relationships, but also as exceptional at offering management advise in dealing with critical issues that can be harmful to an organisation’s reputation and those relationships. As such, public relations has the audacity to advise and support management on broad policies and procedures that are favourable in creating a strong bond between the organisation and its public. It is that capacity to identify and get the feel of an organisation’s operating environment (especially where it conflicts with the public's interest and threatens organizational survival) that makes public relations strategically important in organisational management. Where public relations practitioners are engaged at top management, it is highly expected for an organisation to have policies, procedures, and actions that mutually benefit both the organization and its public.

For instance, when an organisation is faced with issues of legal consequences in nature, getting an opinion from public relations practitioners within the organisation can be the difference in the organisation’s approach towards considering a mutually beneficial outcome, to avoid reputational crises. Clearly, legal and public relations counselors approach situations from different perspectives. Where legal personnel may advise the organization to engage in ‘litigation’, public relations may prefer engaging communicating and negotiating with the other party after considering the damage litigation would bring on the corporate body and the organisation’s or brand’s reputation.

In 1994, a Greenpeace chapter of England accused one of the major and renowned fast-food chain of promoting eating habits that were perceived harmful to human health and well-being. Pamphlets to that effect were found being distributed in the streets of London by five protestors. The fast-food giant, in a legal initiative, demanded that the protestors apologise for their actions or appear in court as defendants in a libel suit. Of the five, three protestors apologised while the other two faced trial. Although the court ruled in favour of the fast-food giant, the court of public opinion ruled in favour of the protestors. Further, media outlets propelled the idea that the court case made the fats-food giant appear confrontational and bullying its own concerned customers, who had no resources to defend themselves with legal representation (instead of listening to them). It was considered one of the public relations disasters for the fast-food giant.

Effective organisational management increasingly recognise the essence of public relations in attaining organizational success and continuity. Without prejudicing internal roles in public relations, outsourcing can also bring a fresh perspective to an organisation’s public relations issues and problems. Regardless of which divide the practitioner is from, creating a great public relations campaign takes understanding the issues and problems, applying a creatively thought-out plan, and putting together an appealing execution - just to mention a few.

#Publicrelations #StrategicPlanning #Leadership #PJElwyns #BrandReputation #ReputationManagement #CorporateCulture