Continuing to develop a public relations plan:
Targeting audiences for First Prize Glass

This reading describes the preliminary steps involved in identifying the most critical publics and/or target audiences for this hypothetical company.

This page continues the discussion of strategic planning for First Prize Glass and assumes you are familiar with this hypothetical company and its mission statement. If not, use the two left-most links above to review this necessary background. You should have also read the article Strategic planning steps before proceeding. It can be accessed with the right-hand link above. To use this scenario as a self-test, prepare your own list of important publics or target audiences First Prize Glass needs to address before reading the article. Try to come up with 20 or more and then compare your list with those given below. As is true of mission statements, wide variations in target audience lists are possible. The goal is to have a list that the communication team and top management agree covers all the important groups with whom the company needs to maintain relationships.

To begin building relationships a public relations practitioners need to know with whom their client/organization needs and wants to have relationships. In addition to brainstorming by the public relations team, a thorough audience identification process requires talking to people in all parts and at all levels of the organization, as well as talking to public relations people working for similar organizations and experts familiar with these types of organizations and the current business environment.

With whom does First Prize Glass want to have relationships?

The first step is to prepare a list of all the different groups of people with whom First Prize Glass is interested in having a relationship, as well as any other groups or publics who might have an interest in the company or its actions whether First Prize Glass has an interest in them or not. These latter groups which some authors have called "hidden publics" or "latent publics" are not always obvious or easy to identify, but they can be critical to an organization's success. Finding them requires that you don't limit yourself to looking at the world from your organization's perspective. You need to look at the world more broadly than that, and you also need to look at your organization through the eyes of the rest of the world.

It's quite possible, for instance, that First Prize Glass wouldn't realize that the local Audubon Society needs to be included in its public relations plan as a key public. From the company's standpoint, there's no direct connection between them and there's no apparent reason to think of the Audubon Society as anything other than a small group of people who individually and occasionally might buy glassware. That view, however, has failed to take into account the Audubon Society's very special interest in the land adjacent to First Prize's property. It's part of a large farm, but it has been untilled and unworked for decades. In First Prize's eyes it's simply the perfect and logical place for expanding its plant when and if that time ever comes. First Prize isn't even aware that it's used for field trips by the local Audubon Society and is one of the best bird-watching habitats in the state. Although First Prize Glass may not be aware of the Audubon Society's interest in the property, the odds are very good that the Audubon Society is aware of First Prize and its potential threat to the bird habitat. Should First Prize ever try to buy the land to expand its industrial facility without recognizing and addressing the Audubon Society's concerns, it could trigger a public relations war with long-term negative repercussions for its reputation. On the other hand, if a properly executed public relations planning process identifies such interested but initially unrecognized publics and enables First Prize to approach them in a spirit of mutual adaptation, it could produce a win-win situation. First Prize Glass might be able to expand its facility but still preserve the most important areas of the bird habitat. And, because First Prize Glass would have initiated this positive outcome by approaching the Audubon Society, it would gain the added benefits of being seen as a good neighbor to the entire community and as environmentally-responsible and animal-friendly.

In the early stages of planning, lists of publics should be as broad and as inclusive as possible even if they become so large they could not be reasonably managed. They will ultimately be pared down a manageable size but, at this stage, they should be all-inclusive to avoid overlooking anyone.

Many PR plans focus on four different types of publics:

• internal publics

• external publics

• media publics

• regulatory publics

Internal publics include everyone who is an integral part of the organization. Employees are the most obvious and most numerous internal publics; others include stockholders, employees' families, and other closely-tied associates.

In the preliminary stages of planning, any group or sub-group that has a distinguishing characteristic that sets it apart should be listed as a separate public or potential target audience. Instead of listing employees as a single public, for instance, it would be much better to distinguish hourly employees, salaried employees, factory workers, clerical staff, maintenance workers, day shift employees, night shift employees, full-time employees, part-time employees, probationary employees, front-line supervisors, middle-managers, department heads, women, men, etc. That way you're less likely to overlook anyone or to ignore distinguishing characteristics that might make their perceptions of the organization different than other people's or that might affect the best ways of communicating with them.

Don't be concerned if the groups are not mutually exclusive. It's highly likely that some people will fit in more than one of them. Using the examples cited above, an employee could be in all of the following groups: salaried employees, factory worker, night shift employees, middle-manager, and women. We all belong to many different publics and groups, and their importance to us and our consciousness of them changes constantly depending on the circumstances in which we find ourselves. And, just as these "memberships" have shifting significance to us, there may be occasions when First Prize Glass wants to talk to its employee as a night shift worker, other times when it wants to talk to her as a middle-manager, and still others when it wants to talk to her as a woman.

Later in the planning process it may be decided that some of these differences are insignificant and can be ignored. In that case, two or more groups from the preliminary list can be combined in a single larger target audience.

Also realize that listing a group as a public does not necessarily mean that the public relations staff will be solely responsible for dealing with this public. In some cases, the public relations staff may have very few, if any, dealings with certain publics. The company's finance department, for instance, may take the lead and have final responsibility for all interactions with stockholders. Nonetheless, stockholders are still an important public and need to be included as such in the overall public relations plan.

Please note that the sample lists which follow are not all-inclusive, nor have they been edited or pared down to make them more manageable. They're rough drafts of a work in progress, not a finished product, and they're meant as a starting point to get you thinking about the possible publics and target audiences that ought to be included in First Prize Glass's public relations plan. Further thinking by the public relations staff and discussion with other managers within First Prize Glass would undoubtedly yield dozens of additional target audiences that would at least double, if not triple or quadruple, these preliminary lists.

Internal publics for First Prize Glass

hourly factory workers general laborers glass-making artisans designers union representatives office staff part-time and/or seasonal staff off-premises sales and distribution staff supervisors and mid-level managers executive management team corporate board of directors stockholders Muellhardt family members who hold large shares of stock Muellhardt family members who are primarily concerned with family pride

External publics in simplest terms include everyone with whom the organization wants to interact that isn't a part of the organization and thereby one of its internal publics.

For some practitioners, this distinction between internal and external publics is the only one that matters. They simply don't bother with any further categorization of their publics. Others, as is done here, prefer to organize publics/target audiences into four categories, two of which -- media and regulatory publics -- could just as accurately be considered sub-categories of external publics.

External publics for First Prize Glass

customers prospective customers prospective employees employees' families local civic leaders all members of the local community nearby residents affected by plant operations the Audubon Society and others concerned about nearby bird habitats suppliers and vendors the glassware industry the trophy industry direct competitors professional and trade associations union officials and union headquarters office staffs local banks and financial institutions Chambers of Commerce

Media publics are singled out and treated differently than other external publics because they are often used as conduits for getting messages to their audiences (the real public which the organization wishes to relate to) rather than being a final target audience themselves.

Media publics for First Prize Glass

local and regional general circulation media business media from the Cincinnati Business Courier to The Wall Street Journal and Business Week glass industry publications prize and trophy publications museum publications trade and professional association journals to promote crystal/glass trophies and prizes wine and fine dining publications to promote First Prize stemware

Regulatory publics or authoritative publics are singled out because they have some sort of official or financial power over the organization and can control or otherwise punish it. They are so important and so influential that they warrant special treatment. Among the most powerful are federal, state, and local government regulatory agencies. Others include professional or trade associations, policy-making boards or commissions, and employee unions.

Regulatory publics for First Prize Glass

state and county licensing boards which issue business licenses & zoning permits US Department of Labor & Ohio Department of Labor which set and enforce employment standards U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service which regulates employment of non-citizens State of Ohio fire marshal Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) which sets and enforces workplace safety standards Consumer Product Safety Commission which is responsible for toxicity standards for tableware state and federal Environmental Protection Agencies which enforce manufacturing pollution standards Internal Revenue Service and State Tax Commissions US Social Security Commission US Customs Service, Department of Commerce, and similar agencies in other countries which control imports/exports

All-inclusive lists need to be condensed and prioritized.

After exhaustive lists of publics and potential target audiences have been compiled, they should be pared down to a more manageable level by combining similar and closely related groups into a lesser number of target audiences. This involves analyzing the groups to find those which may have distinguishing characteristics that set them apart from one another in specific ways but whose differences are insignificant in terms of how your organization relates to them. At this stage in the process, you may also decide that some identifiable groups simply aren't important enough to your organization to warrant keeping them in your plan.

There is no universally agreed upon number of publics that ought to be included in a public relations plan. Some include less than ten; others have 50 or more. It depends on the size and nature of the organization. Generally speaking, it might be reasonable to aim for a prioritized list of publics/target audiences numbering in the upper-teens to mid-twenties. Depending on the nature of the organization, they may be concentrated in one or two of the four types of publics or be spread evenly across all four categories.

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(25 April 2008)