Reading For Week 10

Chapter 7 of the textbook (Johnston and Zawawi), "Strategy, planning and scheduling", explores, well, those three concepts! It works on the premise that a practitioner would employ a strategies for their campaigns in addition to the overall operational structure of their organisation, using planning and scheduling to enhance those strategies.

I think the key points to remember from this week's readings were:

1. The questions to ask when establishing a strategy.
What business are we in?
Why does the business exist?
What are our aims?
What do we stand for?
How do we see ourselves?
How do others see us?
What values and benefits do we hold?
How can these be made to manifest in our business?
How do we view our clients?

I think it's helpful to look through the answers to these questions for patterns or trends, to determine what direction you want to head with your business and any of its campaigns.

2. On a more elaborate level, the Zawawi-Johnston strategic public relations plan gave a firm structure to base a PR strategy upon. I found the step-by-step format especially helpful, and it listed the 10 primary steps as being:
1. Executive summary
2. Vision and mission
3. Background and situation analysis
4. Define strategy
5. Define publics
6. Define main message
7. Select tactics and communication methods
8. Implementation and scheduling
9. Monitoring and evaluation
10. Budget

3. How tactics differ from strategies, as reading the chapters one after the other helped compare and contrast the two. "while the two are inextricably linked, it is important to understand the differences and how they fit together" (Hudson M, 2004, from chapter 8 of the textbook).

4. Controlled VS Uncontrolled communication. From reading chapter 8, I understand that the *prime* difference is generally that uncontrolled communication will usually have a middle man. With controlled communication such as advertising, brochures, and posters, businesses have a direct transmission of communication with their target audience. Issuing press releases to the media however limits the PR practitioner's influence over how the news is reflected for the public.


The readings made me think more about public relations theory/practice in that there is a whole process, of strategising for the strategy. That put the whole process of PR planning and scheduling into perspective, as I came to the realisation that there are a more complex set of steps than I was previously aware of.

Also chapter 8 was especially useful as my debate was under the topic of 'tactics', and it really helped me understand the value of tactics within any PR campaign, and also how blogging fits into all of that.