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Bloggers offered their readers literary, themed competitions giving away bespoke books containing a hiding place for a Dairy Milk bar. Some bloggers received more than 1,000 entries in just three days. Trade outreach amplified the launch of the Taste campaign, alongside digital nd social channels with Facebook activity, YouTube takeovers, mobile, SEO and Twitter. The Joyville recruitment team travelled the country, sampling Dairy Milk over 42 live days to wannabe Joyville Tasters. Thousands of consumers shared their descriptions online.
The winner was Jane Billingham, from Wales, whose suggestion was ‘absoverylicious’. Measurement and evaluation The campaign resulted in 149 pieces of coverage, beating the target of 96. It received coverage in Metro, Daily Star, Real People, Wales on Sunday, The Grocer, Marketing Week and SunOnline. About 77,000 people tweeted descriptions of Dairy Milk. Sampling activity reached more than 760,000 consumers. Results The Taste campaign led to the largest ever sales spike of Cadbury Dairy Milk tablets, and drove a rise in revenue of more than 20 per cent year on year.
Question 2 Strategic planning can help you to improve the performance of your enterprise for the next several years. How? By steering you to find and focus on the handful of really big issues facing your organization. It is the size and impact of these strategic issues that gives rise to the importance Of the strategic plan. Effective strategic planning requires only a handful of procedures. 1 . Start by engaging commitment . Purpose guides everything 3. Analyze the organization in its context 4. Decide strategies 5. Evaluate plan execution.
Q3 Improve long-term performance of your organization, at dramatically reduced risk, with these five simple strategic planning process elements or procedures. 1. Engage commitment from those people who will be affected by the plan This is how you Start and ensure Support for planning, and the implementation of the plan. The people you need to include are primarily the Chief Executive Officer and their immediate reporting managers, and the layer of staff or management at one remove from the Chief Executive Officer CEO). In turn the CEO must engage with the governing body, who in turn engage the beneficiary groups they are there to represent.
Other stakeholder groups may possibly be affected by the implementation of the strategic corporate plan in the operation of the enterprise. Their interests must be respected. It must be remembered that the processes for engaging people operate in various ways in all the other stages of the planning process. 2. Set long term strategic objectives for improved performance of the organization These objectives should clearly further the enduring Purpose of the organisation. This means knowing and spelling out for whom the organization exists, and what benefit the organization seeks to provide this group.
Every organization, whether private company or nonprofit organization (NPO), should set out to benefit one clearly defined group of beneficiaries, and a single, long term, verifiable, target figure should be set to reflect what it is trying to do for them. If it cannot set such a target, the organization should be reformed until this becomes possible. The intended beneficiaries must be defined as one homogeneous group; in the case of the business enterprise it is the owners or shareholders. The benefit offered must also be homogeneous and capable of definition in just a few words.
In the business context, the proposed benefit is something like ‘increased wealth’. The benefit must be capable of being targeted and of empirical verification- essentially then, it must be quantifiable. It must be of perceived significance to the beneficiaries, e. g. the benefit resulting from the point of view of the shareholders is ‘improved prospects for an acceptable mix of capital gains and dividends within a risk profile that is tolerable’. 3. Generate strategic options Formal strategic planning calls for the Analysis of key strategic factors, hortlisting the really major strategic issues and the generation of Alternative strategies.
First, an attempt should be made to provide comprehensive strategies; that is, the plan should consider all the truly important factors – the strategic elephants. Secondly the strategies should not exhaust all available resources. Something should be held in reserve. This recognizes uncertainty and adds flexibility to the plan. Alternative strategies can improve the Adaptability of the organization in two ways. First, by explicitly examining Alternatives, it is likely that the organization will findAlternatives hat are superior to the current approach.
Second, the organization will encounter environmental changes; if Alternative, contingency, plans have been considered for these changes, the organization can respond more effectively. Processes of finding all the relevant significant strategic factors will be covered on other pages about SWOT analysis, and methods for generating the Alternative strategies will be under Business Strategy, for companies, or nonprofit strategy making for other kinds of organization. 4. Evaluate and Decide on strategies It is all too easy to go with the bright ideas that emerge from brainstorming trategic alternatives.
Effective formal planning uses systematic methods for evaluating the various alternatives. Evaluate to ensure that they do not violate any constraints. Rate the strategic options against the objectives. Ensure that all major strategic issues are addressed. Then you are in a position to Design a set of strategies, based on a few key Decisions. With this done you can proceed with some confidence to get approval from the governing body, and convert the strategic intentions into specific work assignments for individual managers, prepare budgets and project plans, and generally prepare to implement the strategic plans. Monitor Execution of the strategies against the long term objectives. Having planned the work of implementing or Executing the strategic plan, you need a system in place for working the plans as they get implemented. The plan should provide for formal reporting at agreed intervals. To allow for corrective action, the monitoring system should address the same objectives and factors determined as significant through the planning process. Too often there is a disconnect between the plan and how it is managed into reality.
All of the above essential procedures for strategic planning can be summarized as follows Practical Corporate Planning is as useful as a S PADE START – Organizing to plan, engaging affected parties PURPOSE – Sizing up the strategic challenge, setting targets ANALYSE Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, and generate options DECIDE Devising Strategies from the options looked at EXECUTE – Evaluating and Actioning strategies put simply – find and decide what to do about the handful of really big issues facing your business or any other organization. We call these biggest issues ‘strategic elephants’.
The strategic planning process and tools, such as SWOT analysis, offered here will help you – directors, owners, managers – to find the lephants in your organization! At simply-strategic-planning. com we provide advice on how to prepare and implement practical plans to address the elephant sized strategic issues over the next few years. These approaches, with their value-based management focus, will ensure that your business or non-profit organization (NPO) will have long run superior performance, and your organization will also be at less risk of failure.
Wherever you are in the world, if you are keen to plan, develop, and manage a growing, thriving organization, youve come to the right place to learn about strategic planning, nd the strategic planning process. Cadbury’s Strategic Public Relation Alernative Strategic Public Relations Alternatives Measurable Objectives Activities for each Strategic Public Relation Alernative Rank Increase profitability. Product Improvement price Hike 4 Gain more market share.
Target Marketing Hardcore Marketing 2 Increase approval ratings, or boost customer satisfaction. Market Survey, Taste Preference post Sales Survey 3 Complete a project under budget Project Approval Guest invitation and Social Media Question 4 Setting communication goals and objectives creates several benefits. It lets eople know what is expected of them, it lets others know what is planned, it helps to quantify the resources that are needed and when, it helps to improve communication between the participants, and it creates measurable results.
A widely held myth for many years was that public relations performance could not really be measured and therefore couldn’t be expected to undergo the performance and budget scrutiny that other areas of the organization were obliged to accept. These days you can prove the value of your PR work by setting and achieving measurable objectives for your activities. Goals are he means to express the end points towards which effort is directed. They are broad, relatively abstract and may be difficult to quantify (“Our goal is to increase our share of the marketplace for [our product]. ) Objectives are subsets of goals and should be expressed in concrete, measurable terms. (“Our objective is to increase our share of the market in the largest city in this State for [our product] by 15% by the end of the next financial year. ‘0 An objective is something that can be documented; it’s factual and observable. A set of goals is achieved only by achieving a subset of interrelated objectives, ven if those objectives are not clearly stated or articulated. Therefore, an objective is a strategic step along the way to achieving a desired goal.
There are generally three types of goals in public relations: Reputation management goals, which deal with the identity and perception ofthe organization. Example: ‘We aim to improve stakeholder opinions of our organization significantly within the next year. ” Relationship management goals, which focus on how the organization connects with its stakeholders. Example: “We aim to improve communication with our shareholders during the coming year. Task management goals, which are concerned with achieving tasks.
Example: “Our goal is to increase attendance at our staff town hall’ meetings. ” Many public relations practitioners are satisfied to express their intentions in the broad terms of goals. This allows them to rationalize the outcomes, to ‘gild the lily’ and take the credit for the results. However, in tough times, they can’t actually prove their worth and therefore senior management may subjectively question their contribution. But if you can show that you have achieved specific, measurable targets, you are able to prove your worth.
Setting measurable objectives helps the planning of future campaigns and offers you the political benefit of enabling you to justify more resources for your subsequent activities. Specifying objectives is also the best practical way to make senior managers understand the public relations role. Measuring the overall impact of a PR program or strategy can be difficult unless the individual elements or components of the program are clearly defined and measured, eg publicity activities, a particular community relations program, a special event, government affairs, speaker program, investor relations activity, etc.
It is often difficult to separate PR programs and activities (such as publicity, distribution Of information material, special events, etc) from other activities such as marketing (advertising, point-of-purchase promotional activities, give-away activities, etc). Also, the setting of challenging but realistic objectives can be a difficult exercise requiring arbitrary selection of target figures that depend on a range of underlying assumptions. Question 5 Budgets for PR and marketing are never big enough.
Like all things in business there are finite limits and someone always has more to spend than you. However, follow these straightforward tips and you could end up with more bang for your buck, a more effective public relations programme and that promotion you deserve. Plan. Every business needs a plan, but so often this is a rushed annual task, grudgingly undertaken while enmeshed in day to day activities. This results in this year’s plan being just like last year’s, but plus (or often minus) X per cent, with fingers crossed. Take time out to plan properly – it could save you a small fortune.
Take time to look at the business, look at the trading environment, understand the threats and opportunities nd what resources you need to counter them and take the business forward. Focus on activity not history. List the key activities arising from the current business plan – new products, investments, acquisitions, market development, and so on. Now decide what communications will support these. Specify the required PR activities – how many releases, case studies, features, press conferences, facility visits, events, road shows, exhibitions, product placements and when these will happen. Integration and balance.
PR is the most potent (and cost effective) marketing tool you have, but it cannot upport the whole communications programme alone. It needs to be integrated with advertising, web promotion, sales and other activities, respecting what each of these channels can contribute. Prioritise. The good old two dimensional matrix is useful here. Plot each of the activities against a cost and benefit axis. Use the four quadrants to determine the must do (high benefit, low cost), should do (high benefit, higher cost), like to do (lower benefit, lower cost) and marginal activities (high cost low benefit).
Slaughter a few sacred cows.. Somewhere in the programme there are almost certain to e sponsorships, exhibition attendances, long standing advertising commitments that have outlived their usefulness kill these off and recycle the cash. Decide what resources are required. Now, do you have a full and rich programme of activities or is it more a series of projects? In house resources may meet some of your needs but for others you will need outside help. Draw a clear boundary between in-house and outside tasks. Brief your PR company.
At this stage you are able to give a full brief to your PR company, telling them what you want to achieve, what you are planning to do and the services you expect them to provide. Any decent PR company should be able to give you a firm cost and Suggest alternatives that will be more effective or save you money. Build in feedback. Based on the objectives you set at the start, decide on the most appropriate form of evaluation to help you measure effectiveness and improve performance. Evaluation: When evaluating PR campaigns many professionals will talk about outputs, Out takes and Outcomes.
Outputs are the activities that have been undertaken in the PR campaign, whilst out takes are the result of these activities. An example would be your PR campaign resulting in an increased wareness of your company, this is an out take. Outcomes are the resulting change in behaviour of your target groups, e. g. an increase in purchases from customers. Cuttings A very simple yet effective method of measuring your success is the classic “press clippings book”. A simple “flick” through the clippings book will give you a great indication of how well a PR campaign has performed.
Reach This measures the number of people in the target audience that will have seen the campaign. Quite often the readership or circulation of all the publications that covered the campaign is added up, this is often the most imple way to estimate reach. Frequency Many studies have shown that marketing messages need to be communicated with the recipients several times if they are to create an impact. A great way to measure effectiveness is to look at the frequency the total target audience saw the message, for example 15% of the total audience saw the message 3 times or more.
OTS OTS or opportunity to see, is a very effective measurement, which focuses on how many of the target audience will see the message, combining elements of frequency and the reach, to represent the number of times on average the target audience will have seen your campaign. Share of Voice This approach benchmarks the campaign against those of your competitors, this can be measured in specific publications, allowing evaluation of the outputs in the most influential media channels.
Conclusion: The traditional advertising still has its roots deep down but it is now evident that the view is changing and PR agencies are catching up with the advertising agencies. The awareness about the need for other communication tools in the introduction phase of a new brand is vast spread. Advertising is a one way communication and seeing the trend many consumers are now not esponding to single sided communication where they have just to listen or watch, where their voice is not heard. Still 30 second ads are aired. This is mainly because of the agencies sense of security and tradition.