Building a PR campaign that truly appeals to all of a brand’s potential audiences takes time and effort. That’s because plan development is a process that involves goal-setting, budget, identification of audiences, establishing benchmarks, and more.
Designing an inclusive PR campaign takes care. When PR professionals start the process of developing a campaign, a natural place to look are previously successful campaigns. The problem with that is if prior campaigns were not as inclusive as they could have been, using them as the structure or scaffolding to develop a new campaign will “bake in” that lack of diversity into a new campaign.
Using research to inform your approach
One of the most important ways that media monitoring can help you to develop more inclusive PR campaigns is through improved research.
Developing culturally sensitive PR campaigns starts by understanding your audiences. Conduct deep-dive research into stakeholder groups. Use media monitoring to identify key publications important to them, read those publications in depth. Your objective is to gain an understanding of the pressures, sensitivities, and preferences of any groups the brand considers to be a target audience.
Research can help to uncover how your target audiences see the world around them and how news, marketing, trends, and issues are informing their perspectives. This is critical for communicators to understand, particularly when working to design diverse PR outreach.
Because each of us is a product of our environment—family viewpoints, socioeconomic upbringing, culture, region—an individual communicator’s worldview will likely inform how a PR program is developed.
When we are attempting to reach out to others with diverse viewpoints and different backgrounds, it is essential to cultivate an understanding of the target audience’s worldview and how it may differ from ours. Research, and specifically the evaluation of media coverage, can help bridge that gap in understanding.
Research can also help to establish an understanding of how regional news is impacting an audience, providing context on what issues are prominent in their day-to-day lives. This is particularly important for PR and communications firms with global reach. Civil unrest, boycotts, national elections, strikes, and even major sporting events like the Olympics can swamp coverage. But the impacts of these types of events are not uniform across all groups. Research can help to uncover the nuances of how major events are resonating with different audiences, and understanding the context is essential to designing a truly inclusive program.
Talk to Partners
We’ve previously covered why it is important to build strategic partnerships. Developing plans with inclusivity and representation in mind is a prime example of how important strategic partnerships can be to your brand.
If you’re already working with influencers or partners who are members of a community you’ll be reaching out to in a new PR campaign, involve them in the development of your plans if possible.
Or, if you haven’t yet developed those relationships, try to do so early on in the planning process—before you launch your program.
Talking to partners includes internal resources. Employees of your own organisation who are members of groups you’re trying to reach can offer valuable viewpoints.
Involving a range of perspectives early on can be helpful in determining where you might be missing voices and input.
Measure your results
Whether you’re new to including diversity into your PR programs or have been doing so for years, measuring your program results is important.
Standard measurement criteria such as sentiment should be closely examined to determine if overall sentiment mirrors that of targeted groups, or if it differs. If a demographic group is responding differently to messaging than is reflected in overall sentiment, it’s important to dig further and try to determine why the messages are landing differently for one or more groups.
Beyond sentiment, use measurement to ensure you’re monitoring the right outlets, social channels, markets, and publications. If you’re unsure whether your monitoring tool covers all of the outlets you believe are a priority for key audiences, ask!
Talk to your designated representative or monitoring team early on in your planning process. If there are specific publications or outlets you want to make certain are monitored, mention them. Give your monitoring tool enough time to review outlets and add new ones if necessary.
Have a plan for when you make mistakes
Some organisations avoid DEI and inclusivity because they’re terrified of making a misstep, or because they’ve witnessed backlash in one form or another.
A better plan of action is to understand that despite all of your planning and preparation, you might get something wrong. Have a plan of action for how to identify and address concerns or criticism should help your organisation feel more confident about launching an inclusive PR program.
If you’ve included members of diverse groups in your planning and are being authentic, hopefully any missteps will be minor. That said, make sure that you’re monitoring for reactions to your PR messages. Monitoring will help you to address negative feedback quickly—just make sure that your responses are honest and authentic and don’t come across as defensive.
The Bottom Line
Developing inclusive PR programs is critical. With PR messaging that reaches around the globe, you want to make sure that you’re speaking to all of your audiences in authentic, smart ways that connect with them right from the beginning.
Incorporating diverse voices can help build your brand by deepening trust, if done correctly—with both external audiences and internally, with your employees.
Don’t skimp on research and planning as this is how you start with a solid foundation for any program, but it’s even more essential when you’re developing messages for cultures outside of your own. Listen closely to the advice you’re given from members of diverse communities, and work to nurture partnerships for the long term. Be authentic, and understand that it takes time to develop trust.
