Developing creative strategies that work

by Alicia Patterson

Strategy. PR Strategy. It sounds so important. So strategic. Like a coup, or a conspiracy or something similarly grave and meaningful.

But a ‘strategy’ is just as necessary for promoting the benefits of calcium in dairy products as it is in communicating vocational education and training options available to 16-year-olds and informing residents when the municipal garbage collection day has altered.

Have you ever noticed that people like to use the word ‘strategy?’ It sounds so significant -- it makes everything sound meaningful and deliberate. But there are plenty of other words you could use in its place. Like ‘program,’ ‘approach,’ ‘plan’ or ‘method.’ Ironically, a good strategy also builds in an element of ‘expecting the unexpected.’ It anticipates to some extent that the most brilliant strategy can’t anticipate everything -- and identifies what those obstacles might be early on.

The most practical way to think of it is as a plan to get something done. In the public relations context, it’s about achieving the (hopefully measurable) objectives you have set. Some examples:

• A plan to make people aware of a specific message, issue or product
• A plan about how to communicate during a crisis and to whom
• A plan about getting people to make a certain choice or change a certain behavior.

If you’ve worked out what the ‘problem’is and you know what you want to do about it (that is, you’ve set objectives on what you want to achieve or alter), then your strategy is simply your plan on how you’ll achieve it. It is your method; the tools you will use to advance your outcome.

Tools can be a varied bag of tricks. There are your stock standards - things like:

• media activity, including media releases, community service announcements, etc.
• brochures and posters
• advertisements
• seminars or conference activity.

But in essence, they are all the means by which you will communicate the right messages to achieve your objectives. The key is to select appropriate methods -- appropriate to your target audience (is it what they are familiar with and understand; can they access it easily) and to use appropriate language. Research prior to developing your strategy will provide you with the direction you need.

For example, research shows that a safe-sex message targeting teenagers needs to be not only presented in an appealing, attractive, bright format, but it needs to be portable (so it can be ‘hidden’) and it should also be in a format which might not make it clear to those who see it in passing to recognise it as ‘safe sex information.’ This is because teenagers can be very self-conscious about their emerging sexuality and sexual practices even though they are curious. Research also shows that this audience wants straight-to-the-point, fairly explicit information. Clearly, what the research has indicated for teens cannot be applied to, for the sake of the argument, middle-aged divorcées who have returned to the dating scene and want information about safe sex too.

Because of this, the strategy you might adopt to get this information to each of the groups will be different. The key concerns, or pressure points for each of the groups is different -- so the messages you use, the style you communicate in and the media or channels you select will be different.

A strategy to reach those middle-aged divorcées might place more emphasis on health professionals divulging information or giving printed information to patients (a teenager rarely considers consulting their doctor on these things unless they are in real trouble!). It might include some low-key advertising with a phone line, articles in selected magazines and segments in lifestyle television programs. It might even go so far as to use the method of a series of seminars in community based social or service clubs, with one seminar in the program devoted to safe sex practices.

Strategies to reach the teenagers on the same issue will be very different -- and no, the Internet is not the only (or even the best) answer because of issues to do with accessibility. Young people who are at the highest risk are the least likely to have Internet access (they are the information-poor) and will not seek it via access in school classrooms and public libraries. One of the key problems with an issue like this is the belief many young people have that ‘they know all they need to know’ and ‘nothing really bad will happen to me.’ More appropriate strategies will include creating a portable -- probably printed -- resource, which is distributed through outlets frequented by young people but not necessarily associated with ‘health-’ or ‘sex-’ education or information. Schools can be appropriate -- but not via the classroom (-- the school canteen is better --), cinemas, shopping centres or malls, video arcades and stores, skate ramps and youth clubs -- these are more appropriate and efficient methods to build into your strategy.

Your plan needs to be thought through. You need to stake out the territory -- do a situation analysis, research or a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis -- then you can make some decisions about the best tactics to employ in your strategy to achieve your objectives. Just to keep things confused (or sounding even more important) you can also plan strategies within strategies. For example, a media strategy and a resource-distribution strategy within a larger communications strategy.

(You also need to tie all your activity together in a timeframe -- so you know how and when different elements of your strategy can be rolled out to best effect. It also pays, in the early stage of your strategy development, to consider how you will evaluate each element of your strategy. But more of these in future editions.)

All strategies -- or plans -- will be restricted by time and budget,so these things need to be given primary consideration. This is not a bad thing -- necessity is the mother of all invention and also the parent of the most creative and innovative strategies. A cynic could say that a PR practitioner with a sizable budget quickly actually converts into an advertiser...

A case study

The Victorian Folate Awareness Campaign, managed through the Department of Human Services, needed to address the issue of low awareness of the benefits of folate (or folic acid) among Victorian women of childbearing age. Folate, a B-group vitamin, can significantly lower a woman’s risk of having a pregnancy affected by a neural-tube defect -- a risk of about one in every 600 pregnancies. Neural-tube defects can lead to miscarriage and stillbirth. Babies born with a neural tube defect most commonly have spina bifida. Research also shows that it is very difficult for a woman to consume enough of the ‘right foods’ to significantly increase her folate levels high enough to have an impact. Consequently, the primary message of the campaign was that all women of childbearing age should take a folate supplement containing 0.4 - 0.5mg of folate daily.

The budget was in the order of a few hundred thousand dollars -for a campaign that had to last a year, include a research phase, media activity, professional development available to all health professionals in the state (including GPs, pharmacists, community health workers, nurses and any other health worker in contact with women), resource development and distribution and evaluation.

The strategy to reach these ‘women of childbearing age’ (this audience was narrowed and defined further through the research phase) needed to capitalise on the health professionals as a primary audience and provide some general background ‘noise’ in the community about the issue of folate (some of which was being created by alternative campaigns which had slightly conflicting key messages about folate) to bring the two parties together.

Some elements of the strategy included:

• Using the research component in part as an opportunity to build relationships with key peak health professional bodies in the state -- to get them buzzing about the pending campaign and their role in it
• Free professional seminars throughout metropolitan and country Victoria to allow access for all health professionals
• A range of resources which included items designed directly for consumers and items directly aimed at health professionals -- with the channel for distribution largely through health professionals to enhance accurate and guided education about the issue
• A direct mail-out of the resources to thousands of health care settings in the state
• A small paid media spend on radio with suitable demographics and in two women’s magazines
• A media launch for the campaign to generate unpaid publicity, coupled with a general campaign launch inviting all those with a professional interest in the issue to attend (the campaign was launched by the Minister, a 16-year-old young man with spina bifida and a Clinician with many years experience in counseling women about sexual and reproductive health and outcomes).
• The development of borrowable items for use by community health workers at local events and fairs and access to a trained nurse practitioner who could facilitate these local activities
• The development of Internet pages parallel publishing the resources and providing for some sustainability when budgets can no longer support the printed materials

These elements have been very simply described -- they were actually more complicated than they first appear because of the complexity of the issue and specific issues affecting sections of the target audience. However, they provide a broad brushstroke picture of the kinds of activities that were incorporated into the ‘plan’ to make women more aware of the issue and to educate them about folate.

The proof, however, will be in the pudding -- the strategy will be evaluated at the end of 1999 / early 2000!

-- AP
© Alicia Patterson 1999