Environmental Analysis

An environmental analysis is highly important to assess and determine the correct strategies that would be applicable here for the public relations campaign. The PESTLE and SWOT methodologies will be applied.

The PESTLE method analyses the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental concerns of Oldbury, while the SWOT primarily outlines the negatives and positives, both internal and external (Shabanova et al. 2015).

A stakeholder analysis analyses the impact any decision or change would have on the target publics in any situation of project management or conflict resolution (Missonier and Loufrani-Fedida 2014). The analysis of stakeholders often gives a lengthy list of both groups and individuals. All the stakeholders are to be actively involved and have to be considered to make any decision regarding a nuclear power plant construction, as well as to help in the formulation of a public policy. They have to examine the historical context of the nuclear power plants of that area and investigate in order to attain clarity and prevent unforeseen problems or issues (Akimoto, Oda and Sano 2015). The level of interest of the stakeholders involved in the construction of the power plant is given below:

Fig:  Power Mapping

Source: Created by the Author

The objectives of the campaign will have to be outlined very carefully, as effective communication will bridge the gap between the key publics and the interests and objectives of Horizon (Stacks 2016). The public will never develop a positive attitude to the construction of the power plant until and unless they can see their interests and concerns being met.

• The primary aim of this public relations campaign is to bring about an improvement in the opinion of the stakeholders that are concerned directly because of the nuclear reactor set up. They will be informed of the underlying ideas that has spurred on the project.
• The campaign will highlight the positive aspects of the power plant construction and the employment opportunities that it will bring with it, focussing on its aim to reduce the number of educated people who are without a job.
• The campaign will also focus on the benefits that nuclear energy has over the non-renewable or other renewable sources of energy, and why it is the energy of the future (Roth and Jaramillo 2017). It will create awareness among the people regarding the issue of renewable power, and work to change their attitude towards the construction plans.

During the formulation of these aforementioned objectives, Gregory’s internal constraints were also taken into account (Immonen 2017).

SMART Analysis for First objective

The people or the groups and segments of people who are the main elements for the survival of any business venture are considered as the key publics (Culbertson and Chen 2013). In this context, the key publics would the politicians, the local people, and the individuals who live in the surrounding areas of Oldbury. The one group that will be considered here is the segment of the local people who have been living in the area for the past many years. They have a deep emotional and sentimental attachment with the place and will therefore be unwilling to cooperate with the construction processes, and there might be some sort of opposition from them in this case.

Theory will be used to develop the strategies and tactics for this public relations campaign, and a linear approach will be utilised to ensure that the campaign is executed in a systematic manner (James 2014). The main strategy is to deploy a range of tactics to facilitate communication with the key publics and the stakeholders and to also engage a social strategy that will enable and improve the communication or the feedback from them.

The tactics that are to be employed have to be both appropriate and deliverable (Paek et al. 2013). They will aim at educating the people on different aspects and it is always easier to communicate internally than to do it on the external scale. In details the following strategies can be taken in to action:

Stakeholder Analysis

In order to ensure public relation the company would be following the steps that would be initiated through media releases. Media releases are written in an active manner.  Hence it would put greater impact upon the target audience. Instead of making a mundane use of the media strategy, the company would be taking a step ahead in terms of lucrative advertisement measure so as to create a positive check with the help of a positive media management.  As a matter of fact, it needs to be taken care that the basic structure of public acquaintance remains the same.  As a matter of fact, there are different segments of media strategy and management and moreover there are different segments in terms of creating a basis of the public relation strategy. Making business contract with professional graphic designers and advertisement agencies in a low cost would be a segment of such strategies. As the main objective of the company would be reduce the cost of aggregate business performance without hampering the quality of service, strategic advertisement and media management will be assisting effective public relation. In terms of creating a positive stake when it comes to the entire stake of the business.

Many of the organisations are found to have been using crisis communication in order to stand against major crisis. Since crisis directly threatens the financial performance of an organisation, it needs to be de- originated.  As a matter of fact, the basic understanding of the actual case needs to be taken in to certain consideration. Hence, crisis communication would be prioritised while framing the strategies for public relation of the companies.

• The use of signature moves needs to be done so that it helps in promoting the company in the eyes of the people. An example of this would be the use of a team photo along with all the important people such as the stakeholders and the crew who are talented to run the company
• Press conferences needs to be done on a regular basis so that the people would come to know that there will be no degradation done to the surrounding environment, which will help in gaining the trust of the people for establishing the company
• Inoculation can be used as a tactic, which will help in strengthening the reputation of the organization within the community where the power plant will be built so that it can protect the external threats and preserve its goodwill
• Use of blogs needs to be encouraged where the writers can put up better information about the importance of the company, which will benefit the locality and the people
• The Public Relation agency can hold a mock debate by allowing the people to speak for or against the topic, which will help in providing insights to the local community

The budget suggested for the public relations campaign is £100,000. This includes the fees for the Bright Sparks PR Agency.

 The timeframe spans over a period of six months from the announcement of the project. The following is a Gantt chart with the budget and time estimates:

Any public relations campaign will need to be evaluated to assess the success of the venture (Pamment 2014). The implementation of any such campaign is no exact science, and there are some ways that can be incorporated to evaluate how successful Bright Sparks PR would be in promoting the goodwill and building a positive image of the company and its goals.

• Research and survey:There can be an audit or a survey conducted of the target audience or the key publics to assess the effectiveness and also to gather their personal opinions on the matter. This can be done with or without focus groups, and the survey is to be similar to the initial proposal. The reactions of the public can be encouraged through the use of social media websites and other online means, although that does attract more critics instead of supporters (Fowler 2013). A direct or a face to face approach to analyse the outcomes is also effective.
• Media analysis: The success rate of the press releases can be assessed by this method, and it can be understood as to how positive or negative the impact of the campaign was on the target public (Newcomer, Hatry and Wholey 2015). There are even specific websites for this issue which can be considered for the evaluation.
• Measurement of success: The rate of success can be evaluated by taking into consideration the change in the attitude or the behaviour of the key publics, and also the number of hits on the website that gathers feedback or outlines the advantages of the project (Austin and Pinkleton 2015). A direct method of interaction can also be employed, and feedback can be encouraged by providing a hotline number or a help desk service.

References

Akimoto, K., Oda, J. and Sano, F., 2015. Electricity generation costs by source, and costs and benefits by substitutions of generation source.

Asante, M.K., Miike, Y. and Yin, J., 2013. The global intercultural communication reader. Routledge.

Austin, E.W. and Pinkleton, B.E., 2015. Strategic Public Relations Management: Planning and Managing Effective Communication Campaigns (Vol. 10). Routledge.

Bateman, I.J., Harwood, A.R., Abson, D.J., Andrews, B., Crowe, A., Dugdale, S., Fezzi, C., Foden, J., Hadley, D., Haines-Young, R. and Hulme, M., 2014. Economic analysis for the UK national ecosystem assessment: synthesis and scenario valuation of changes in ecosystem services. Environmental and Resource Economics, 57(2), pp.273-297.

Csereklyei, Z., Thurner, P.W., Bauer, A. and Küchenhoff, H., 2016. The effect of economic growth, oil prices, and the benefits of reactor standardization: Duration of nuclear power plant construction revisited. Energy Policy, 91, pp.49-59.

Culbertson, H.M. and Chen, N., 2013. International public relations: A comparative analysis. Routledge.

Elliott, D. ed., 2016. Nuclear or not?: does nuclear power have a place in a sustainable energy future?. Springer.

Fowler Jr, F.J., 2013. Survey research methods. Sage publications.

Greene, J.O., 2013. Message production: Advances in communication theory. Routledge.

Immonen, E., 2017. 2D shape optimization under proximity constraints by CFD and response surface methodology. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 41, pp.508-529.

James, M., 2014. Positioning Theory and Strategic Communication: A new approach to public relations research and practice. Routledge.

Lee, S.U., Jung, K.M., Seo, Y.C., Choi, B.S. and Moon, J.K., 2014. Actuator Module of Robot Manipulator for Nuclear Power Plants Inspection, Maintenance and Decommission.

Missonier, S. and Loufrani-Fedida, S., 2014. Stakeholder analysis and engagement in projects: From stakeholder relational perspective to stakeholder relational ontology. International Journal of Project Management, 32(7), pp.1108-1122.

Newcomer, K.E., Hatry, H.P. and Wholey, J.S., 2015. Handbook of practical program evaluation. John Wiley & Sons.

Ojovan, M.I. and Lee, W.E., 2013. An introduction to nuclear waste immobilisation. Newnes.

Paek, H.J., Hove, T., Jung, Y. and Cole, R.T., 2013. Engagement across three social media platforms: An exploratory study of a cause-related PR campaign. Public Relations Review, 39(5), pp.526-533.

Page, S. and Connell, J. eds., 2014. The Routledge handbook of events. Routledge.

Pamment, J., 2014. Articulating influence: Toward a research agenda for interpreting the evaluation of soft power, public diplomacy and nation brands. Public Relations Review, 40(1), pp.50-59.

Roth, M.B. and Jaramillo, P., 2017. Going nuclear for climate mitigation: An analysis of the cost effectiveness of preserving existing US nuclear power plants as a carbon avoidance strategy. Energy, 131, pp.67-77.

Shabanova, L.B., Ismagilova, G.N., Salimov, L.N. and Akhmadeev, M.G., 2015. PEST-Analysis and SWOT-Analysis as the most important tools to strengthen the competitive advantages of commercial enterprises. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6(3), p.705.

Simpson, C., 2015. Science of coercion: Communication research & psychological warfare, 1945–1960. Open Road Media.

Smith, J.A. ed., 2015. Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods. Sage.

Stacks, D.W., 2016. Primer of public relations research. Guilford Publications.

Thompson, J.B., 2013. Ideology and modern culture: Critical social theory in the era of mass communication. John Wiley & Sons.

Wan, J., Zhang, D., Zhao, S., Yang, L. and Lloret, J., 2014. Context-aware vehicular cyber-physical systems with cloud support: architecture, challenges, and solutions. IEEE Communications Magazine, 52(8), pp.106-113.