Reflection Task Assignment

The following is the collective reflective diaries of Mohammmad, Rishard, Sam and Joe for the PR campaign assignment.

Joe Findlay-Bada

My role in our campaign was to produce the press release and help to come up with crisis management procedures in the event of a company crisis.

The press release was a very important component to our PR campaign because it was a great way of drawing media attention to our foundation, helping to spread the word on our brand new company to the public. I had to ensure that all of the vital information about the foundation was visible on the release, including our name, what we do and how to get in contact with us. To make sure that our press release was impactful, I made sure that the headline was enticing and the first few lines would keep the audience reading on. I added quotes from our ambassadors to give the press release more credibility and to further appeal to our target market.

I was also responsible for helping deliver our crisis management research and procedures in our presentation. We ensured that we looked into crisis’ from the past for other companies and putting in place steps which helped to prevent and minimise harm to our company. We looked at using betting companies as our sponsor but saw that this would have been hypo-critical from us. There are a lot of ethically correct people that may have boycotted us and formed marches or protests against us had we chosen to go down that route.

Some of the problems that we faced as a group was trying to get together to work on the presentation as on a few occasions when we had lectures and seminars, I was unable to attend due to circumstances out of my hands, such as train cancellations and illness. However, our group maintained good communication with one another and made sure that we were all given specific roles and responsibilities and this helped our presentation run smoothly on the day.

I believe that the press release and crisis management was a success because the press release was well-structured and provided all of the relevant information for potential clients to see and get involved with. The crisis management section also worked well as the procedures were put in place to ensure that if a crisis was to occur to our foundation, the potential harm done will be minimised as much as possible.

Rishard Haddad

My role in our PR campaign was to conduct research to find if there were similar organisations to ours already out there, and through research find what they do and try to differentiate ourselves from them.

My role was important as it gave our group an understanding about fellow competitors and how you can be different to them based on the research conducted. For our organisation, we did not have the money that organisations like ‘Life After Professional Sport’ have whereby they are able to use their contacts to spread the message about their campaign.

Moreover, having watched ‘No Hunger in Paradise’, which is about there being no pathway for academy dropouts in football. From that documentary, one name that stood out was Kieran Bywater, who despite being captain of his boyhood club (West Ham) for 10 years, got dropped, and with no back-up plan, he now finds himself in the US completing a college course.

Our organisation’s Unique Selling Point would be to have realistic figureheads like Clarke Carlisle giving guest speaker talks at our workshops when going into football clubs. We went down this route because we believed Clarke can give first hand experience and can relate to our target market, therefore forming a rapport between us and them. According to Atkin, Charles and Rice (2016) their theory states that celebrities are key categories of public communication campaign messengers. Therefore, having influential individuals like Clarke Carlisle spreading messages of positivity and hope will provide our audience with inspiration that there is always life after football.

As previously mentioned, not enough was being done by the Professional Footballers’ Association, according to Conn (2017) research showed that in 2013, a Premier League (PL) academy player committed suicide after struggling to come to terms with his release. Shockingly, the organisation who earns over £9 million from the Premier League’s TV deal only gave £530,000 in charity grants to former and current players (Conn 2018).

With all Premier League clubs having welfare officers, we will target English Football League clubs will not only expand our target audience but give us an opportunity to advertise as EFL clubs may not be able to afford to pay us. Instead, we could subsidise the cost, in exchange for a billboard about our organisation as part of the clubs advertising hoardings. After all, both parties will be helping each other out as research showed that 55% of players struggle with psychological distress 21 days after being released (Blakelock, 2015).

Whilst researching for ways to fund our organisation, we considered going towards betting companies to get financial interest. Initially, we believed this could be a great option as betting companies dominate football, with half of the PL clubs having representation of betting symbolization on their kits for the 19/20 season (Davies R, 2019). However, we realised this would have been ethically and morally wrong. It would have been so hypocritical of an organisation who is trying to give ex and current footballers an exit path, to then be sponsored by a betting company, especially when research conducted into betting in football showed that professional footballers are three times more likely to have a gambling addiction in comparison to an average male (Horridge).

Overall, having spoken about what we done throughout our campaign, for further improvement, we will aim to produce more content for the website, this will be done through preview videos about upcoming guest speakers to excite our audience. According to Fabio Calefato and Filippo Lanubile (2010), their research found that videos serve a better purpose than emails as they involve social/ personal issues and thoughts. The use of a close-up camera angle will help the audience under the individual’s emotions.

Another way we aim to improve our campaign is by incorporating individuals from women’s football into our organisation. Interestingly, women’s football is on the rise, with 28% of those that followed the Lionesses in the summer ‘are now fans of women’s football’ (Wrack S, 2019). Having female footballers as part of our organisation will not only broaden our target audience, but also as research has shown (Zhang L, 2017), gender diversity within our organisation can alter the opinions of potential investors and other stakeholders that wish to invest into the organisation. In addition, it can be suggested that it will improve our brand image as we are representing the image of football to be for everyone, no discrimination on race, age gender, ethnicity.

My role for the presentation was to produce the slide deck, within this role, I had to incorporate creativity, colours, images and set the scene for our audience that we’re all about positivity and hope, something that may be lacking in a footballers’ career once they retire/suffer a career threatening injury. Furthermore, I also broadened my skill-set and assisted other people in my team by collaborating with their roles, together we worked as a team and I believe we all worked extremely hard to produce this campaign.

Sam BC

My role in our campaign was that I oversaw social media. This means that I was in charge of whatever goes onto our account such as press releases, statements and even polls. This role has great responsibility due to how popular social media has become in the current day with most businesses or campaigns using social media to gain followers and get attention. A good technique that we followed was called signposting. We used this method because it makes me people explore around the website due to our website being in our twitter profile. We also attached statements to the twitter account which leads straight to the website so again if the audience is curious about the statement then they can have a look around the website as they are already there. This is a theory by Brassington, P, in his book Website Signposts, three simple real-world examples.

As most companies and campaigns have social media, we felt like this was the market to target our audience as most of the people we are targeting, will be on the platforms due to their status. As Latane (1981) says that social impact is hugely important to a successful business and the three things which is it useful for such as: Strength, Immediacy and Numbers. Strength due to the relationships between the campaign and the people you want involved such as Clubs and players, where they can then promote your campaign. Immediacy is important since you can put your message out there in a few clicks so if there was a cancellation in an event, we would tweet out a statement which would reach all our followers in the matter of seconds. Number is important statistically due to the retweets, likes and mentions we are receiving. If we are getting a lot of activity on that front, then we know the campaign is going to be a success but if the numbers are slacking then we might need to change how we go about things. We combat this by putting out tweets daily, such as facts or polls which keep the audience engaged in the campaign so that they don’t forget about us.

We also looked at Laswell`s five stage of communication which we would use when putting a statement on our Twitter profile as we would then be in charge of where that statement goes, such as on the website, our twitter, news outlets and to different football clubs and we are the ones who give the message to tell so again it is an effective way of getting our campaign out there and we have seen it with various other campaigns such as Rainbow Laces for example.

I feel like the social media part of the campaign was a success as it was hugely prioritised as that is where we would target our audience. The use of hashtags would get our audience involved and then would reach out to others who yet haven’t heard of the campaign. Our next step is to go onto another social media platform such as Instagram where we can post pictures from inside our lectures with the guest speakers using hashtags to spread the word at how successful the company is doing.

Mohammad Ilyas

In terms of my role with the PR campaign for Brought Back Foundation, I was allocated the main duties of setting up, operating and maintaining the website/blog, as well as focus on the post-campaign future of Brought Back Foundation, in terms of our legacy after the completion of the campaign.

When roles within our group were being allocated, I elected myself forward to handle the website component of our campaign as I felt I have ample experience with websites, having run my own personal blog for six years. My role I feel is was a vital part of our campaign as the website would act as the central hub for information. Anything that happened during our campaign would be posted onto the website for reference and to inform, whether that is press releases, event announcements, contact information and various other bits of information.

When it came to the website, it was vital that it was in conjunction with our social media channels, so Sam, who was handing the social media aspect, and I were in tandem and in constant communication. We agreed to set a basic house style and formatting across both the website as well as the social media page, in terms of colour scheme, logos and tagline. This was done to build familiarity between the two, as well as give our campaign a distinctive identify, achieved using the same logo across the website and social media channels.

Signposting is using social media channels to direct stakeholders and audience to information on external channels I.E. a website. We used our Twitter Page to publicise and promote our website posts, as well as allowing further engagement and direction to the website.

An important theory I kept in mind and referenced during the campaign as Harold Laswell’s communication model. His theory entails communication being ‘linear and a one-way process’, which is the following:

Who (Communicator) -> Says what (message) -> In which channel (medium) -> To whom (receiver) -> With what effect (feedback) (Laswell, 1948)

In the context with our campaign, I ensured that our communication was simple and concise, whilst following this concept. An example of this was when we released our press release on the website, which was also signposted on our social media channels.

Who (Brought Back Foundation) -> Says what (press release) -> In which channel (website/social media) -> To whom (stakeholders) -> With what effect (inform people about what our organisation is about)

The other aspect I handled on our campaign was the legacy we would leave, post campaign. This entailed researching into similar campaigns to ours and I discovered the most impactful have an iconic/symbolic item associated with them. Examples I found were Stonewall with the rainbow laces and armbands they use, a LGBT+ organisation, or Prostate Cancer UK, who have a pin page of a stickman, which is worn to represent support for the organisation.

I decided that we would use our logo of a silhouette of two people with an arm around the shoulder as the face front of our campaign, to make the imagine synonymous with Brought Back Foundation. This also provides synergy between all our channels.

Another aspect of our legacy is we’d create a Kitemark, which can be purchased by our stakeholders to display on their websites to show their association with us. This could be purchased by club’s welfare officers to promote the fact that their club cares about the issues we take, as well as provide more external revenue for the organisation.

To conclude, I believe the Brought Back Foundation was a good campaign with a solid base to be successful, if it was to be carried out in a fully fledged operation. There was room for improvement such as building a stronger social media presence and also possibly even covering more sections of the footballing community such as women and LGBT members, which is something that could be achieved through more research.