Fortunately, there are many communications tactics to choose from: newsworthy announcements, letters-to-the-editor, news releases, radio and newspaper interviews, brochures, speeches and on and on.

Now, you’re back to monitoring mode as you interact once again with members of key target audience. With your communications tactics hammering away, you keep one eye peeled for signs of target audience opinion shifts in your direction. The other eye, (and ears) stay alert for any references by print and broadcast media, or other local thoughtleaders to your carefully prepared message.

The bottom line is, are perceptions and behaviors within target audience being modified? If not, adjustments to your communications tactics – often a big increase in, and wider selection -- must be made. Your message may also need to be sharpened and its factual basis strengthened.

Gradually, you’ll begin to notice changes in opinion starting to appear along with a growing receptiveness to those messages of yours. This is real progress.

Should you still need encouragement to hang in there with your brand new public relations program, consider this. A single issue – for example, a potentially dangerous, unattended perception among a key audience -- can spread like wildfire nudging any business closer to failure than success.

That statistic alone should make you feel pretty good about public relations.

end

Bob Kelly counsels, writes and speaks about the fundamental premise of public relations. He has been DPR, Pepsi-Cola Co.; AGM-PR, Texaco Inc.; VP-PR, Olin Corp.; VP-PR, Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.; director of communications, U.S. Department of the Interior, and deputy assistant press secretary, The White House. mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net Visit: http://www.prcommentary.com

And what does this hidebound, 81/2" x 11" x 2" box contain: a CD! I trembled thinking it too would be wrapped in that plastic that yields to neither man nor woman.

Thankfully, innocuous little CD was without wrapper. Good thing. My scream would have reverberated in hallowed halls of Bill Gate's Washington mansion. It's pain enough to upgrade software without going through physical machinations of opening a #$%^& box.

Moral of story: The customer's experience is everything. Don't let packaging ruin their day.

(c) 2003 by Eileen McDargh. All rights reserved

Reprint rights granted to all venues so long as article and by-line are used intact.