Knowing Your Audience Paper and Communication Release

Knowing Your Audience Paper and Communication Release

To help with communication work, public relations professionals use the concept, of public, as a way to acknowledge all the different audiences served by an organization. Kotler (1982, p. 47) offers this definition of public: "A distinct group of people and/or organizations that have an actual or potential interest and/or impact on an organization." As an example, Kotler says; think of a college or university and all the groups that have a stake in the success or failure of an institute of higher education. While there may not be much time to prepare when a crisis does occur, the simplest way to prepare for a news interview is to address the issue using the five W's--who, what, when, where, why, and sometimes how (Coombs, 2007). Obviously, workers and their families, are the primary audience for the Chilean mine, they are an important group to consider, and there are multiple ways that official information spread to the average worker on a mine. However, stakeholders, management, prospective customers (such as potential copper buyers), trustees, staff, residents of the local community, suppliers, and local government officials also have an interest in a mine but may receive different communications and differing amounts of attention from the administration than a miner. The consideration (based on the foregoing discussion) that is to be remembered is that the families of the 33 workers and the parent company are the most important people that need to be addressed by the person communicating on behalf of the Mine.

The potential needs of the families of the miners include receiving a quick response from a company spokes person. This response should include that details of the incident that occured, the number of casualties and injuries (if any), exact number of people trapped in the mine, what is the company doing about it, current situation, expected time till rescue, progress of rescue efforts, any assistance required by the company (from NGO's and/or Government), contingency plans and various other things.

The relationship between having in place an existing crisis plan and an organization's ability to weather a crisis intact is hard to overstate. A quick look at the headlines gives some examples of what types of crises can occur. Nonprofits have faced the fallout of having a leader exposed as a criminal, or even worse, having been the site for an act of violence to occur. External events, such as a natural disaster or an accident, also merit a crisis response. Since such unexpected events have the ability to damage your organization's good name and quickly change the public perception of you and your colleagues, a crisis without an appropriate organizational response can significantly impact the long-run ability to carry out the work of your organization (Ulmer, Sellnow & Seeger, 2006).