The PR practitioner's objectives are to restore public opinion of the Leicestershire police force after a documentary showed officers behaving improperly. The strategy includes the police chief apologizing, firing officers involved, and increasing transparency around tax dollar spending. Tactics involve community donations, creating an advisory board, and implementing supervisor roles to oversee officers. The campaign aims to regain citizens' trust over the course of a year through open communication and addressing issues raised in the documentary.
2. Objectives As the PR practitioner for the Leicestershire police department, my objective is to restore the public opinion of the police force so the citizens that live here feel safe and protected. This is also important on a much larger scale because now the people that saw the documentary may be wary of their local police departments. Develop a reborn sense of confidence in the police force as a whole.
3. Strategy Issue a statement from the head of the Leicestershire police department in which he will formally apologize to the people. Fire or implement serious consequences for the officers that were caught in the wrong in the documentary.
4. Strategy Create an itemized list that is made public for the citizens of Leicestershire that documents exactly where their tax dollars are going. Donate money to the community for improvements to make the people feel better about the money they have spent.
5. Strategy Implement rank in the police force. Always have a supervisor on duty that oversees activities and assigns duties. Create an advisory board consisting of citizens, police, and government officials.
6. Tactics Hold a press conference for the head of the police department to apologize to the people and the media to explain what is being done to fix the obvious problems in the police force. Create a website that documents how tax dollars are being allocated in the police department. Explain the consequences that those officers that broke the rules will be facing. Assure the public that everything is being done to condemn the behavior shown in the documentary.
7. Tactics Donate money for improvements to the community. Hold a public survey to determine what the people would like their tax money to go towards within their community. Another possibility is to donate money to a charity that is important in the community. Post these donations on the website so people can see exactly how the money is spent.
8. Tactics Create an advisory board consisting of police, citizens and government officials. All parts of the community are represented Work together to serve the community This board will decide on how to spend the tax money and make decisions to better the community. Will also oversee the police department to make sure these changes are actually occurring and issues such as sexism are being dealt with.
9. Tactics Supervisors in the police department. As seen in the documentary, the officers got away with this behavior because they had no one in charge of them. Develop a system of rank and make the best officers supervisors. Have a supervisor on every shift to ensure officers are doing their job at all times. Supervisors will be in charge of assuring that males and females are treated equally within the police force.
10. Evaluation This campaign will take a significant amount of time because the citizens of Leicestershire and all people that saw the show, undoubtedly have lost faith in the police force. It will take some time for people to feel trusting and secure again. The campaign will be effective immediately and will take about a year.
11. Evaluation We will measure the audience attitudes with a public survey before, during and after the campaign. This will allow us to track the progress throughout the campaign and adjust it accordingly.
12. Budget Total cost for a year- long campaign is $10,000. $7,000 in fees $3,000 in out-of-pocket expenses
13. Source Credibility People may not be very trusting at first because as the PR practitioner, I am considered a member of the police force. After the public sees all the changes and improvements we are making, we hope to gain their trust back even if it is little by little. By donating money to something important to the people, they may feel better and more inclined to trust that we will make significant changes.
14. Cognitive Dissonance We will assure our audience that changes are being made to improve their opinions of the police. We will give updates of new developments and improvements that are being made to help change the audiences opinions. To appeal to low involvement audiences, we will have the highest officials who are most likely to impact people speak to the public. As far as our high involvement audiences, we will keep the website updated with detailed descriptions of all the changes being made in the community.
15. Flow of Opinion As far as the immigrant community that does not watch TV or read newspapers, we will also send out mailings to each member of the community. This will outline everything that is being done It will also provide the web address and updates This mailing can be produced in multiple languages
16. Suggestions for Action People ignore PR campaigns because they feel they cant do anything to make changes. We will encourage people to participate in the survey that will track progress. Theyre opinions will be the basis on which we decide what direction to head in during and after the campaign is completed.