I'm a student of PR and will be graduating this fall. I'm currently
assisting on a project to design an integrated marketing plan for my
university along with faculty and administration members. A few core
people will be writing the proposal that will be submitted to the
administration. I have been charged with the task of justifying the
shift of advertising, printing and marketing dollars for the purpose of
hiring two new, full-time staff members for different public relations
capacity.
I can provide quite a bit of conceptual justification -- and have
already lined up a fair amount. What I want to find is some general
quantitative research that backs the effectiveness of increased public
relations emphasis. Even more valuable, it would be good to show that
integration of strong, effective PR efforts will enhance the
effectiveness of other effortst (targeted advertising and marketing).
At this point, the university has only one person dedicated to any
aspect of PR -- media relations. Otherwise, PR functions are fairly
diffuse and are performed by people with other tasks that happen to
connect them with certain publics. The idea is to centralize PR efforts
to maximize their effectiveness and ensure consistency.
Brian Buck
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