The Importance Of Thorough Research

Hello Everyone

Well this is my first posting. My name is Ashlea and I am currently living in Sydney. I am interning with Hill & Knowlton (H & K), which is a global communication consultancy, providing public relations services to a range of different clients. Within H & K, there are different departments that deal with different types of organisations. These departments include Corporate, Health and Pharmaceutical, Consumer, Digital and Online, Travel and Tourism, Media Relations, Food and Nutrition, Crisis and Issues Management and Internal Communications.
I am working within the Health and Pharmaceutical team. Currently we are consulting with a range of clients across health care providers, biotechnology, prescription and over-the-counter medications, vaccines, medical devices and consumer health and nutrition. Over my first four days, it has become evident how extremely important research is (particularly in the area of health), in providing accurate information for clients and their stakeholders. Research makes a significant different to the effectiveness of any form of public relations activity. It is undertaken at the start of every PR related activity to determine the size and nature of the topic, its foundation and implications, and the particular stakeholders it may relate to. I have been working on some research for one of our clients, BUPA Aged Care Services. I have had to conduct a media audit that also included a situation analysis, identified key stakeholders including the competing businesses, the key spokespeople and the main media outlets providing information on aged care services. To do this, I was introduced to two new programs: Factiva, which is an online search engine that provides a list of all relevant published articles in newspapers. You are also able to specify your search by region, date range, specific publications etc. The second program is Alterian SM2, which searches the whole Internet for the keywords you are after. It includes in its search general media forums (newspapers etc), blogs, websites and social media such as twitter. What I love about this program is that it can pull all the results into a relevant graph that can outline the top domains (who talk about the topic the most), the age of majority of the people talking about it, the top authors and the tone of the content (the positive and negative opinions). All of this information is extremely important when selecting which media outlets to use when targeting a particular market.
Other duties I have taken part in so far include media monitoring. Every morning, the first thing I do is scan the daily newspapers (Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph, The Financial Review and The Australian) for any health related articles. On a monthly basis, this also includes the Medical Observer and the Australian Doctor. I then have to send out a group email to the health consultancy team with a short summary of any news or stories that are health related.
I was also involved in a brainstorm for a new client concerning fish oil in the Asia-Pacific region. Ideas were thrown around the table of how to creatively present the pitch and in the end it was decided to send the proposal in a fishbowl that contained pebbles and reef coral etc, as well as provide each member with a cook book on healthy fish meals. This brainstorm also highlighted how creativity plays a part in PR. Something so small and simple could possibly differentiate a company from its competitors.

Until next time!