Onalenna Kgositau
Campus: LUCT
Hello fellow bloggers
Research and
Event Planning in Public Relations
I am here again to point out the importance of research in
event planning.
Normally we, PR practitioners tend to think
that communication and strategy are the most important skills in our field but
let me correct you, we are wrong since one cannot put this skill to good use
without a foundation of research and information gathering. Research is the most
valuable skill in PR and it is important to know every little details of the
project you are to work on before you can go to the core of it.
During my
placement I have done a lot of research on the projects I was assigned to work
on and I would say research has really helped me to complete my projects well
in time and without bothering my supervisor from time to time. And from my
placement I have learned that research is the most valuable step one has to
consider first before she/he start to plan an event or doing any project for
the organisation. For example I was assigned to plan the 7th World Summit on Media for
Children, this Summit Movement
has a 16 year history and have been held every after 3years in different
countries, now the 7th one will be hosted by Malaysia’s national
broadcaster, RTM in 2014 while ABU is the organizer of this global conference.
One would think
2014 is far but remember planning an event well in advance is a good PR
practice with the fact that this is a global Summit and not only Malaysia
should know about it but also the world at large should be aware of it.
The very first
thing I had to do was to carry out a research to try and find out about other
events of a similar nature thus the past Summits, I was look at things like
what was happening during the past summits, activities, who were the speakers,
how did the summit went, if good what they did do to excel, if wrong I had to
check out what really went wrong, so here research gave me some inspiration for
developing this event in terms of activities and style that might work well for
this 7th global Summit. Research helps you to be unique.
“Research
is the planner’s homework. It’s the foundation of every effective campaign for
public relations and marketing communication. Your communication tactics might
be innovative, but they will probably be ineffective if you don’t have adequate
research.” (Smith, 2004, 15)
Research is the foundation of event planning, before you can
plan your event, do a thorough research
first, know the past events of a similar
theme and also research can help you know
behaviors of key publics, which information sources do they prefer, and how
best to reach them and also with research we can be able to predict outcomes
accurately.
Thank
you for reading until my next post.
6 comments:
I am impressed how you all here are getting educated,theoretical and practical.
And i should agree with you that you cnt plan an event without doing a research and expect fruitful results in return.Research is the key to any successful PR campaign and event, before you start to do anything regarding your event is best you start with a research, find out more about your key publics,environment, what's your client mission,vision and so on.
You are all ready to start your PR journey, i am impressed.
It is true actually, there is no how one can plan for an event or anything else without doing proper research first. You need to know who and what you are dealing with, or what to expect and how to deal with it, and u can only excel if u have done your research well. Thank you for this insightful post. Keep 'em coming!
Its very true that research is important in PR, it should always be the basis of all PR plans. Without research we as PR practitioners would be lost. In order for the projects we do to be a success we have to have done a thorough research first.
Interesting post Onalenna, and you are indeed true because there is no how you can get a good turn out in PR without prior research.That is why some campaigns/events end up as a disaster due to inadequate research.
It's a very nice and mind-broadening piece of work. Full of information as we know that research has a bigger role in public relation because in order to create lasting respect and understanding, whether with internal, external or trade publics, public relations policy should be based on effective and through research. AS it helps in knowing your client,choosing your media,finding your market,making your pitch. In the ideal world, public relations practitioners would conduct research before launching any program or activity as a key element for developing the organization’s strategy
A very informative post from you Onalenna, and i totally agree with you. Research helps in doing our PR work and in making us have a better understanding on our PR work.
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