Before I close out the topic of questioning over the past few weeks, I thought I'd share one of the simplest methodologies for communications executives (either in-house or consultants) to use in developing a plan of action which is both strategic and creative. (Credit for the original list goes to the brilliant Barbara Smith who pretty much taught me most of what I know.)
The purpose of the questions is to uncover insights which will improve the quality of your brainstorms. If you use a similar series of questions to guide communications planning, please send me an e-mail, and I'll be happy to post variations in the future.
Questions for Communications Planning
1. What are we trying to do? (What are the campaign objectives?)
- Regardless of us (the consultant/the agency), what is the business objective you (the client) need to achieve?
- What role do you want communications or public relations to play in helping you achieve your business result? (What’s the communications objective?)
- How are we going to measure our success?
2. Why can’t we? (What issues must the campaign address?)
- What’s going on in the world which might prevent us from achieving this goal?
- Which issues can communications do something about, and which ones can’t communications do something about?
- Perhaps the problem is simply “awareness,” e.g., it’s a new product. But, once launched, why wouldn’t people come running to buy the product?
- What “good news” (opportunities, drivers) might help – as messages to convey to the target audiences – to address, eliminate, neutralize or minimize these issues?
3. Who’s not reacting the way we want? (Who’s the target audience?)
- Primary Audience. Which is the single audience which must change their opinion, attitude or behaviour so we might achieve our objectives? (The primary audience is never the media, traditional or digital. It might be the most important audience we reach, but that’s different than being the “primary audience.”)
- Secondary Audience. What audience groups influence the primary audience to believe what they do, or behave in a certain way?
- Media. Which traditional and media can help convey the messages to both primary and secondary audiences?
- In this campaign, how much (money, resources, times, energy) should we spend on reaching each group? Are we reaching one group – media, for example – but not the primary audiences, which is the one who has to change their behaviour if we’re going to reach our objectives.
4. What does this group they think now? (What’s the current mindset? And why?)
- Internal Perceptions. What’s the little voice in the back of their heads telling them? (What past experiences, events, issues, history, perceptions (right or wrong), or personal attitudes do they have?)
- External Perceptions. What are outside groups or organizations telling them to believe? (rivals, competitors, neutral parties who can’t pick sides)
5. What are we going to tell them? (What messages will change their minds?)
- Facts. What rational points do we need to convey to the audiences? (Rational reasons persuade.)
- Feelings. What emotional points do we need to convey to the audiences? (Emotional reasons motivate.)
- How do we organize the messages for maximum delivery?
- Who will be our effective spokesperson?
6. What are we going to do? (What’s the “Big Idea”?)
- What creative tactics can we develop to …
Deliver our messages
Address the issues
Convey our good news
Reach the appropriate audiences
Achieve our communications objective, and
Accomplish the business result?
- How can we measure the success of this ‘Big Idea’?
