Light, Camera, Action (And Response Strategies) !

Action and Response Strategies, Tell Me All About it!

It is important to understand that effective public relations and strong programs are built only on solid and consistent action. There is no action without a message, and the two work together while the organization interacts with its various publics. Strategy and tactics may be grouped together for having similar meanings, but rather strategy is the entire approach to problem solving and tactics are the various actions and channels communicated through to implement that strategy. As for the strategy for actions, they can either be proactive or reactive. There are 13 total proactive strategies and 25 total reactive strategies.

Proactive Strategy: Active Vs. Reactive

You can think of proactive strategy as what first comes to mind to most people when building a public relations strategy. Proactive strategy “is an approach to an organizational strategy that enables an organization to take the initiative and engage its publics by launching a communication program under the conditions and according to the timeline that seems to best fit the organization's interests.” Proactive public relations is all about spreading the word and finding the right people, news channels, publications, and more to work with. A well-known proactive strategy is action strategy. this is a category of proactive public relations that specifically has to do with organizational performance, audience participation, special events, alliances and coalitions, sponsorships, and strategic philanthropy. Since action strategy is still proactive, these messages are to be used within the planning done by the organization as opposed to a reaction by the organization to outside pressure. Other things that are implemented by the organization are things like communication strategies, examples of those being generation of publicity, presenting newsworthy and exciting information, and communicating in a process that is transparent to audiences.

Types Of Reactive Strategies In Public Relations

On the other side of the spectrum, a reactive strategy is an approach to an organizational strategy and which an organization responds to the influences and opportunities from its environment. On the other side of the spectrum, a reactive strategy is an approach to an organizational strategy and which an organization responds to the influences and opportunities from its environment. Opposite from action strategy, reactive public relations uses strategies that correlate to new and now things going on that align with the goals and needs of an organization. I like to think of this as a sort of crisis management. The reactive category includes 25 response strategies, a few of them being: preemptive action, diversion, commiseration, and strategic inaction.

When To Use a Pre-Emptive Action Or Offensive Response And Why?

According to its name, preemptive action involves a preemptive strike, meaning an action that is taken before an opposing party starts in on the criticism of an organization. When something bad happens within a public organization, people find out and have different opinions on how an organization should handle their issues. A preemptive action strategy is something that should be used by an organization to get ahead of their opponents and make their own statement about what happened, essentially creating a narrative that they wish for the public to be aware of. No organization wants their competitors to create a narrative for something that happened that they might not even have all the details about. Getting ahead of the problem itself both benefits the organization through public opinion and creates a respectable feeling for the public that the organization understands where they went wrong. On the other hand, another reactive strategy is offensive response. the word offensive here is not used because it could be hurtful to another person or organization, but rather used in the sense of sports as it is an “aggressive initiative.” Offensive public relations strategies usually come into play when an organization faces a great amount of competition from their opponents and themselves fighting for attention in the eyes of the public and in the media.