Unit 5: Developing Strategic Messages
Unit 5 will focus on how to use key messages to tell your company's story and how to incorporate key strategic messages in online and traditional media tools. This unit will also discuss how to help managers communicate timely, effective, and truthful messages while adhering to sound business principles.
Imagine you work for a company that is trying to negotiate with its union employees for their routine 4 to 6-year contract renewal. Imagine you are the public relations spokesperson for the second largest company in the United States and there are few trained spokespersons at your company, including you. What starts out to be a routine renewal labor union contract renewal turns bad. As the spokesperson for your company, what do you do? In 1997, a situation like this occurred when UPS employees were negotiating their contracts. When talks failed to produce an agreement that provided more job security through full-time employment and less part-time employment, without warning, the Teamster's Union announces that its UPS employees would go on strike. This resulted in millions of dollars in lost revenues and expenses. Approximately two weeks later, in hindsight and with the help of the case study authors, management reviewed how effective planning and message development could have resulted in a better outcome. In this unit, you will find out more about crisis management while reading the UPS case study.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 2 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- explain how to brainstorm key messages that tell a company's story;
- explain how to incorporate messages in online and traditional media tools;
- describe how to help management communicate truthful messages; and
- describe how to communicate to various stakeholder groups
5.1: Practice Writing Key Messages that Tell Your Company's Story
Read Chapter 1 for a case study about how negotiations broke down and led to UPS employees going on strike. This chapter will help you understand the importance of developing message strategies and how to develop them for crisis management.
Read this article on message strategy. This article will help you understand the importance of developing message strategies and how to develop them for crisis management or marketing. This article includes a position statement and three supporting points.
Practice writing three key messages about your favorite organization. Post your messages to the PRSM107 Discussion Forum, and review as well as respond to one or two other students' posts. As you respond to other students, consider which message is the most effective, and why.
Consider the following prompts. Post your written response to these prompts on the PRSM107 discussion forum. Make sure to review and respond to at least one or two other students' posts.
- Write three marketing messages that address the safety and value of a new social media application that helps parents keep track of their children's departure to and from their homes aboard school buses. Include that the cost for the app is only $10 to download. Each app can be customized with an individual child's genetic coding.
- Next, write three key messages on how a technology company is providing smartphones equipped with the same social media applications to help locate lost or missing children during an earthquake disaster. The devices will emit a special beep when a human is discovered buried deep under rumble or within horizontal ranges from 20 feet to 1 mile. Include that there is no cost for the apps, the smartphones, or the operators who are using them to help locate the children. Everything is free and being donated by one nonprofit company named "Help on the Way".
5.2: Incorporate Key Messages Using Online and Traditional Media Tools
Read these three articles to better understand your role with news media, what you can do to achieve an effective working relationship with the media, and tips for using traditional and new media.
5.3: Help Management to Communicate Truthful Messages
Read this article, which explains what happens during a crisis, how to plan for a crisis, and how to use the ICE method to guide the actions of management and the crisis response team.
Read this article, which will provide you with guidelines for ensuring management is ready to handle a crisis and also outlines specific business ethics that should be followed to ensure truthful disclosures.
5.4: Communicate to Various Stakeholder Groups
Read Chapter 7, which defines and prioritizes stakeholders and publics.
Unit 5 Assessment
- Complete and pass the activity Receive a grade
Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.
- This assessment does not count towards your grade. It is just for practice!
- You will see the correct answers when you submit your answers. Use this to help you study for the final exam!
- You can take this assessment as many times as you want, whenever you want.