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PUNCH Strategy

Consider if a PUNCH strategy can help you to position your brand/product/idea among competitors, and with your target audience segment.

PUNCH

In what ways is your message emphasizing how the brand/idea is:

· Positive

· Unique

· Niche

· Competitive

· Helping

This approach can help you to identify the important characteristics of the brand, and the aspects that you want to emphasize in the messaging for the campaign. 

Creating a Communication Channel Mix

To help you consider an appropriate communication channel mix for your Strategic Communication Plan:

· Review the SWOT analysis and audience segment description that you created for your client organization’s campaign.

· Review our discussion in Module 6 about key messages, and consider the potential key messages you will include in your Strategic Communication Plan

· Consider any challenges/obstacles you are encountering in developing a channel mix for the messages in your campaign. Some aspects to consider include:

· Are you able to gather reliable information about your target audience segment’s media usage? What information would you like to know about your audience’s media usage that you don’t already know? Are there resources available that might answer some or all of your questions about the audience’s media usage?

· Possible resources you can use to learn about your target audience's media usage include:

PRIZM zip code lookup:  https://claritas360.claritas.com/mybestsegments/#zipLookup

VALS types  http://www.strategicbusinessinsights.com/vals/ustypes.shtml

Interviewing people who fit the target audience description to gather qualitative data that might help to information your decisions

· What information are you able to gather about potential communication channels’ audience characteristics? Are you able to determine which channels are a good match for your target audience and communication goal? What information would you like to know about the channels’ audiences that you don’t already know? Are there resources available that might answer some or all of your questions?

· Possible resources you can use to learn more about a communication channel's target audience include:

A media kit from the channel/publication/media outlet (typically posted on the media organization's website), with a detailed description of the audience composition

Press Room and/or News links on the media outlet’s website

Information from the media outlet’s advertising department, which might include information about the audience composition

Audience Descriptions and Profiles

1. Don’t gear the campaign to a general audience that includes “all who”…

· All women who...

· All men and women who are 18-22...

· All 18-22-year-old college students…

2. Select a very specific audience segment.

· A strategic communication approach tailors messages to specific audiences, to increase the likelihood that the message will be effective.

· In a real-world setting, the organization would develop separate campaigns/messages for  all relevant audience segments.  Each relevant audience segment would be treated as the unique audience it is, and  separate  messages would be geared to each audience segment.

· We don’t have the resources or timeframe available to do that in the course, so for our class project, you will select 1 audience segment to gear the message to.

· Any  relevant audience segment is a “correct” one to select. Select an audience segment that will enable you to explore aspects of the campaign and/or the organization/brand that most interest you.

3. Ensure that your audience profile, and all aspects of your plan, demonstrate your understanding of a “strategic” approach to communication campaigns, and how it differs from a “general” approach.

· If your audience description includes  “all who…”, consider ways to separate that larger group (of  everyone in that particular population) into smaller segments, to craft more specific messages for each individual group.

4. Include both demographic and psychographic factors in your audience profile.

· Which physical and tangible characteristics are relevant for your target audience (age, gender, geographic location, income, etc.)?

· Which beliefs and intangible characteristics are relevant for your target audience (what are their values, priorities, goals)?

5. Ensure that the target audience segment is a relevant audience for the overall goal of the campaign/organization/brand.

· What outcome does the organization seek from the campaign, and why?

· Is this target audience a good fit for the organization’s communication goal for this campaign?

1

Key Objectives Paper

Developing a strategic communication plan for Amazon is imperative in addressing the company's growth projections to operate competitively in the e-commerce field. The name of the plan is: Developing a larger market share for Amazon by using behavioral management operations for its employees. A company can improve its overall performance by implementing behavior change needs and ensuring employees use their prior experience to eliminate barriers to productivity (O'Sullivan et al., 2003, p. 81). Behavior change is needed to address any areas with limited productivity. Since Amazon has many departments like finance, technical, web services, and legal, all employees require a changing work environment to ensure they conform to standards currently adopted in the market. Articulating the purpose of the communication provides the employees with an understanding of areas for changing their behaviors.

For Amazon, visual and written communication is the primary strategic method for better performance. The strategic approach for Amazon is to expand globally since its current operational process has set up headquarters only in Washington, Portland, Vancouver, Tacoma, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York (Amazon, 2023). Employees need to change their behaviors to use a more global approach in addressing business operations in a way in which clients will discover closeness to the company’s operational areas. Communicating to employees about the need to implement a global approach effectively allows new ideas to be formed as they conform to functional specifications at Amazon. Amazon already uses Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as its communication channels. Posting of visual communication types on social media platforms is effective in ensuring better behavioral changes.

Employees can be influenced to integrate change using strategic approaches like breaking new territory, being product-oriented, and being service-oriented (O’Sullivan et al., 2003, p. 111). All these can be adopted at Amazon to facilitate its expansion in the global market and develop productive methods of generating better performance. Proper communication operations ensure that a company can deliver governance, leadership, innovation, and products/services for different markets that have a great need for such (Harrington, 2016). The strategic communication methods of visual and written communication are proper for Amazon to increase its territorial operations by reaching a ready market that needs its services and products. The use of presentations, infographics, and roadmaps for communication change at Amazon are appropriate visual representations of all aspects connected to better performance.

The visual communication will integrate a detailed course of action that has the capability of generating the required goals. The relationship between the employees and unique strategic communication methods is evident in the possibility of developing a proper idea for work performance. Written communication, like using memos, emails, and letters, is another part of strategic communication that is effective in addressing the plan for Amazon to increase its operational efficiency. This method is connected to the possibility of generating appropriate results from a project without having to deal with too many unforeseen challenges on the way. Using the communication type is proper for developing different goals, analysis of the company environment, picking persons with expertise, and increasing understanding of available resources. Measuring outcomes of the strategic communication process is possible by using surveys, checking editorial publications, and assessing engagement with the communication tools adopted (Harrington, 2016).

A complete improvement in operational efficiencies will be attained when the strategic communication plan at Amazon adopts the techniques mentioned and then collectively addresses performance measures. It can be possible to engage with all persons involved in the project by understanding how the division of activities would be conducted. Operational improvement results in better capability of handling the plan's requirements and stakeholder expectations by creating a complete change in behavior for the employees handling work operations. It would be possible to remove inefficiencies by adopting strategic communication methods and ensuring that learning is implemented among all employees.

References

Amazon. (2023). Corporate Offices. Retrieved 29, October 2023 from https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace/corporate-offices.

Harrington, K. (2016). Strategic Communications: The Science behind the Art.

O’Sullivan, G.A., Yonkler, J.A., Morgan, W., & Merritt, A.P. (2003). A Field Guide to Designing a Health Communication Strategy, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs.

Key Messages

· The messaging should be directly influenced by the audience profile: The audience's interests, priorities, goals, and circumstances (demographics) should determine what you include (and exclude) and emphasize.

· Messages can convey many things: key facts, a "promise" to the audience, tone, brand identity.

· The desired lasting impression should be the focus when developing the messages: What do you want the audience to think, say, do or feel because of the message? How are you encouraging that outcome?

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION PLAN – TEMPLATE

Name of the organization

Name of the plan/campaign

Prepared by (your name)

Introduction

Identify the client organization

Establish clear and specific communication goals/objectives for the communication campaign

Identify any relevant/challenging aspects of the organization/situation that you considered when developing the plan for the client

Target Audience

Identify and describe the target audience (one segment of the intended audience)

Strategic Approach/Rationale

State the overall strategic approach (see Table 4.1, pp. 111-112 in the O’Sullivan et al. text)

List the key objectives of the communication campaign

Describe the positioning strategy you are using (i.e., the content you are emphasizing and why that approach is likely to be effective for the client organization’s communication goal)

Message, Tools, and Communication Channels

Present key messages, tools, and communication channels that will be used to reach the target audience and achieve the communication goal

Demonstrate how the messages, tools, and channels are part of an integrated plan to achieve the desired outcome

Evaluation

Describe a method to evaluate and measure the effectiveness of the campaign and whether the communication goal was achieved (See Chapter 7 and the example case study [Location 831-998] of the Harrington text for more discussion on evaluation methods)

References

(Follow APA Style for entries. See the guidelines posted under the Course Resources link on the course page for more information.)

Appendix A

Optional

Appendix B

Optional

Assignment Requirement Reminders

Format: 8-10 page paper, submitted in a Word document

(10 page maximum length, not including title page, references, and optional appendices)

Style: APA (7th edition)

Structure: Include section headings throughout the paper, where appropriate (see examples in this template), to organize the content

Optional: If you’d like to include example materials (of messaging content, etc.), you can include them in an appendix, labeled with appropriate/relevant headings to identify the content

Recommended:

Use a combination of paragraph form, bullet points, charts, graphs, and other formats to clearly convey content. Consider how the format is helping you to present and emphasize content.

Use your judgment to determine the best way to present each aspect of the plan.

For example:

(1) It can often be helpful to include several statistics in bulleted list, rather than writing the statistics out in paragraph form. It can be a reader-friendly format that also emphasizes the information, and makes it memorable:

· 10% of XXXX..........

· 87% of XXXXXXX.......

· $XXX was spent on........

(2) You could use some of the worksheets presented in the O'Sullivan et al. text, or you can adapt the worksheets to a format that is better suited to your content.

(3) You might create an infographic to highlight what you consider the most important aspect of your plan.

Final notes and suggestions:

Each strategic plan that you work on enables you to develop your judgment -- about what needs to be said, to whom, in what way, and with what desired effect.

The decision-making process that you engage in as you create the plan is as important, and possibly more helpful, in developing your strategic communication skills, as the end result and the plan itself -- particularly because the nature of PR work is so subjective.

· What type of research will be most persuasive/convincing?

· When have I included enough research/supporting evidence to persuade the audience and illustrate that the strategy is likely to be effective?

· What message will resonate with the audience?

· Which messages best represent the brand?

All of these questions -- and many more -- contribute to your "judgment" about what and how to communicate the message to bring about the desired outcome.

As you work on the plan, take note of how, and why, you are making decisions, and how that is forming your judgment.