What Does the Public Relations Client REALLY Want, and Why?

It’s not unusual for clients of service providers to insist that
their budget dollars be quickly applied to a variety of flashy
tactics. Yet, when pressed, many acknowledge that what they
REALLY want for their money is visible, end-game change.

This is especially true in public relations where clients often
second-guess careful plans for achieving that end-game
change by insisting on premature use of tactics like news
releases, talk-show appearances and sports sponsorships.

But obviously, flashy tactics alone will not satisfy those
clients once they start looking for a return on their public
relations investment. Because it is then that it becomes clear,
sometimes painfully, that their goal MUST be the
kind of change in the behaviors of key stakeholders that
leads directly to achieving their business objectives. Thus,
it is quality planning, and the degree of behavioral change
it produces, that eventually captures client attention,
not tactics.

These days, with public relations budgets in mortal danger
from a softening economy, the old tactical chats between a
client CEO and public relations counsel probably sound
more like this: “Do something about those activists
chaining themselves to our plant gate and yelling
that our emissions go into the river. It’s costing us big
money each day that plant is shut down.”

Or, “How are we going to calm down those Garden Club
members down in the lobby waving around those
cockamamie newspaper reports and talking to the TV
cameras about the additives we use? Where’d that reporter
get those numbers, anyway? It’s costing us sales!”

Or, “Please people, what are you doing to encourage a
favorable Town Council vote on our petition for that new
highway off-ramp?”

What’s common to each of those rants? The CEO is asking
his public relations people to modify somebody’s behavior.
He doesn’t want to talk tactics, or even strategies. He wants
those activists off his property, he wants those print and
broadcast reporters to do a fairer job of reporting on his
production methods (hopefully getting the Garden Clubbers
off his back), and he wants a real effort made to
move public opinion in a way that encourages local officials
to approve that badly needed vehicle ramp.

Modify somebody’s behavior, that’s his goal, and
that’s the job of the public relations agency and its
client’s corporate professionals. Fortunately, the
key to a successful effort is the fact that people
really DO act on their perception of the facts. In
so doing, and in a cumulative way, they form the
very public opinion that those practitioners must
now inform.

So, what is their strategy? In short, to reach those
perceptions with the facts as they know them.
Hopefully, the messages they use will be clear and
persuasive, and will change negative or inaccurate
perceptions, then alter behaviors in the client
company’s direction.

Using the three examples above, when the activists
become satisfied with explanations of the company’s
new, public commitment to correct their emission
problems, the protesters can be expected to leave the plant
gates.

Editorial board meetings with local newspapers and
television stations will begin to bear fruit with more
balanced reportage of the company’s efforts to meet
emission standards which, in turn, will reduce negative
public opinion.

And, while the agency’s briefing sessions with town
council staff will do little to hasten a formal vote, a targeted
communications effort is likely to lead to a community
opinion poll showing positive movement in public, then
official sentiment about the new highway off-ramp.

In the end, a sound public relations strategy combined
with effective tactics leads directly to the bottom line –
perceptions altered; behaviors modified; client satisfied.

end