A "military" approach to PR

This post reflects on readings for week 6.

Melanie James opens this week's readings (PR strategic planning, tactics and evaluation) with an interesting premise:

When you first encounter some of the language of public relations you might wonder whether you’ve mistakenly enrolled in military school. Words like strategy, tactic and target abound in public relations texts.

While the field of public relations and military operations are not so easily reconciled to each other, the similar language used in both activities reflects that there is a common concept shared between both public relations and military campaigns -- the concept of "contested space".

I have had trouble before differentiating between strategy and tactics as both seem to be two words for the same concept. Inspired by this military-themed introduction, I did a quick dictionary search using my Mac's dictionary widget (supplied by Oxford American Dictionaries) and got the follow definitions:

strategy

a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim

• the art of planning and directing overall military operations and movements in a war or battle. Often contrasted with TACTICS.

tactic

an action or strategy carefully planned to achieve a specific end

• the art of disposing armed forces in order of battle and of organizing operations, esp. during contact with an enemy. Often contrasted with STRATEGY.

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From these dictionary definitions it becomes clear that in PR, strategy refers to the overall plan, wheras tactic refers to a specific sub-plan that fits within the overall strategy.

At the strategic level, he or she needs to consider the objectives of the campaign (eg. increasing sales of a product), determine the total resources available ($$), then determine the individual efforts, or tactics, needed to move towards the eventual goal and finally allocate resources to these tactics.

The tactical level is more specific and interested in situation on the ground, as the phrase "during contact with an enemy" suggests. In terms of PR, when in the "contested space", contact with an enemy would not only include direct competitors, such as a rival organization, but also indirect barriers slowing progress to the goal, such as the attitudes and opinions of the public.

Here is one place where PR and conventional battles diverge. One cannot simply send in the air force to carpet bomb a company's clients into submission! Or at least not all the time. Instead, it is important to seek out and engage the organization's stakeholders, both within and without.

Sometimes, it is important that the managers of an organization view situations from a PR perspective. James discusses a case where a PR practitioner, attending an operational meeting of a large organization, manages to convince senior managers to cancel a disasterous customer service policy before it is implement. (Interestingly, this is known as a "pre-emptive strike" in military terms -- destroying the capability of a party to cause harm before they actually do.)

In terms of engaging external stakeholders, the textbook refers to a case study of the Mitchell Freeway extension in Joondalup City, Western Australia. Here, the construction company was able to successfully build the freeway extension by gradually converting the at-first partially-hostile community to become supporters of the project. The construction company went out of its way to customize noise walls at varying locales to heights preferred by local residents, saved significant greenery and wildlife from disruptiong by planning construction around them and educated the public on the advantages of the freeway extension. By showing that the company took the community's feedback seriously, the project was able to proceed smoothly and without disruption through the use of direct action and other means of frustration. (Interestingly, this is a close parallel to "softening the ground" in military terms!)

The "contested space" concept is useful to understand the role of strategy and tactics in public relations, while engagement with stakeholders both inside and outside of an organization is an integral part to PR strategies and campaigns.