The Importance of Research in PR Campaign

Many people are often confused about what PR practitioners do. Many believe that it is simply event planning to raise publicity about a client. However, for the most part, that is not the case. A proficient PR campaign consists of numerous steps including Research, Action, Communication and Evaluation (otherwise known as the RACE model). The first step in the process is often the most important, research. Without the essential research elements taking place before a campaign, a practitioner will not know in what area to focus their efforts.

Research tells you, what your public thinks about your client, the best methods for approaching that public, what message should be sent to that public to incur a specific action or a change in beliefs. Research will allow you to set goals for your campaign by giving you a beginning margin to evaluate your results against. It will tell you what other organizations did in similar situations (best practices). Research will tell you all this and more.

There are two ways to classify research methods, primary and secondary OR qualitative and quantitative. To give examples of each, I will share the research we conducted for my current PR campaign for Independent Living Services for Youth. Primary research elements are ones a person conducts himself or herself. Our primary research elements include: focus Group, interviews, ethnographic study and surveys. Secondary research is research that has already been conducted. Our secondary research elements included a demographic study of Norman, Okla., a media audit and bibliography/content analysis. 

Quantitative data is data that is numerical and statistical in nature. Qualitative is not numerical; it captures information that is not statistical. Quantitative data included demographic studies and surveys. Qualitative data included our focus groups, interviews and ethnographic observations.

The following links give more information about research elements.

social research methods

primary vs secondary research

My First Client…Independent Living Services for Youth

When my PR Campaigns class began the semester, I had no idea what I was about to get into. Was the class going to be hard? Or fun? Was it going to be rewarding? Will I gain the knowledge I need to work in the real world?
When ILSY (Independent Living Services for Youth) confronted our class about implementing a name change, PR Perceptions jumped right into the campaign with the most important step, research. We began our research with some secondary research and ultimately, found other organizations similar to ILSY. We also researched how implementing a name change can be a positive step in an organization and can create positive publicity and increase awareness.

My group also conducted primary research such as interviews, surveys, and focus groups. We began our primary research by interviewing Debra Krittenbrink, executive director of ILSY. This helped us gain more knowledge about what our client wanted in the new name. She told us she wanted the name to be short, about 1 to 3 words, and also said she did not want an acronym. We also interviewed ILSY board members and got their input about the name change.

Our next step was to create a survey to send to our publics, which were churches, donors and teachers/counselors. We created a survey with 14 questions and sent it out to about 40 people. Overall, we found that most of the participants agreed that the name ILSY was hard to remember. All agreed that a name change was needed.

From there, we came up with three different names: 1.) Bridge to Beyond 2.) Step to Tomorrow 3.) Uniting Futures for Youth. These name were well researched by our group to insure we were not violating copyright laws. We then conducted the last phase of our research, a focus group. We held the focus group on a Saturday morning and 4 people attended, including people from Norman Public School and churches. We asked them a wide range of open-ended questions to gain feedback. We found that they all agreed ILSY needed a name change, as some could barely remember what the acronym stood for after we told them for the first time. We found that they liked the names Bridge to Beyond and Step to Tomorrow.

Ultimately, our client chose the name “Bridges- Empowering Students Who Live Alone to Succeed”. Our group was thrilled that we helped chose the name, as it came from our name “Bridge to Beyond”. Overall, the campaign was a complete success and our research was a big reason why.