Planning and executing a communication action for promoting awareness
We
have seen that communication is an essential element of project management, as it is
required to generate internal team co-operation and external consensus to all project phases.
There
are however some kinds of activities or projects where communication is given a higher
consideration and becomes central to the scope of the whole action. This
is particularly when the scope of the action is to increase knowledge and awareness
in the counterpart, and formal communication is identified as the main means to such a
scope. Usually to these kind of actions are given the name of
"campaigns".
The
concept of "campaign" is borrowed from the military field. "Campaign"
is the terrain of physical confrontation in warfare. In communication is the actual
execution in the field of a communication strategy.
It
would not be proper to call campaign an information service. campaign
conveys the idea of something extempore, that has a specific end and can result in
success or defeat. It has to overcome some resistance on the
counterpart.
According
the two other modalities of human relationship we can have the:
propaganda
campaign, aimed at generating persuasion, that will utilised the method that we have defined as
rhetoric;
the
awareness creation campaign aimed at educating the target
audience and contrasting ignorance or isolation.
It
is fundamentally this idea of contrasting ignorance, along with its
non-continuous character, that gives a sort of warfare connotation
to the "awareness campaign" that is otherwise a typical educational
activity.
Through
a specifically planned communication action, along a strategic approach, an awareness
campaign aims at improving the life quality of the audience, that is also the community
expected to gain from it.
The
methodology of the awareness campaign is therefore characterised by the fact that :
-
it is aimed at improving the life of the
beneficiary;
-
the beneficiary (before the campaign) is
not fully aware of the benefices that may receive from the campaign results.
-
It uses communication as the
main means to generate the expected results.
Presentation: The campaign strategy
See also Advertising
Developing Communication
Strategy in
and Project communications planning in Project Communication Managementt