The Importance of Knowing Publics, with a S!
- June Loo
- Sep 27, 2018
- 4 min read
Whether we are coming up with the perfect concept for an article, organizing an event, or even speaking in public, it is important for us to know who we are talking to. It is crucial especially for PR practitioners to know who their target publics are as successful PR strategies are well-constructed around the specifications of their audience.
Publics, according to the situational theory of publics developed by Professor James E. Grunig, are a group of people (associated under the four different types of publics) that can be identified and classified in the context to which they recognize the problem and the level of involvement they put in when faced a problem/situation.
“The TYPE of public determines how and what you communicate to the public.”
It is important to know how to address the targeted public group in order to develop suitable and relevant tactics to communicate and accomplish targeted goals. The diagram below identifies the four different types of publics developed by Professor James E. Grunig.
“The most important thing to remember is you must know your audience.” - Lewis Howes
Every public plays a role in helping an organization achieve what it has in consistency and continuity. The relevant publics are the ones that help drive your company in terms of effectiveness as without them, it is hard to determine if the campaign is a success or not.
According to Grunig’s theory, there are three variables that determines which group of public an individual is associated in. These three are: problem recognition, constraint recognition and level of involvement.
What one communicates to the public is important as different groups have different behaviors and there are different ways to craft messages which would be appealing to them. It is especially important to do a research on the targeted audience as it will be ineffective if one uses the wrong approach as it would lead to a failure of the campaign.
Identifying the targeted publics group is crucial as an organization is able to connect and have a good relationship with them in the long run. A very well done campaign would be the Bare Skin Project done on social media by SK-II. This project is all about inspiring people (be it women or man) all over the world to embrace their natural bare skin beauty in this society where makeup has become essential in their daily lives.
It served as a marketing method for SK-II as they teamed up with prominent key players in the fashion industry to make a bold statement stating that one does not need makeup to define their beauty. This project featured Chloe Grace Moretz, Chun Xia, Kasumi Arimura, Mayu Matsuoka, Ni Ni and Tang Wei using the SK-II Facial Treatment Essence.
The PR practitioners who did this SK-II campaign knew who their targeted audience was and utilized it efficiently which lead this campaign to be a success!
A full version of the photos taken for the #BareSkinProject .
Source : L'Officiel Malaysia
“It’s still unconventional to see female celebrities photographed bare skin, and through the #BareSkinProject, we hope to provide a different point of view.– Sandeep Seth, CEO, Global SK-II
Knowing audiences is as well important as part of social media marketing strategies, watch the video below for more insights from Hannah Rainford.
Social Media Marketing Strategies: The Importance of Knowing Your Audience by
Jellyfish Agency.
Depending on the targeted outcome, there are two types of campaigns present, which are the persuasion campaigns and the information campaigns. There are many campaigns conducted in Malaysia throughout the year within both these categories. To illustrate a more in-depth understanding on the types of publics, let us look into an information campaign poster done in Malaysia.
The Stand Together Carnival, jointly organized by R.AGE and SP Setia was established in the beginning of 2018 with a goal to make Malaysian schools kinder and a safer environment for children. Their initiative started with a simple goal of having National Kindness Week every first week of April. As there are many bullying and school violence cases from the reports in 2017, the founders of the #StandTogether campaign believe that the only way to start inspiring children to be kind is by standing together as a community and bring kindness back to schools.
From the poster above, we are able to identify clearly who the latent, aware and active publics are.
Latent Publics, meaning those who are aware of this campaign but do not see a need in participating to understand more about the issue pointed out, include:
Those who do not suffer from being bullied
Those who are not in schools
Those who do not have children
Aware Publics, meaning those who understand this issue, recognize is as a problem that could affect them but do not do anything about it, include:
Those who have friends who suffer from bullying scenarios/cases
Those who are aware of the effects of being bullied
Active Publics, meaning those who are aware and take action in helping fight the issue as well as are very proactive in finding solutions, include:
R.AGE
SP Setia
The Star
Digi
UNICEF
Ministry of Education Malaysia
Petrosains
Those who suffer from being bullied
Psychologists
Counsellors
“Determining your audience categories helps you understand how to communicate with them. This helps you avoid wasting the wrong communication strategies on the wrong audiences.” - Pierpont
At the end of the day, the ultimate goal of campaigns is to create awareness and changing people from the latent and aware publics group into the active publics group. Being able to critically speak your mind out and participate actively to show support for campaigns which are able to make changes in the world would no doubt be an eye-opener experience.
BE THE CHANGE TODAY!
References:
Lardbucket (2012) Public Relations. [online] Available at : https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/public-relations/s08-02-the-situational-theory-of-publ.html [Accessed on 26 September 2018]
Lester, C. (N.A) Situational Theory of Publics. Penn State University. [online] Available at : https://sites.psu.edu/colinlester473/theory-research/ [Accessed on 26 September 2018]
L’Officiel Malaysia. SK-II Bare Skin Project gets six celebrities to bare it all. [online] Available at : https://www.lofficielmalaysia.com/beauty/bareskinproject-sk-ii-chloe-grace-moretz-more [Accessed on 26 September 2018]
McCafferty, J (2015) The Importance of Knowing Your Target Audience in PR. [online] Available at : http://www.janicemccaffertypr.com/the-importance-of-knowing-your-target-audience-in-pr/ [Accessed on 26 September 2018]
Palacios, S (2014) How The Situational Theory of Publics Helps You Communicate With Your Audiences. Piercom. [online] Available at : https://www.piercom.com/insight/how-the-situational-theory-of-publics-helps-you-communicate-with-your-audiences/ [Accessed on 26 September 2018]
StandTogether (2018) Our Story. [online] Available at : https://www.facebook.com/pages/story/reader/?page_story_id=528647424154212 [Accessed on 26 September 2018]
Comentários