Project 4: International Campaign

Sep 22, 2021 | students

Project 4: International Campaign
Start Here

“Hello?”

“You’ll be pleased. We’re going with the market you recommended.”

“That’s good news!”

“And we’re almost finished staffing the new department. But, before you move on to your next client, we have one more project for you. We need you to put together a 12-month campaign budget and resourcing plan for the expansion.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“As long as it’s not no. We’re moving quickly, so we need something in two weeks.”

“I’ll get right on it.”

“Great! Talk to you later.”

You take a sip of tea. The recommendation was one thing, but a budget and resourcing plan are beyond any type of planning you’ve done before, at least at Parabolic. Luckily, you have your colleagues’ expertise to draw from. Rebecca still stops by your desk periodically to check in on what’s happening with her old client. Knowing she’s helped with expansions before, you ping her to get her thoughts.

A-ha! This is where things get nitty-gritty. You’ll drill down into the tactics you chose and figure out how you would produce them—and evaluate their success—in this new market. This will probably involve some iteration as you compare your vision with financial reality.

Here’s how I would tackle this:

  • Review the tactics in your communications plan and verify that they will enable your proposed strategy for the 12-month timeframe. If you went general in the last project, think more deeply about the needs now. I have a timeline from my last expansion that I’ll send so you can get a sense of the appropriate scope and level of detail for our client’s needs.
  • Now for the Budget component. Drill down to the resources you’ll need to produce each tactic. Do you need to hire contractors? Arrange for studio time? Is travel necessary? Consider the Evaluation part of the plan. How will you evaluate the success of your tactics and conduct further research if necessary? Will you need to hire someone to coordinate focus groups or gather and analyze data?
  • Once you have a handle on how much your proposed tactics and associated needs will cost, take a look at the client’s financial situation. Is everything you calculated within budget?
  • Update your budget, tactics, and timeline based on your prioritization.
  • Finally, create a work breakdown structure outlining your human resourcing needs for the expansion and any cross-functional teamwork you anticipate.

Let me know if you need any help.

A Little More Context

In this project, you’ll strengthen your strategic communications management chops as you prepare a 12-month campaign budget and staffing plan. This will require research, numbers-crunching, evaluation, prioritization, resource reshuffling, more evaluation, and then, finally, a clear and well-organized product for your client.

This is great preparation for your future endeavors at Parabolic. If you’ve never done this kind of planning before, the learning resources and sample budget will help you determine what you know, what you don’t know but can figure out, and what you don’t know and need guidance on. Please ask questions if you’re unsure about anything.

Planning Your Work

You have two weeks to produce your campaign planning documents; be sure to read through all the steps of the project first so that you can plan your time wisely. Here is a possible task breakdown:

  • Week 9: Steps 1–2
    • submission in Step 1
  • Week 10: Steps 3–6
    • submission in Step 5

Project 4: International Campaign
Step 1: Update Your Tactics and Timeline (Submission)

You’re going to spend the next two weeks developing a budget and staffing plan for your campaign. That is, you’re going to greatly expand on the Budget and Timeline sections of the draft communications plan you prepared in Project 3. Basically, you’ll put together a comprehensive list of all that’s needed, how much it will cost, who will handle it, and when it will occur. This is for a 12-month time period.

Before you start, take some time to learn about entering a new market: tactical and budgetary considerations. This will help you identify needs you hadn’t anticipated and assess the resourcing implications of those needs.

Rebecca sends you a sample expansion plan to review as well.

Sample Communications Team Timeline for Entry Into Istanbul, With Budget Notes

Once you have a sense of the scope and level of detail expected of you, go over the communications plan you drafted for your recommended market. The PESO model might help you think of additional needs.

The PESO Model

As you review the PESO model, ask yourself the following:

  • How will you gain a foothold in the new market? Consider what you’ll need to do to leverage already-existing relationships and form new ones. What will your department do to establish ties in the community, with the media, and with the government? Will you need to conduct research?
  • What owned media will need to be created for this expansion? Will you need a website, blog, or other infrastructure (e.g., video, photo, or print production)? Who will create this? What about a crisis communications plan?
  • What social media will you need? How much and how often?
  • What are your earned media needs? What might be required for you to obtain free coverage from the media, including social media influencers, and your publics?
  • Do you have any paid media needs? Even though paid coverage typically falls more to marketing and advertising than to PR, you may still pay fees for certain types of coverage (see the learning topic above).
  • How will you evaluate your efforts? If you look at the sample timeline, you’ll see that evaluation occurs on an ongoing basis, especially close to a major event.

When you engage in campaign planning, you typically don’t work solo, but coordinate with the other departments in the organization. You might find, for example, that you can support marketing by producing some of the content needed for ads or that you and marketing can share costs for certain tactics. If you identify places in your timeline where you think you would work with another department or share resources, make a note of it.

Once you’ve finished updating your timeline, send it to Rebecca so she can get you some early feedback.

Project 4: International Campaign
Step 2: Draft Your Campaign Budget

Now that you’ve verified all your tactical needs, determine how much each tactical activity will cost and come up with a total.

First, learn about creating a communications campaign budget. Also review entering a new market: tactical and budgetary considerations to identify what will cost money and how to assess the amount.

Use a spreadsheet or table to (1) identify what will cost money and (2) research the costs.

What Will Cost Money?

Your staff is already paid for, so you don’t need to factor their salaries into your budget. If, however, you want to hire contractors or anyone else to assist in your efforts, you will need to calculate hourly rates. You will also need to compensate any consultants, such as a cultural ambassadors who can help you identify intercultural tripwires and make sure your messages are credible to your publics.

Your communications products and your efforts to generate earned media will all cost money. If your tactics include, say, 20 talking head videos of local agriculture experts that you’ll post on Instagram every few weeks, you’ll need to figure out your equipment needs, staffing needs (do you need to hire a videographer and rent production equipment?), transportation needs (do you want to get one of your employees over to the area to conduct the interviews? Where will he or she stay, and for how long? What will be expensed?), and any other need. You might want to hire a local person to conduct the interviews; if so, how much will you pay him or her?

If your tactics include an event, don’t worry: You don’t need to create a line item for every need. Do try to come up with a high-level cost estimate. It might be useful to review the SPCA Pet Day Event Plan Spreadsheet as a guide to the type and variety of costs an event incurs. Of course, a press conference will have radically different costs from those of a CSR or festival-type event.

Finally, look at the efforts that support your tactical decisions. Will you need focus groups, click through rates, surveys to assess how well your products are succeeding? Who will gather and analyze the information?

How Much Will It Cost?

Once you’ve identified what will cost money, figure out how much it will cost. The learning topic on entering a new market: tactical and budgetary considerations will give you some ideas on where to look.

This is where you might get creative, weighing, say, a six-month contracting hire in the new market against someone you might pay by the hour in your current location. If you’re looking into travel, you might find that putting up the VP of communications away from the city center costs half as much as putting her up in the city center, or that getting to the new market by air is much cheaper off-season than on, which might affect your timeline.

If you need to convert currency, there are many online tools that will help you.

Once you’ve calculated all your costs, add one final item: a reserve fund for emergencies and other contingencies. A good rule of thumb is to create a reserve fund of about 10 percent of your total costs. In other words, you’ll add 10 percent of your total to your total to accommodate the unexpected.

To keep yourself on track, complete your timeline and budget drafts by the end of Week 9.

Next, you’ll check your timeline and budget against your client’s financial situation and revise, incorporating any comments from Rebecca and/or your peers.