External Comms

The importance of internal comms in an external campaign

Posted by John Weet in Public Relations on January 12, 2009

I give blood regularly and was recently sent a letter telling me that as I had donated three times in the past year I was to be given a slate coaster the next time that I went. All I had to do was present the letter and the coaster was mine. Giving blood can be a chore and it is a little bit uncomfortable at times so it felt nice that my efforts were appreciated. It gave me a nice warm feeling inside.

I gave blood last week and presented my letter. The response I got was totally unexpected, and I quote,

“Don’t know what you want one of those for, I wouldn’t give them house room, I’d rather see the money spent where it should be spent and not on that sort of stuff.”

This person has missed the point, the coaster wasn’t for her, it was for me. It was a thanks and I was pleased with it.

This was a nice little PR campaign by the National Blood Service, spoiled at the point of delivery. Either they didn’t communicate the purpose of the campaign correctly to the people at the customer interface or they didn’t gauge how well that message had been received by that person. Whichever it was it took the edge off it for me.

This type of experience clearly demonstrates the importance of ensuring people all the way through the organisation are on message, particularly those at the sharp end.

blood, external comms, internal comms, john weet, national blood service, WeetPR

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Effective Marketing Communications

Posted by John Weet in Public Relations on December 12, 2008

In the current economic climate the marketing budget is often one of the first to be cut or trimmed back.

Marketeers will often shout “NO, you should be investing in marketing in difficult times.” True, but get real.

There is generally only a limited amount of money to go around and where else is there a big pot of money that if cut won’t have an immediate effect on sales?

If that is the case, and your budgets do get cut then you need to be as effective as possible with the marketing communications activities that you do undertake. The question is, how do you know what is and what isn’t effective?

One way is to benchmark yourself against other companies or against what is considered to be best practise. A simple benchmarking process is to perform a gap analysis. If you can list all the elements of a marketing communications programme and then define what would be considered to be best practise in each of those areas then it is possible to audit yourself to see how you perform.

communications audit, external comms, john weet, Public Relations, WeetPR

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Posts Tagged external comms

The importance of internal comms in an external campaign

Effective Marketing Communications

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