Given the foundation that Sony’s PR team laid, it should strive to adopt robust strategies to build media relations and generate publicity. At the heart of media relations is the strategic deployment of the media to tell an organization’s story. It disseminates information regarding the objectives and mission of the organization to the audiences spread across different regions of the globe. At the same time, media relations involve the transmission of messages through the mass media. Where effective media relations are widely promoted, publicity is generated. Sony sought to adopt this strategy.
One of the invaluable strategies is storytelling. Sony is supposed to figure out the storylines, which effectively resonates with the news outlets and audiences while at the same time ensuring that it shares and publicizes the key message appropriately. The PR team should pull together everything that the media might need before any outreach. Sony should be prepared to support the trend or the message it intends to disseminate to the public with examples and statistics. The storytelling approach has to identify the company, the audience that it is seeking to reach, the extent of its impacts, the status of the company and why the underlying message is valuable for people to know (Raisman, 2000).
The potential risk associated this strategy is bias or partiality. The purpose of this media relations campaign is to change the indifferent attitudes that members of the public have, especially after the 2011 scandal. Such an incidence might be a source of bias in the storytelling strategy. As such, the media might factor in their attitudes, which might be negative. To prevent such bias from taking a toll on the press relation outcomes, Sony’s PR team should select the most credible media platform to tell the story. Ideally, the team should carefully choose the media people to tell the story. Another potential strategy is conducting interviews with journalists (Raisman, 2000). The potential risk with such a strategy is that the company might present information, which might be perceived differently by the press. To avoid this, the PR team should prepare adequately for the interviews. It is important to ask the journalists about the questions that they will pose during the interview beforehand. The PR people ought to take notes on the most critical points that they will want to make during the interview (Raisman, 2000).
A tactical plan
The interview strategy for public relations is preferred. The company will arrange for interviews with the renowned industrial players. Two interviews will be conducted each month. Several tools will be used to facilitate this plan. One of these is the spokesperson. As such, a designated corporate spokesman, who is competent in the field and issues of public and media relations, will be participating in the interviews (Raisman, 2000). The second tool is direct mail. Direct mails will be used for the purpose of requesting interviews. Thirdly is a press conference. As such, the interviews will take the shape of a news conference.
At least two prominent media houses will be invited to a press conference in which they will be requested to ask whatever question about the company that they may harbor. Another important tool to be used is the corporate newsletter. The entire interview session, including the questions and the responses, will be documented and reserved a place in the corporate newsletter, which will, in turn, be dispensed both internally and externally (Raisman, 2000). During the interview, the promotional items will be provided. In essence, each participating journalist will be provided with a product from the company as a sign of appreciation.
Reference
Raisman, N. A. (2000). Building relationships with the media: A brief working guide for community college leaders. New Directions for Community Colleges, 2000(110), 21-27.
