English for Students of Public Relations and Advertising. Rendering. Учебное пособие

est honors. Formative research documents the research criteria, process research documents the execution criteria, and evaluative research documents success or failure to achieve an objective. Practitioners are reminded of research’s value and the practice reaffirms its importance through the Silver Anvil Awards. Research is establishing itself as a core element of public relations. That does not mean all practitioners embrace or even use it. If you review Silver Anvil Award entries, you will find lapses even in those public relations efforts seeking to be honored. However, public relations research is now a required element in a public relations curriculum. This means that future practitioners, coming from strong public relations programs, will have the skills and knowledge necessary to execute public relations research. As recently as the 1980s and 1990s, properly trained practitioners were not being provided with the research skills. As a result, research had been neglected out of a lack of skill. Lack of skill should not be a barrier with recent and future graduates.

Coombs W.T. Public relations research // Encyclopedia of public relations / Ed. Robert L. Heath. Volume 2. Sage Publications, 2005. – Р. 694–695.

D. READING FOR THE MAIN IDEAS

Explain in few sentences how you understand the statement: “For years, public relations researchers were the ones exclaiming the value of public relations research.”

E. READING BETWEEN THE LINES

Answer the questions.

1.What does research serve to?

2.What does Silver Anvil Awards prove?

3.What is the main task of the Commission on Public Relations Educa-

tion?

4.What skills are regarded as key ones needed by future practitioners?

5.What is one of the highest honors that can be achieved by a public relations department?

6.What place does research take in a public relations curriculum?

7.What was the weak point of public relations programs the 1980s and 1990s?

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F. RENDERING

1. Find the main idea of each paragraph.

Part I.

Part II.

Part III.

2. Link the main ideas with linking devices. Remember that rendering should cover 10-15 % of the original text.

Reading 3.4

PR CASE: COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH AT TINE

A. PREDICTING

Write your own ideas about the topic in the article. Don’t forget to compare your ideas with the original text after you have read it.

B. VOCABULARY AND COMPREHENSION

Match the words to make word combinations from the reading.

C. READING

Read the article.

The Norwegian School of Management and Tine entered an agreement in 1998 to analyse Tine’s current communications vehicles or channels, the messages being sent by the organization and by whom, and managerial communications. In further conversation with the team put together to work on the project, it became clear that some of the above analysis had already been done by Tine, including the following:

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A needs survey in 1998 analysing employees’ opinions on their working environment in relation to the organization’s benefits and attitudes towards health, the internal working environment, security and company health services. This report was carried out internally under the supervision of the HMS Committee, a group appointed to deal with and make recommendations to management regarding how the company deals with issues of health, working environment and security. The report does not mention how many people participated in the survey and it appears that only employees at the headquarters office in Gronland took part.

An ‘Information Survey’ conducted in 1997, which analysed Tine’s internal communication that looked at routines, preferences, needs and attitudes towards internal information and communication within the organization. This study was done by an external consultant at the behest of Tine’s

Information Department and was a follow-up from a previous study done in 1995. The survey was carried out among different sections of Tine and delineated the number of participants both with and without managerial responsibility.

An internal environmental survey done in 1996 covering the follow-

ing:

information;

career possibilities;

educational possibilities;

willingness to relocate;

top management;

‘ties’ to company (identification with company);

relationships with superiors;

quality;

conflicts;

work environment and psycho-social relationships.

It is not possible to tell from this study how many employees participated, their profile or who within the Tine system participated. The study is interesting and somewhat useful as it not only gave average results but also showed the ‘spread’ on a number of important issues and also gives extensive employee feedback in the form of comments.

Bronn P.S., Drogseth S. Case 8 Tine Norwegian Dairies: Rebranding from the inside out // Public Relations Cases: international perspectives / Eds. by Danny Moss and Barbara DeSanto. Routledge, 2005. – Р. 97–98.

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E. RENDERING

1. Give key words and topic sentences for each paragraph.

Part I: Key words Topic sentence

Part II: Key words Topic sentence

Part III: Key words Topic sentence

Part IV: Key words Topic sentence

Part V: Key words Topic sentence

2.Summarize each paragraph in one sentence.

3.Write rendering in 120 words.

Reading 3.5

PR CASE: FORMATIVE RESEARCH IN SLOVENIA

A. PREDICTING

Write your own ideas about the topic in the article. Don’t forget to compare your ideas with the original text after you have read it.

B. VOCABULARY AND COMPREHENSION

Match the words to make word combinations from the reading.

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C. READING

Read the article. Introduction

This case study describes how Pristop Communications was responsible for the design and implementation of a public communication campaign which succeeded in increasing the take up of these loans by individual households more than tenfold. The public communication campaign started in May 1996 and by its end, 1,896 Slovenian households had converted from dirty fossil fuel heating systems to more environmentally friendly heating systems.

Aim of the case study

The aim of this case study is to show how good use of research and straightforward execution can be effective even within externally imposed time and financial constraints and in economically difficult times – in this instance for the intended loan provisions. Time and financial constraints are common in public communication campaigns particularly if providers of communication services are selected through a public tender which usually pre-defines what has to be done, in what time and with what resources.

Background

In an attempt to tackle the problem of air pollution in 1996, the European Commission, through its Phare programme, issued a public tender for the ‘Pilot Testing Phase of the World Bank Air Pollution Abatement

Programme. A Slovenian consortium of four consultancies (ITEO, Pristop Communications, Sistemi Shift, and E-Net) won the tender. The consortium collaborated through a Steering Committee that held 13 meetings and the project assurance team that held 32 meetings during the life of the project. The whole contract value of the project was ECU 400,000, of which ECU 154,800 were designated for the public communication campaign. The campaign started in May 1996. One month was designated as an inception phase, 11 months as the implementation phase, and 1 month for the finalisation and evaluation phase.

The public communication campaign Formative research

The initial formative research to assist the design of the public communication campaign was prepared and executed in May and June 1996. It

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consisted of both quantitative and qualitative research. The latter consisted of in-depth interviews with the management and staff of Eco-Fund and interviews with some of their target audiences. The quantitative phase of the research consisted of a poll of a representative, quota sample of 1,163 households drawn from the population of 645,000 households in Slovenia. Face-to-face interviewing was carried out between 20 and 28 June 1996. Analysis of publics, which was used to discover the willingness of the population to enter into a dialogue on the key topics, showed that half of the population could be viewed as a potential target.

From the poll it was concluded that the model target audience had the following characteristics:

•is older;

•lives in an urban environment;

•is employed by the state/a public company;

•lives in a family with one provider;

•the family has middle or lower income;

•the possibility (willingness) for communication activity grows with target’s education.

From in-depth interviews it was found that one important group that was interested in the conversion of their heating systems were retirees. It was found that children were prepared to help their elderly parents financially to afford the cost of conversion to more convenient gas heating systems.

Vercic D., Pek-Drapal D. Case 14 Raising environmental awareness in Slovenia: A public communication Campaign // Public Relations Cases: international perspectives / Eds. by Danny Moss and Barbara DeSanto. Routledge, 2005. – Р. 167–169.

D. RENDERING

1. Give key words and topic sentences for each paragraph.

Part I: Key words Topic sentence

Part II: Key words Topic sentence

Part III: Key words Topic sentence

Part IV: Key words Topic sentence

Part V: Key words Topic sentence

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Part VI: Key words

Topic sentence

2.Summarize each paragraph in one sentence.

3.Write rendering in 120 words.

PRONUNCIATION

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4. Since e-fluentials highly value one-on-one dialogue and information exchange, companies can better manage their reputations by inviting feedback and providing a forum where e-fluentials can chat about their positive and negative experiences – and query others.

5. By knowing where specific types of e-fluentials surf online, marketers can more precisely personalize their campaigns and reap greater rewards from their messages, events, and cause related programs.

6. E-fluentials uncover the inside scoop.

7. E-fluentials do their homework before embarking on a new purchase.

C. READING

Read the article.

Mass communication media have come to play a dominant role in the life of everyone, including the public relations practitioner. With the growth and convergence of global telecommunications and information technology, the role of these media can only become even more important in the future. Few people, let alone organizations, dare to forecast where this will lead in years to come other than to suggest that the media will play a vital role in the survival of every organization [Oliver S. P.63].

The Internet is a forum where anyone can speak freely and share an opinion in an uncontrolled environment, unlike traditional media that always have filters – a reporter, a researcher, or a broadcaster who reviews the information and presents a reasoned opinion. Public relations professionals need to understand how to influence the pure, unfiltered opinions that are shared over the Internet to reach their own goals, as well as the goals of their clients. To accomplish this, public relations professionals need to first identify the influential people who shape public opinion online and offline and who share the uncanny ability to seamlessly spread information by word-of-mouth.

In the old economy – or the offline world – one person was generally thought to have an impact on the attitudes and behavior of approximately

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two people. Today, an efluential has an impact on the attitudes and behavior of approximately 14 people. The challenge today, and in the future, will be for companies to understand e-fluentials and harness their potential impact to achieve measurable business results.

The classic 1970s Faberge Organics shampoo television commercial serves as a dramatic example of how the opinions of e-fluentials travel across cyberspace. In the commercial, a woman tells two friends about the product, and they tell two friends and so on and so on, and as she speaks, her image multiplies across the screen. If that commercial were broadcast today and that woman was an e-fluential, she would influence 14 friends, with her opinion spreading in multiples of 14 rather than two.

E-fluentials, who comprise 10 percent (11.1 million) of the U.S. online adult population – up from 8 percent (9 million) since Burson-Marsteller’s first study in 1999 – were among the first to explore the Internet frontier and remain today’s most prominent online trailblazers.

The following are the Secrets of E-fluentials, which were uncovered by our latest research:

Secret #1: E-fluentials are infectious. They project their opinions far beyond the scope of their individual contacts. An efluential imparts an experience to 14 individuals on average. The vast majority spreads the word through multiple communication channels. These electronic town criers are as likely to share information on products and services offline as they are to relay their experiences online.

Because of the extensive reach of e-fluentials’ opinions, it is critical that companies establish brand recognition and win customer preference among these opinion-brokers to expand their customer base.

Secret #2: E -fluentials share negative experiences. E-fluentials spread news describing a negative experience to a wider audience than they would a positive experience. Since e-fluentials highly value one-on-one dialogue and information exchange, companies can better manage their reputations by inviting feedback and providing a forum where efluentials can chat about their positive and negative experiences – and query others.

Secret #3: Gender affects e-fluentials’ choice of information sites. When developing customer acquisition and retention campaigns, marketers need to be aware of different categories of e-fluentials. Male and female e-fluentials go online to provide or read opinions with diverging agendas. While men seek opinions and provide advice on technology, women e-fluentials primarily search for information pertaining to food and health, and they mobilize others on women’s issues. By knowing where specific types of e- fluentials surf online, marketers can more precisely personalize their cam-

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