Breaking Down The Role Of Public Advocacy

by Purvi Dalvi Writer

The ability to communicate is essential for the success of any idea, enterprise or corporate to reach their specific objectives. Today corporates need to connect, communicate and engage with consumers on a constant basis. The audience needs to be made aware of the initiatives undertaken and how it affects them.

Definition:

Public Advocacy is all about influencing and driving change. It is an activity for an individual or group to affect or support a particular cause or policy. Advocacy can include activities such as media campaigns, public speaking, commissioning and publishing research or conducting an exit poll.

Objective:

Public advocacy aims to ensure that people have their voices heard on the issues that are important to them. It will defend and safeguard their rights. With the boon of the Internet, Public Advocacy becomes easier and helps attain organisational goals. The Internet helps to increase the speed, reach and effectiveness of advocacy-related communication.

Things included in the public advocacy campaign:

Often compared to a PR campaign, the public advocacy campaign is more refined and strategic. These communication plans are proactive and driven by an agenda. In the social and economic development context, advocacy aims to initiate or change policies, laws, regulations, other decisions that affect people’s lives and to ensure that such arrangements lead to implementation.

Well-defined goals:

For the public advocacy campaign, the goals need to be clear and attainable. They need to be doable and not ambiguous. If the goal is to manage the reputation of the company, then it is essential to establish transparency among employees and the management. Corporate reputation management is a long-term goal, and hence, the agenda needs to be specific, about maintaining the goodwill of the company.

Mapped target audience:

While building the campaign, the challenge is to recognise potential audiences, determine what information to communicate and then identify who within the business is the best representative to interact with that audience. Some of the groups include clients, immediate consumers impacted by the incident and their families, employees and their families, stakeholders, news media.

Articulated messages:

A successful public advocacy campaign will most certainly involve simple messages that resonate with stakeholders and garner support for the campaign. It does not mean restating the goals again. But it merely means building a compelling case with your target audience.

Structured planning and research:

Research is the basis of communication but getting the right advocates is the key to a successful campaign. The preparation begins with setting the goals to implementing the program on the public platform. When the company is hit with a crisis, it is critical to have a tactic plan to overcome the problems. Few companies advocate a structured crisis communication training program to prepare the organisation to surpass the difficulties.

Though advocacy communication is about bringing policy changes, it takes time and patience. Hence, for an effective communication plan, it is critical to bring clarity on goals and issues.