What is a public relations campaign?

A public relations campaign can best be described as a series of activities that relate to a specific goal for coverage of an organisation, an individual or product, usually over a set amount of time.

Campaigns usually don’t refer to overall public relations activity, but a specific group of activity for coverage of a specific thing. There are many different types of public relations campaigns. This may include a product launch to promote sales, or coverage surrounding the launch of a brand to spread awareness.

Many tools are used to make up a PR campaign. These may include media relations, advertorials, social media posts, newsletters, business events, press releases and partnerships.

Adoni Media for example was recently called upon for a public relations campaign surrounding the launch of Heart of Australia’s second mobile specialist clinic. Coverage was gained across national TV including Channel 7 and 10, through to niche publications surrounding trucking and medicine.

Why do a public relations campaign?

A specific campaign enables goals to be set regarding coverage, and focuses the company, individual and PR team on generating media on that one area.

Campaigns are also aimed at establishing brands and building relationships with customers, suppliers, government agencies, investors and the media – as well as promoting the client. If you’re able to do this, it’s evidence yours is one of the great public relations campaigns.

What is public relations management?

To put it simply, public relations management is about maintaining or enhancing the public image of a company or organisation. Campaigns can focus on mainstream media by appealing to parents, for example, or controversial public relations campaigns can be utilised to promote discussion of the brand by the wider public.

Crisis public relations campaigns are about minimising damage to organisations when a crisis hits.  Public relations political campaigns can be used to enforce political pressure and to inform the public. Adoni Media’s Your Health Your Choice campaign to protect complementary medicine resulted in direct petitioning to Senators and led to a meeting with the Health Minister to discuss the industry’s concerns.

Public relations campaigns must be tailored to the industry the company or person is in. For example, the importance of public relations in family welfare campaigns and the importance of public relations in public administration are quite different. Ultimately the purpose is similar though – all campaigns are aimed at gaining coverage, informing, and building relationships.

Here are our top tips on delivering an effective public relations campaign:

1. Establish clear goals – work out exactly what you want to achieve and focus on that.
2. Know your audience – take the time to establish who you want the campaign to reach and tailor it so that group is targeted.
3. Choose your platform – whether that’s traditional media, social media or some other platform, angle the campaign to something that works well with the targeted demographic.
4. Find every possible angle – the only way a successful campaign will run is if it’s creative, if it’s newsworthy and if it’s interesting to the audience. Find a way to look at it from the public’s point of view – or from a journalist’s.
5. Research – it’s important to not use the shotgun approach and bulk send your campaign to every journalist you can think of. Instead, carefully tailor and distribute releases to relevant media outlets.
6. Build relationships – if you’re aiming for more of a long-term approach, start building relationships with journalists ahead of your campaign. If you get them what they want during the campaign, they’re also more likely to want to cover the organisation you represent down the track.