Through the Looking Glass:
An upfront and personal interview on the importance of Public Relations to any business
By Sarah Parker
“As part of my course work in Public Relations at Grant MacEwan, I had the opportunity to interview Johanna MacDonald, APR and ask her some interesting questions about her work and convictions. I met Johanna when she came to our college asking for some volunteers who would be interested in participating in a really exciting PR project – Meet the Money - Entrepreneurs helping entrepreneurs. I was one of the fortunate students to help out with that project and gain some incredible insights as to how PR projects are managed and unfold. Below is my interview taken with Johanna in early November 2007.”
The most effective tool any organization can use to gauge their audience and achieve their goals is through a comprehensive public relations strategy. More importantly; however, is the degree to which the organization’s values and goals align with the specific tactics they use to communicate to the public. For the purpose of identifying how an organization meets these objectives, I researched a private firm - Johanna MacDonald & Associates (JM&A): Public Relations and Strategic Communications. This self-owned firm works collaboratively with companies who want to establish stronger ties with their desired audiences, and at the same time, create a reputable identity. The firm has worked with numerous organizations and both federal and provincial governments. Through specific tactics and detailed goals, JM&A has assisted these groups in creating awareness, building their credibility and engaging the public.
PR vs. Marketing
Upon meeting with Johanna MacDonald, APR an accredited member of the Canadian Public Relations Society, I quickly realized she strongly agrees there is a clear distinction between a marketing team and a public relations team and she emphasizes her firm’s position is on the later. Although the two can work closely together on occasion the bottom line is public relations is about raising awareness and marketing is about raising sales.
Public relations practitioners chiefly focus on supporting the senior management team in ensuring that all messages that need to get to the businesses audiences get to them in timely and effective manner. PR practitioners develop and implement corporate communications strategies that align with business goals, support external communications to shareholders, the general public and agencies of interest, and produce and manage internal communications media. While on occasion, the PR team works in conjunction with the marketing team to focus on creating the appropriate communication tools (identity branding, brochures, sales materials, presentations, etc.) and targeting a desired audience with their key messages.
Marketing is mainly concerned with the sales and revenue gains of the organization. Their focus tends to center on generating funds for their company or organization, and branding a particular product or concept. In lay terms, public relations practitioners ask how they can reach, engage and build their audiences and marketing/sales representatives ask how they can increase sales of their organization.
Johanna stresses the importance of this idea with all of the clients she works with. With a prime focus on strategic communications, she outlined three values she strives for with each and every case: to engage the desired audience, to create credibility for the organization, and to establish trust. Her plan is simple. She wants each of her clients to create milestones where they can set, achieve and measure targeted results. She places utmost importance on securing a trust with the audience.
Target Audiences and Specific Objectives
Johanna founded the company in 2006 after she left the federal government to go it alone. She felt that with her comprehensive knowledge of how government communications works that she could do more with her skills from the outside than she could from the inside.
Upon creating her own firm, she has broadened her client base to include a variety of different organizations and companies. She is primarily interested in working with medium to large-size business as these organizations tend to have both the resources and manpower to effectively strategize and implement comprehensive strategic communications plans. They are also at the time in their business growth that the need for a public relations strategy along with a marketing plan is becoming apparently clear to the management team.
Her specific objectives are to focus on creating clear and strategic communications plans that identify specific goals and targeted audiences and achieve measurable results. The most important tactic to accomplish this is effectively is communicating clear and consistent messages to the audience. She was also very passionate about the importance of outlining how proactively handled communications can work to the businesses advantage when dealing with future challenges. A business that has a plan in place to handle issues now is prepared for anything that can happen in the future and they don’t have to resort to the “firefighter response” (only reacting in the wake of a crisis.) Johanna claims this is one objective many organizations tend not to employ – planning for future communications needs. Mapping out how a business can effectively deal with a crisis or an issue is an efficient tactic for preventing future complications.
Tactics and Techniques
With the aim of successfully meeting both her own, as well as the firm’s objectives, Johanna employs a variety of tactics which prove to be very useful and effective. The tools and tactics that are employed for any client will always depend on who they are trying to reach and with what message. For herself, Johanna has her own website www.macdonaldapr.com and she updates it on a regular basis with articles and case examples. She takes advantage of seminars, teaching opportunities, and advanced learning opportunities.
Recently, she also had the opportunity to take advantage of social media outlets including Facebook, YouTube, and simple word of mouth awareness building. The chosen tools and delivery mechanisms are entirely dependent on the circumstances surrounding the needs of the client. Each of her techniques possess a strategic element – the means in which to accomplish her client’s objectives.
She has formed mutually beneficial professional relationships with media contacts and other professionals and strives to keep the dynamic strong. While working with the media she keeps them informed of her clients various stories (as appropriate) and provides them with information on what angles or contacts they will find most useful if they would like to follow up.
When pitching a story or event, she is very straightforward about the nature of intentions. If she is looking for publicity or if the information she has is truly newsworthy to the public and how important it is that people know. She provides the media with relevant background information which centers on aspects of the story the audiences will actually care about. She is very adamant about planning and participating in events, to not only to create awareness, but also to self-market her services to potential clients.
Obstacles and Challenges
Johanna identified the challenges of encouraging her clients to plan ahead. Once again, this idea follows suit with the importance of being prepared for challenges, as opposed to waiting for a crisis to occur and then having to “put-out-the-fires”. A planned approached to issues management is always more effective and provides positive results. As her firm is young, she also faces the challenge of establishing her ‘firm’ as opposed to ‘herself’ as a contractor. She is in a transition period at the moment, so more specific challenges include the typical growing pains of any firm: the issue of relocation (she would like to have an office downtown and is exploring some options), and the costs of moving, leasing property, hiring staff and exploring the idea of seeking a business partner.
Staff, Roles and Functions
Johanna’s firm currently comprises one full-time principal staff member - herself – she out sources when she is working on a project that requires additional support for a variety of tasks. Her primary duties include working closely with an organization to outline their specific milestones, formulating communication plans that will identify the steps necessary to achieve these goals, and measuring and analyzing the results through the use of feedback forms and survey polls. An example of when Johanna would look to outsource would be if she is working on a PR marketing campaign and needs a high resolution brochure to communicate a message.
She will hire a graphic designer to assist her with this subset of the project. She also enlists the services of junior copywriters and technical advisors when necessary. The specific roles and functions that are out sourced vary from project to project. In the future, Johanna plans to do less outsourcing by expand her firm, creating positions such as an administrative assistant, coordinator, and a strategic partner.
Values-Driven Approaches
The most important value I gathered from my interview with Johanna was the importance of instilling trust between herself and her clients and the importance of developing a strategic plan based on measurable goals. While she is concerned with increasing awareness, she believes the only plausible way to establish a stable identity within a given community is to formulate a communications strategy based on honesty and integrity and one that will outline a step-by-step process to achieving milestones – key stages in a businesses growth. She prides her firm on being a credible source of information, and continues researching new ways of building a reputation for her services.
Public Relations Activities and Measurable Results
The fundamental goal behind Johanna’s firm is to build business alliances with organizations who want to utilize her services. Her core values have evolved into several projects including a $100m community services campaign, special events, conferences, fundraisers, open forums, and recruitment events.
One spectacular example of a successful PR event, which drew measurable results, was the recent “Meet the Money – Entrepreneurs helping Entrepreneurs.” Johanna was one of the four businesswomen partners who developed the project and acted as a member of the advisory panel. The idea behind the event was to help entrepreneurs access the financial and knowledge resources needed to launch their business concepts in the market. The entrepreneurs could either pre-register online or come prepared as a walk-in through the open panels held at the SAIT campus in Calgary, or the NAIT campus in Edmonton. The entrepreneurs had 15 minutes in which to present their concept and explain why they should be chosen to be considered as a viable entrepreneur candidate to receive up to a $50,000 investment. Through a four-step elimination process, 10 successful candidates had the opportunity to meet with investors and answer their questions. The aim was at least one to three entrepreneurs could garner the financial support they needed to achieve their goals.
In the initial stages, all four women came together to collaborate and combine their knowledge and expertise from their respective fields. They had gathered research from a variety of sources including Alberta Women Entrepreneurs and Statistics Canada in the hopes of confirming present speculations about entrepreneurs. The studies outlined a large gap between the needs of a startup entrepreneur and their access to financial support either through the banks, “angel investor” or a venture capitalist. The angel investor was the missing link differentiating a civilian with a dream and an entrepreneur accessing resources to grow their business idea. The research identified most entrepreneurs lack the business savvy to access resources, are not skilled in identifying arenas for financial support, and often cannot effectively formulate an effective business plan when attempting to conceptualize the product or service.
Taking these three factors into account, the Meet the Money panel hoped to successfully act as the link between the entrepreneur and their access to an angel investor. All entrepreneurs were surveyed twice through the process to gather information on how they heard of the project in an attempted to identify the most useful tactics in raising awareness to more comprehensive questions about the process and value of information gained. The final survey hoped to answer the question of whether or not the panel successfully filled the gap between an entrepreneur and their access to resources. In addition, the questions centered around how well prepared each entrepreneur felt after meeting with the initial panel of the four partners, and if they felt prepared enough to meet with an investor panel. Without being too specific, Johanna stated the feedback from the entrepreneurs was very good and confirmed the Meet the Money project had done a great job of steering them in the right direction.
The media coverage has been successful to date in garnering support and interest for the project. The Calgary Herald acted as a sponsored advertising medium, and the Edmonton Journal printing two news releases. They received support from Cool Companies magazine that ran their poster and had a comprehensive article written in Alberta Venture Magazine. In addition, CBC radio interviewed two of the partners and all four women were interviewed on Breakfast Television to speak about the project and invite all interested entrepreneurs.
Detailed Analysis
After meeting with Johanna, I believe very strongly that marketing and public relations are completely separate disciplines. They may work in conjunction with each other, but they do not necessarily intermingle. Johanna was a wealth of knowledge and meeting with her only strengthened my beliefs about the importance of an effective public relations campaign, as well as the drastic events that may result from not having one in place. Strategic communications is perhaps one of the most fundamental aspects to any successful business, and planning ahead is absolutely essential. Identifying specific goals and fostering mutually beneficial relationships are two of the crucial factors which must be implemented with every public relations activity an organization undertakes.
Overall, this interview was outstanding. Johanna was a wonderful woman with 20 years of experience in public relations. After speaking with her, I am even more excited about the opportunities existing in the marketplace today. Her passion and commitment to public relations was inspiring, and compelled me to work even harder to achieve my own goals for success. I would not hesitate to give this interview a stellar 10/10 score.
Communications plays an integral role in any successful business. Whether the organization is political, non-profit, or corporate, the best tool any of them can use is a sound, stable communications strategy. Upon interviewing Johanna MacDonald, I discovered some fantastic results can be accomplished simply by creating a detailed plan which aligns with your organization’s initiatives and goals. While marketing and public relations do co-exist, they are separate disciplines which strive to accomplish very different results. It is crucial these two areas do not employ the same tactics, as this can result in a poor relationship between an organization, its media, its public and its goals and objectives.
Public relations impacts the internal structure of an organization, its staff, its management, and its external audience. By formulating achievable goals, implementing strong strategies, and measuring results, an organization is already succeeding in communicating to its public. This should be the primary focus. Johanna MacDonald & Associates has done an exceptional job of stressing this importance through their tagline “Business Results through Targeted Public Relations.” In essence, this is the formula for success. |