Recently I came across a very good blog post about raising awareness and why it is a poor goal for a PR or marketing campaign.
Often people talk loosely about the need to raise awareness of their issue, product or service. Even when people know you exist that alone will not move the needle to make your organisation more successful.
After all what do you do with awareness once you have raised it?
Awareness alone does not translate into more income, volunteers, program take-up or involvement. I may be aware of Ford Motor Company but I may choose to drive a General Motors car. I know about Coke but may prefer to drink Pepsi. I know about Telstra services but give my business to Optus (true).
The true goal is for the people you need to engage (audiences), to change either their attitude so they eventually support what you are trying to achieve. Or to change a specific behaviour such as adopting a healthier lifestyle, buying something, registering to vote or using your services etc.
Achieving this often means:
- Continuous communications and keeping in mind the PR maxim: just when you are sick of saying something, people are probably just starting to listen.
- Compelling content (centred on personal stories) that motivates people to change what they are currently doing.
- An approach that grabs attention and propels your message through the communications clutter engulfing the average person.
- A repetitious mix of communications tactics so if one approach fails one time, another may succeed later.
5 comments:
Your post hit me at the right time, even the most positive, energetic and knowledgeable PR professional can sometimes lose patience in the quest to engage audiences and change attitudes. Thanks for the reminder.
I think that awareness raising can be an appropriate goal particularly if your organisation is starting from a low awareness base. I agree that a campaign should include some behavioural objectives as well as simple awareness building but to keep your analogy going, you may be ambivalent about Ford or Holden but if you don't realise that Ford are having a sale you may not even look.
I agree - when it comes to brands that are already known.
But right now I'm designing an approach for a company that nobody knows. So the first step is to raise awareness of the company, but of course, associated to the space it provides services in.
Pure awareness raising is ludicrous and too easy - just get the CEO to streak over the Harbour Bridge... People will know him/her and the company - but I'm not sure it'll drive business success.
How many times have you heard people talk about raising awareness of their product,service or issue without also talking about changing behavious? Regretably some PR people encourage or are complicit in setting this limited objective simply because it is often easier to achieve.
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