Post 9 Crisis Management

I think the two key points to remember from this week's readings are the importance of planning for a crisis and crisis management tactics.

Crises can come in many forms. Be it a takeover bid, product tampering, natural disasters or terrorists attacks, they come unexpectedly. Like they always say, expect the unexpected. I am sure most of us can still remember some crises of recent years like the SARS outbreak which hit Asia, the Mad Cow disease scare which affected Europe and the bird flu epidemic which hit china hard. The Singapore government handled the SARS outbreak well, in fact it was handled so well that the government received praise. Not only was the public not in a state of panic, they were informed well enough on how to handle SARS. On the contrary, China was lambasted for trying to hide the truth from the populace; China handled the situation very poorly.

When the crisis hits, it will be too late to control much of the backlash that will happen. Therefore it is important to plan for a crisis prior to it happening. Just like a building having backup generators in case if a power failure, an organisation needs to have contigency plans.

Many of the tactics of crisis management should already be in place if the crisis does hit. So the bottomline is to be prepared.

Post 8 Typical PR Program

I think the two key points to remember from this week's readings are well,everything we have learnt so far and how a typical PR program is like.

What can I say? The typical PR program is somewhat like what we have been taught thus far. It sort of refreshes my memory, going through everything that has been covered and lumping all of the information together. Since we have to do a PR campaign for our final project, I must say that this article has been extremely useful to me. I would definitely use it as a guide when i undertake my final project.

The entire campaign should be roughly like this - setting goals and objectives, preliminary research on target audience, planning and tactical approaches and then implementation of the plan. While the plan is being carried out, research should continue on how to improve said plan and lastly, research should be carried out on how to improve future campaigns.

The article also showed us the importance of corporations investing in public relations. As shown over the past weeks, good public relations makes for good business and of course good business leads to money. Any money is good money.

I am grateful that I have the chance to read this article because I totally feel that it would be useful to me in future. Hey, I might want to go for a career in public relations someday! I mean, look at Tanya Wilson and the company she works for. Cool!

Post 7 Sponsorship and Event Management, Research and Evaluation

I think the two key points to remember from this week's readings are the benefits of sponsorship and the importance of research in PR.

There are many community events which require corporate sponsorship to function. Usually the organisers of such events do not have the funds to hold big scale events like races. For example, every year, there is a marathon organised by the Singapore Sports Council. The Singapore Sports Council have sponsors like Standard Chartered and Adidas. The agenda of the Singapore Sports Council is to promote a healthy lifestyle. Standard Charted funds the event while Adidas provides the sports gear and clothing. The marathon is known as the Standard Chartered Marathon. The agenda of Standard Charted and Adidas is to promote their brand's image. Corporate sponsorship is a very effective strategy for PR. It is able to enhance the image of an organisation without being too blatant.

Research and evaluation are very important. It is pivotal to know the demands, needs, opinions and misgivings of the target audience as they are the ones to generate profit. Then the research has to be evaluated so that a proper plan can be made and ideal tactics be used. There are a few kinds of research that can be done. Research on target audience, so that a plan can be formulated will be the first step. Then as the plan is put into action, research can be done so the plan can be improved. Last but not least, the aftermath research can be done to find out how effective the campaign was as reference for future endeavours.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Enough said.