Step One: Plan

Kelli Eason

I used to think life was all about spontaneity. I still do, on some level. It always seems like the great stories are the ones that result from that time you intended to have a lazy movie night with friends in college, but on a whim, drove to New Orleans and had a powdered sugar fight at Café du Monde at 1 a.m. Is that just me?

OK, spontaneity is not a bad thing. But I’ve come to appreciate a good plan too. Since I’ve been working in PR, my friends and family have become almost annoyed with my need to map things out, know what’s going on and to answer the “news advisory questions” of who, what, when and where. It’s such a common theme that my fiancé now won’t even tell me where we’re going on our honeymoon – and it’s slowly driving me crazy.

Sometimes spontaneity looks like this. 

At Obsidian, planning is a great thing. Preparation for anything is even better. When we begin a relationship with a new client, we spend a lot of time on the front end getting to know them so that we can properly plan.  Our planning is extensive, but it also leads to preparation. Here are the steps I usually take with new clients:

Communication analysis

The communication analysis is sometimes fondly known as the “information transfer” around here. It consists of two to three hours of getting to know the new client. This includes learning things about their business that may be helpful for reporters to know, any news items they have coming up or how their business works. It also includes learning what they’re happy to talk about or not and leads back to the preparation. For example, some companies are willing to talk about how legislation could affect their business, but others prefer to shy away from anything of the sort. Knowing this on the front end allows us to properly communicate with reporters and be more efficient with our retainer hours.

PR timeline

The PR timeline is a process. You start out really excited about a new client and all the information you’ve just gathered from the communication analysis. Then you lay out the spreadsheet, identifying ideas for every month in what is generally a yearlong relationship. After you lay out what seems like a million of them…it turns into “Hello, my name is brick wall. I’m here to hold up your process.” That’s when the rest of the team comes in for a brainstorm. I love brainstorms because it always seems to turn the brick wall into a floodgate for new and creative ideas. At the end, the timeline is fantastic and pretty useful when you’re thinking about several clients.

Brand and message development

After building a PR timeline, you generally feel like you know the client inside and out. That is very helpful for the next step: identifying key messages and the company’s brand. When we’re lucky, a new client comes in with a pretty solid marketing arsenal. They may have internal communications support, a functional website and decent brand recognition. Of course, if they don’t have those things, it can also be lucky – because that allows us to be even more creative in helping them develop it. Regardless, having the brand ready to share with the public is an integral part of the planning process. In some cases, this step – including the research often associated with it – needs to come before the timeline.

All the plans change

It’s inevitable. It usually doesn’t even take six months for a timeline to completely change. But that’s the beauty of a complete plan. If you’ve planned well, your messages are in order and your work is solid, you’re ready for anything. Oftentimes, the best opportunities to present your company as an expert or as a solution come with the unexpected. For example, a hospital, pharmacy or other health care business can’t plan for an outbreak of a certain virus. But they can be prepared to talk about treatment and prevention if it does happen.

It took me a few years to learn to use and love the plan. If I’d loved the plan back in college, I might not have taken a weeklong road trip to seven cities in four states that involved four people and a two-door sports car. (We switched cars with my friend’s dad two cities in…or we surely would have died of being cramped on a back road in Arkansas.) Now that I do love the plan, life seems much less stressful and yet, oddly spontaneous and always enjoyable. 

There’s no “I” in team

Katie Pemberton

“No man is an island…and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

In John Donne’s Meditation 17, he emphasizes the interconnectedness of mankind. It’s also a pretty accurate metaphor for our culture here at Obsidian PR. You see, although each client is officially represented by ONE Obsidian staffer, that client also has the ideas, expertise and experience of the entire agency in its corner. That’s because no account rep is “an island.”

As you may have read about in a previous “From the Rock” post, group brainstorming is a pretty major part of what we do here at Obsidian. There are many times that brainstorming among the entire Obsidian staff might be used for a client:

• When the relationship starts, to get everyone’s input on broad things, like overarching goals, or more specific things, like story pitching ideas or social media tactics
• When the client is starting a new initiative or event and the account rep wants to consider ALL ideas for promoting, helping plan and execution
• When the client has a problem or issue and needs our help overcoming the challenge
• When the client wants some ideas for a tagline or new company or product name

I can tell you as an account rep who has handled several of these types of projects, it is a major asset to the work I do to have our team providing input, guidance and feedback.
 
In addition to the formal brainstorming, there are many other ways that Obsidian functions as a unit, preventing any account rep from ever being the sole person servicing a client. 
Both the Dallas and Memphis locations have a manager of the team who keeps an eye on all client work from an aerial view, providing guidance and ideas to the account rep that she might not have seen from where she is “on the ground” executing tactical work.
 
Yet another example of how Obsidian fosters a great community and group dynamic is how we are all able to fill in for each other when needed. For example, if an account rep is going to be out of town during an important client event, he will transition all of the materials, from the publicity timeline to the contact list and the event planning notes, to another account rep, and that account rep will execute the last-minute promotional tactics, attend the event to field media, coordinate timing as needed, etc. Each account rep will ensure that client work is taken care of (by other staffers, if needed) while out of the office.
 
But sometimes things come up for a client, such as a media crisis, that can’t be predicted, which has actually happened with a client while the account rep was out of town. Fortunately, Obsidian’s culture is such that the team manager was totally up to speed on the client’s issue, and the other account executives had a solid foundation of information about the client from all the collaborative activities we had done. The team manager and the other account executive tag-teamed the crisis and handled it seamlessly while the original account rep was 1,500 miles away.
 
I also like Donne’s advice not to “send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” He was talking about death, but I look at it in a more abstract and therefore positive way. I equate a bell tolling to when we have had a great success for a client, such as a front-page news story. Even if it wasn’t one of MY personal clients, I am still excited for the success of one of OUR clients, and one of OUR account reps. So that bell…it still tolls for me.

You Are Going The Wrong Way! How Would He Know Where We Are Going?

Thomas Whitehead

This quote and scene from John Hughes’ 1980s classic Planes, Trains & Automobiles is one of my favorite examples of how miscommunication can create more problems than resolutions when everyone is not on the same page.

I was recently reminded of this scene when I had lunch with a friend and he was sharing some of his frustrations with his current job. Relatively new to the position, he was stressed out that his bosses were asking him to do more and more tasks that were outside the original scope of what his job responsibilities were. More stressful for my friend was the issue that these new requests were delaying the chance to achieve the original goals.

As I listened more and more, I asked him one simple question – “Did you create a communication and marketing plan for the organization?” To this, he said he didn’t.

To me, this was the root of his frustration and stress. Without sitting down and taking the time to develop a comprehensive communication plan for at least the first quarter, if not whole year, the organization could be easily driven off course and distracted from the original goals that were set forth with his hire.

A communication plan includes, but isn’t limited to, a situation analysis, audiences, key messages, goals, objectives, strategies, tactics and a timeline. This document is always dynamic and can be adjusted at any time according to the needs arise. 

The beauty of it for my friend would be that as his bosses create new duties, he can cite the communication plan that everyone would have agreed upon and use that as leverage to have a clear course in accomplishing what needs to be done.

The communication plan is the foundation of any true successful publicity campaign. You have to start at the beginning by knowing what has worked and failed in the past. That perspective will quickly allow you to identify what direction your path should take.

Otherwise, if you don’t have a direction, there is a good chance you might have to pass through two trucks coming right at you.