Public Relations Campaign Plan: Surf Life Saving New Zealand (SLSNZ)

Summary

New Zealand has in the recent past been experiencing horrifying news regarding how citizens and visitors have been dying. The culprit here is not terrorism or a disease outbreak, but it is a case of fun gone wrong. Drowning. People, especially in beaches, have been meeting their untimely deaths as a result of swimming, surfing or engaging in other water sports mostly in unpatrolled waters.

Following the current statistics, this is a big reason to worry. Of the last 8 drowning cases, a whopping 6 people died in unpatrolled waters. Last year’s (2015) holiday season saw 10 people lose their lives in the same fashion. Ellingham &Schoultz (2016),recorded that as many as 30 people who have tragically ended their lives. If these statistics are extrapolated based on last year’s count, it means that we shall be losing more than 100 lives by the end of this year. Too many lives, isn’t it?

Further analysis of the statistics revealed that the majority of those who drowned are 16 year olds to 27 year olds. This forms the target group for this campaign. Studies of death circumstances show that teenagers (16 years and above) ward off into dangerous and unpatrolled waters without the supervision of their parents or guardians. Young adults (20-27 years) mostly get into dangerous situations by diving in the wee hours in the morning. Furthermore, this target public makes the highest number of beach visitors and the most affected by the drowning cases (Ellingham &Schoultz, 2016). Therefore, initiating a campaign that will effectively persuade this target public will drastically reduce deaths.

Key messages are, No More Drowning!Natural Playground Can Be Deadly and Swim Between Flags. The big idea here is to make people aware of the dangers of getting into zones marked as dangerous and unsuitable for swimming or otherwise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Campaign goals

The first goal of this campaign is to make sure that the target group is made aware of the dangers of being in the wrong with regards to the use of the beach.  The studies aforementioned have revealed that a majority of those who die are mostly in undesignated areas which are unsupervised by authorities and their kin or friends. Such areas are often beyond certain markings mostly flags. Curiosity can be driving such people to such lengths especially considering their age, but that notwithstanding, the risks of doing the same are far much greater than the satisfaction thereby derived. The campaign will ensure that these points are clear and that the target group can relate to the same with ambience. This will instill a sense of responsibility in the target group.

The second goal of the campaign is to reduce the number of deaths that are haunting more than 30 families as at now and counting. This, if the trend takes the same route as last year, there will be more than 100 families by the end of this year. This trend is not only shocking but disturbing uncalled for and preventable with some effort. The most disturbing fact is that majority of those who die are young, and just ripe for life. These deaths rob the country and the world at large animportant element that is critical to the future development and continuity of this vibrant society. The deaths rob us potential, a promise and finally leave a gaping hole in the society that is impossible to fill. For instance, according to Ellingham & Schoultz (2016) it is exhibited that the total number of people who died in 2015 added up to 113. Therefore, it can be asserted that these people were potential contributors to the economy assuming that they were in vacation at the beach. Thus, losing those people affects the contribution to the economy significantly and it might be hard to recover.

 

 

 

Campaign objectives

The campaign intends to make at least 80 per cent of the target population visiting the beaches aware of the dangers involved in setting foot in undesignated zones or ones that are deemed dangerous for human action. The campaign proposes that the objective should be realized within the next six months. The target group is expected to hence act in accordance to the gained information.

Achieve at least a 40% reduction in the number of deaths occurring as a result of drowning by the end of the implementation year. This objective is highly correlated to the success of the first objective if all other factors remain constant. With proper execution of this plan, it is expect that the resulting reduction will be significant enough. This means that assuming that the number of deaths that occurred back in 2015 remains constant, the number of deaths after execution of this plan will drop to 68 annually.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strategy

To achieve the said objectives, the following strategies will be used.

Collaborations are effective ways to inexpensively execute campaigns without breaking a sweat. This is the case because when we decide to collaborate, we not only pool resources together; we make it easier to achieve our diverse goals. In this sense, the campaign will involve collaborations with other event organizers who are targeting the same publics as SLSNZ. These collaborations will be used to achieve goals for all the collaborators. Some events like games are self-selling and as such are great influencers. Getting crowds and a large numbers of people in our target group is practically difficult for SLSNZ on its own hence collaborations are suffice and appropriate.

The other strategy for SLSNZ is to consider informing the public why they are concerned with saving people’s lives in the sea. This strategy is a major catch that will not only attract the target group, but will also attract the attention of the authorities and other potentially useful stakeholders previously not considered.  The target public is known for being conscious of the ‘why behind’ question. Since we are privy to this fact, it is prudent to give them the answer before they look for it, probably in the wrong avenues.

The aspect of generating content for the campaign ads is prudent. People need adverts they can relate to and those that they think have a connection to their lives. This is informed by the fact that people nowadays have the choice of what they read, listen to, watch and participate in. It is therefore necessary for the campaign managers to understand what drives the target public so as to tailor the content in the ads. This can be cited from the fact that there is a portion of the visitors of the beach probably 20% who are aware of the dangers associated with setting foot in undesignated zones.  Therefore, if ignorance is what drives these visitors towards swimming in undesignated areas, the campaign managers will have to incorporate emotional contents and other features that will attract the attention of the swimmers. 

The other strategy for the campaign is the use of the media. This does not necessarily mean that the campaign will pay for mainstream media. The campaign managers should lobby the media to pick up the story and make some news out of it. To do this, a few things need to be done. First, the campaign has to ensure that it is news worthy. This will be done by highlighting the importance and urgency present when it comes to finding a solution to deaths emanating from drowning. This will make the story more credible to feature on mainstream media. This strategy utilizes the two-way asymmetrical model (theory) which according to Daniel (2010) will use persuasion and manipulation to make the audience behave in accordance with its strategies and wishes. The theory further recognizes that the organization using the theory gets into the psychology of its audience to understand what is desirable in terms of information. Thus, prior to implementing the theory in the organization, they will be obliged to first understand the behaviors of the audience in order to exert manipulation and persuasion in the process of aligning this behavior with the intended objectives. After assessing the audience, the organization will be able to attract the attention and persuade the audience in accordance to the intended strategy.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tactics

The guiding theory in this is the diffusion theory. Lee (2011), has identified that for diffusion to occur, the following must occur in order of arrangement; awareness, interest, evaluation, trial and adoption. The purpose of these tactics is to ensure that the first three elements in the theory are aroused. The tactics will create awareness to the public through the use of various models not forgetting the slogans, No More Drowning!Natural Playground Can Be Deadly and Swim between Flags to arouse interest in the public. The public will then evaluate the message and determine if the same is appropriate in their lives (Ellingham &Schoultz, 2016). This consideration is always on the individual level. If the individual considers the message appropriate, they will inform their friends and relatives (trial) and if it works, they will adopt the same as a way of life with regards to the beach safety. This is the long term goal. That the public will be relied upon to deliver the message.

The first tactic to be used in the campaign will be free public events in majority of all popular beaches in the country. These beaches include; New Chums Beach in the Coromandel Peninsula. Ocean Beachon the foot of Mount Maunganui,Hot Water Beachin Coromandel Peninsula,PihaBeach inWest Auckland,Karekarein West Auckland. KaiteriteriBeach in Nelson Township, Whale Bayin Raglan and Mission Bay in Auckland.There can be addition of beaches or removal of some of them from the list based on the turnout of events during the campaigns.

The events will be timed to take place during holidays when the beaches are populated by beach lovers. The events will occur in a series, from one beach to the next. To further entice the target group, there will be prizes up for grabs. The prizes will be gadgets that the target group identifies with and have preference for, mostly electronic communication gadgets like iphones, and laptops. Other prizes will be fully funded three day tour in New Zealand’s most exquisite private beaches.  Activities during the event will include, surfing competition, mock rescue operation full with helicopter and crew, short speeches and finally a dance event in the evening.

To fully publicize the events, there will be online and offline activities. Online activities will include paid adverts in majority of the websites that the target group visits. They include social sites, school websites, and entertainment sites. The online campaign will be two fold; prior to the events and after the events. The prior to the event campaign will involve detailing the events, main activities during the event, and showcasing prizes. This will be the advert to attract people to the event. After the events, there will be a highly charged online campaign that will make the target group cognizant of the main issue even after the public events are gone. This will be like a reminder that there is need for safety even in the absence of the events. Offline activities will include the use of posters, bill boards and promotional t-shirts. Precisely, bill boards and promotional t-shirts are very effective in promotion of events as they are readily accessible by a large audience base (Danna, 1992). In fact, promotional t-shirts are the most effective since they are regarded as the walking bill boards which attract the attention of a larger audience. On the other hand, bill boards and posters are regarded as conversation starters, which is proportional to attention attraction (Danna, 1992). Therefore, this tactic will guarantee effective publicity of the event and a reminder on the need for safety in beaches.

The second tactic is to visit social places that the identified target groups often frequent. These include places like campuses, social events like field events, parties and games. This is based on the reference that the target group is people from the age of 28 years where most of them can be found in social events and campuses though not in large numbers. To fully get acquainted with the events, SLSNZ will get into collaboration with the organizers of such events. As such, the events will provide a means to interact with the target audience. With such collaborations, there can be meaning when it comes to inviting local entertainment celebrities who will help in crowd attraction and retention. The timing of such events will be of significant importance. Those close to the beach events will be given preference although these events will be desirable if distributed evenly in the long run aspect of the campaign.

 

 

Evaluation

To effectively evaluate the progress of the campaign, two approaches will be used, each for the mentioned objectives. The first objective will be evaluated using periodic studies. The population frequenting the beaches will be required to respond to open-end questionnaires that will ask questions relating to how conversant they are with the SLSNZ public relations campaign. The progress thereby shown by such research will inform SLSNZ management if there is need for controlling the program. The objective aims at making at least 80 per cent of the target population visiting the beaches aware of the dangers involved in setting foot in undesignated zones or ones that are deemed dangerous for human action. The time period for realizing the same objective is six months. It therefore means that SLSNZ management should first determine what percentage of beach visitors are aware of the objective’s subject. This can be achieved by physical interviews conducted to some visitors asking questions regarding their knowledge on the associated dangers. After the interviews, quantitative analysis of the data collected can be used to represent the overall awareness on the dangers of swimming in the undesignated areas. From there, the remaining percentage that is uninformed should be divided by the number of months to know the percentage of extra people to be covered each month. Studies of the population should be done monthly too see if the effort put in for the month has helped the organization to achieve it monthly target and consequently its overall target.

The second objective which seeks to achieve at least a 40% reduction in the number of deaths occurring as a result of drowning by the end of the implementation year will be evaluated on quarterly basis. Each quarter’s result will be assessed in comparison with the corresponding quarter of the last year’s results. It is expected that in each quarter, the number of deaths resulting from drowning will reduce by 40%. This will lead to a 40% reduction in the number of deaths in the 12 months of implementation of the campaign. In order to acknowledge the contribution of this campaign, one of the factors that can be considered is reduction of number of deaths in areas that were covered by the campaign. The other factor that can prove the contribution of the campaign is the cautions that visitors are taking if they are comparable to those suggested by the campaign.    

Both the evaluation models will utilize the situational theory which is a relationship theory. According to Lee (2011), an organization needs to identify a public that is easy to initiate and maintain communication. The communication in this case is the study while the identified part of the public is those people who visit the beach. The first step in this case is problem recognition. People will easily identify that there is a problem (deaths), second is constraint recognition. The researcher needs to explain that the constraint in this case is people’s ignorance with regards to the main cause of death. Such ignorance will enable the researcher to make respondents and other interested parties identify the need for slogans like “swim between flags”. As such, respondents will be more than eager to respond to the evaluation questions. As awareness is created to more people to achieve the required percentage (80%), the attention will be correspondingly attracted to the participants in responding to the evaluation questions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Budget

The budget for the campaign will be as follows.

PARTICULARS	PRICE/UNIT	QUANTITY	TOTAL COST
Beach event contracted organizers	1000	10	10000
IT manager	750	12	9000
Promotional materials: tshirts	8	500	4000
bill boards	100	20*12 months	24000
posters	0.2	1000	200
Electronic Prizes; iphones	800	50	40000
Laptops	1000	40	40000
Private beach sponsorship	15000	3	45000
Online adverts	1000	12	12000
Travelling	2000	12	24000
Fees to celebrities	10000	10	100000
Administration Expenses	2000	12	24000
Collaboration fees and expenses	1000	10	10000
Miscellaneous	1500	12	18000
TOTAL			196200

 

Some of the celebrities who will be featured in the campaign include swimming Olympic gold medalists such as Mark Spitz, Michael Phelps and Fanny Durack among others. Therefore citing from the fact that these are the worldwide recognized celebrities who will help significantly in attracting the target audience, each of them will be paid a price of $10000 as a persuasion amount to participate. On the promotion bases, though the expected audience will be bigger, the number of t-shirts for the promotion will be 500 and will be given to the randomly selected participants. The number of electronics will add up to not more than 90 to be used by organizers and IT staff. The number for the electronics is selected to make sure that nearly every staff member is actively contributing to the event particularly on IT perspective. Lastly, the miscellaneous fees are meant for risks and losses that might be incurred during the events. Some of these risks might be technical failure of the machines involved, injury and other inconveniences.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

Daniel. (2010). Social Media and Public Relations Theory. Retrieved from http://simplyevolve.com/social-media-public-relations-theories/

Ellingham, J., &Schoultz, R., (2016). Weekend pushes drownings to 30. Retrieved from http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11605033    

Lee, N. R., &Kotler, P. (2011).Social marketing: Influencing behaviors for good. Sage.

 

Danna, S. R. (1992). Advertising and popular culture: Studies in variety and versatility. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix.

 

 

 

Mock-up of the tactics.

Two mock ups will be conducted, each for each tactic. In the first tactic, a team will be composed and will include the an artistic crew that will mock the stage. The exercise will be performed in one of the beaches with live audience which will be encouraged to take part in the event. There will be competitions and a mock rescue operation. If accepted, this mock up operation will form the standard of performing all the other 10 beach events. Modifications to the mock up exercise should be noted with due concern as this will be applied to the other 10 real events.

The second tactic will be mocked in one of the campuses in the area of our scope. The mock up will include a live audience that will be thrilled by a mock celebrity. Activities in the exercise will include chanting the three main slogans of the campaign as well as engaging the audience in a live interactive action that will be a means of getting information from the audience as to why and how the audience would want the event organized in the next series. Notes will be taken for implementation in the upcoming real sessions. Any expected deviations and setbacks in the mock should provide a basis for coming up with alternative plans on how to conduct the same with less hiccups.

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