The OLC’s Online Public Awareness Action Guide

What is This Guide About?

Background

One of the ways the OLC promotes literacy is by supporting literacy programs across Ontario. This guide is designed to assist local agencies as well as regional and sectoral networks to plan and execute activities that will raise public awareness of literacy issues in their local area or sector.

Raising public awareness of literacy, and societal issues associated with it, is a task on the agenda of many groups and agencies in Ontario. Of the various ways to raise public awareness, public relations (PR) is one of the most popular due to the realities of funding constraints.

Public Relations as a Communications Tool

PR is simply a way to communicate between an organization and one or more target groups. It can be used for various purposes, including to educate or inform, to stimulate sales, encourage trial of a product or service, or to sway the opinion of the target group. What sets PR apart from other means of communication, including advertising, is that the message is delivered indirectly -- via a third party. This means that the third party has control over the message and its delivery, which may affect its quality. On the other hand, if the third party is considered objective by the target, the message may have greater credibility.

For many organizations in the not-for-profit sector, PR can be the only viable method of reaching a mass audience due to the high cost of direct communication methods such as advertising. The cost to produce a mass message can be extremely high, especially for a medium such as television. Also, the cost of buying air time or print space is avoided with PR.

The Need For Planning Public Relations Activities

Offsetting the cost savings of using PR and the potential for greater credibility is the fact that your message is delivered by someone other than you. It can be subject to distortion or even wind up serving unforeseen purposes (such as political ends). For many not-for-profit organizations desiring to reach a mass audience, however, PR is the only viable option. The loss of control becomes a “necessary evil” in order to get your message out. One advantage of taking the time to plan your PR activities is that steps can be taken to minimize the risks caused by relying on a third party to deliver your message.

The third party that delivers PR messages most often is the mass media. While many of its members willingly support worthy causes such as literacy, major media organizations are in business to make a profit and they look more favourably upon opportunities that help them achieve their own goals. If such opportunities “just so happen” to also do good in the community, so much the better, but that is not the media’s primary mandate. It remains the task of literacy agencies to structure their PR initiatives so as to help the media achieve their primary goals of building and maintaining their audiences. In effect, a literacy message intended ultimately for your target audience must be tailored to first appeal to the media. If it does not appeal to the media, it will never reach your target audience. While this complicates your task, recognition of the situation is your first step toward overcoming this hurdle and achieving your own goals. Given that the media is more likely to relay a literacy message when their own needs have been taken into account, it is of major importance for you to include consideration of how best to approach the media in planning your PR activities.

Another benefit of a PR plan is it allows you to look at your PR activity as a whole and to coordinate individual initiatives for greater effect. It also allows you to balance your total activity so that all your critical issues receive appropriate action.

Your chance of success is greatly enhanced when a plan is prepared before taking action. Such a plan will identify key success factors and take the current state of affairs into account. The plan will also focus your resources on the most critical issues and will help to ensure that your actions are consistent with your organizational values and philosophy.

This guide is offered as a resource to help conduct PR efficiently and effectively. It is meant to support local action on province-wide literacy initiatives, as well as independent awareness-raising activities.