Week 9

Week 9's recommended reading had two themes; suggested that we read Chapter 6 on PR Practice again and Chapter 9 on PR Strategy. Here, I will respond to PR strategy...

Here's my take:

I begin with a quote from the chapter: "Strategy is a plan or method by which you are going to achieve in a specific goal in a contested environment." (James, 2009, p 252)

After a few weeks in this course, now that we have to prepare for our final assignment- a PR plan for OCD (our client), it makes me think of PR similar to playing chess. One word: Strategy. I'm no chess person, but I know that in playing chess, there needs to be strategy... In PR, strategy according to James (2009), is vital in its practice.

With the many types of media trying to tell us different messages today- organizations are in a competition for our attention. And as PR practitioners, we are supposed to strive to get peoples' attention to hear out what we want to tell them, right? It is here that an effective PR strategy can set us apart from the rest. And with strategies that are well-planned, the organization's goals can be met.

Another area I find interesting in this chapter is on sponsorship- partly because it was my debate topic.

From my debate: "Community events invariably benefit from securing corporate sponsorship", in the course outline, it said that there was no winners or losers, but if you asked me, I think my team lost. Cos' it's a little tough when they start telling you that the company benefits, because sponsorship is a much cheaper form of advertisement. I guess the winning or losing doesn't really matter as long as I gained from the debate. To me, corporate sponsorship in events is a "win-win" situation. Because, the company gets itself known with the sponsorship, the event organizers save money on their budget. So both sides benefit.

And to end with, is the monitoring and evaluation of PR Strategies (James, 2009). It is important that strategies are monitored to ensure everything runs smoothly, and what to do should a crisis arise. And evaluating the outcomes from the strategies implemented- we need visible results, if not, what's the whole point of doing a certain task? We need to find out if the implementation of the strategy is successful in reaching our target audience and if it isn't, what can be done to improve it?

Thus, this ends my take on PR strategy.