Let’s talk about the different media strategies that spokespersons tend to use to communicate different messages.
Let’s define a strategy as a rational and coherent long term plan of action.
A political media strategy is different from institutional awareness media strategy. These strategies serve and mean different things to people.
The main aim of a political media strategy is to pump propaganda that will influences the minds of people who will end up responding either with emotions or reactions, while the main aim of institutional media awareness strategy is to focus on either making a profit or creating awareness about a product or campaign.
An effective media strategy will have clearly defined objectives, messages and target audiences. It will indicate when and how the media management function-resources, personnel, procedures and lines of reporting should be revised. It should also prescribe appropriate operating priorities and realistic performance targets.
For example who should approve press releases and be authorised to talk to the media? The latter is not just a matter of not saying anything stupid or indiscreet; it is also a matter of knowing how to present a story to different journalists so as to trigger their interests sufficiently to cause them to publish it.
Ultimately what is needed is an element of controversy, which is both focused and directly relevant to the man on the street.
Generating interest often means courting controversy and public debate, yet many organisations shy away from this and do not understand that it is an essential aspect of a higher public profile.
Given the extreme difficulty of sustaining even brief media campaigns, consideration should always be given to ways of supplementing and reinforcing news media and communicating directly with carefully targeted groups in the course of their normal day-to-day activities.
Such direct promotional campaigns can be effective and are newsworthy, thereby sustaining media interest that would otherwise have long since waned.
While it is important that any strategy is relevant, focused, structured and sustainable it is equally important that it is seen to possess all these attributes by those who may be called upon to apply it and to have their fullest support
