Harris Associatesby Matthew Shevlin, Jonathan Routledge, Philippa Brown & Thomas Jones.

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Six weeks ago, you came into our class, with a brief to increase the number of clients during 2017.

We’re here today, with what we think is the most effective way to achieve that aim.- Our structural model is based upon Gregory’s planning model shown here.

Being able to weigh the positive aspects of Harris as a company against their weaknesses was important in helping us to build a balanced analysis of the company (Caywood 2011:18). This enabled us to illustrate to Harris what aspects of their company our campaign would be focusing. For example, Harris' experience in the built environment and their ability to maintain lasting relationships played a crucial part in shaping the "family" elements of our campaign. In addition, this helped us to show Harris we working with them, as opposed to being consistently negative about them.

Formulating well-defined objectives is critical to the implementation of any strategic communication campaign. The campaign itself will be shaped and driven by these objectives, while they will serve as an important measuring yardstick when it comes to the evaluation (Barker and Angelopou 2005:200). The importance of including this slide cannot be understated; it was essential to show the client where we wanted to go with the campaign and how we and they would be able to monitor its effectiveness.

“The job of the public relations professional is to communicate with and build relationships with the organization’s publics. They are should be acutely aware of the environment in which the organization operates.” (Gregory, 2015) We considered this quote when beginning the planning process, and wanted to establish the tone of the campaign. To do this we looked at the tone of Harris, who position themselves as a personal PR company who focus on their relationships with clients. It’s this unique selling point that has provided a basis of trust and reliability too. Lastly, they are a specialised company in the built environment, whilst this has been identified as an issue because it is not transparent enough, it has been included in the tone as something to build on.

Furthermore, we looked at Aristotle’s family principles to develop the tone more. The idea that “there must necessarily be a union or pairing of those who cannot exist without one another” guided our ‘story’. (Aristotle & Hittinger, 2013) The principles are applicable to Harris, there is mutual influence within the team and everyone has equal contribution. Also relating to the story of ‘the Harris home’ the principle of common habitation simply links to the Harris office being a home. Harris is a basis for community, not only for its employees but for existing clients and new ones alike. Lastly the principle of economic provision, ultimately Harris needs to make money.

With all of the research on Harris and the tone of the campaign completed we wanted to then tell a story for our campaign, something beneficial as its focused our efforts onto one ‘big idea’ and encouraged us to look at the long terms goals (Gregory, 2015). We devised a story of the ‘Harris Home’ whereby in 2017 we are looking to extended our welcome into this home for new clients. It is based on strong, established foundations and reputation and will build relationships in-house taking advantage of in-house strengths.

- The ‘Join Our Family’ campaign is an inclusive campaign with the aim of displaying family values throughout the company.

- Our open door policy goes that extra mile when attracting potential clients.- This part of the strategy really celebrates Harris’ strengths of building and maintaining

successful relationships.

- The more traditional part of the campaign builds upon existing PR methods.- From our research conducted, we found that networking can be built upon. This is why we

have incorporated improved and increased networking into our strategy.- Attending events and industry exhibitions are pivotal to increasing awareness and brand

identity.

The importance of Social Media within Strategic Communications only continues to grow. As it has made its way into the everyday lives of millions, it has presented unparalleled opportunities for organisations to interact with new audiences and increase brand awareness (Al-Deen and Hendricks 2013). However, it is not without its dangers and bad Social Media policy has the potential to significantly harm an organisation's reputation. Therefore, it was necessary to dedicate an entire section of our presentation to this new field of communications. We felt that many of Harris' competitors had more in-depth strategies in this area and, in a constantly changing environment, we thought it crucial that they were brought up to date. For example, we felt it absolutely necessary that they create a Facebook page in order to keep up with their rivals.

Effective content on Twitter is concise, well-written and on-point (Hanania 2012:298). This was something we aimed to emphasise to Harris. Twitter is one of the more simplistic ways to build awareness and a following, providing the content of an account is appropriate. Harris' tweets were too often unrelated to their business. We wanted them to bring more focus to their Twitter account and focus more on selling themselves to their audience.

- Continuing on with our social media plan, we believe that tactics such as guest posts on LinkedIn and contributing to Quora conversations can be an effective way of boosting your online presence.

- When looking at your current YouTube channel, we found that the majority of your content was client facing. We want to switch it up and turn the camera around to focus on Harris.- One example of this would be to showcase CSR content. For instance, forming a partnership with local charities in the community and uploading this content to the channel.- Exploiting the vlogging trend on the road at exhibitions and industry events will add that extra personal touch to your online presence.

This tactic is the last of the comprehensive social media strategy, which hopes to achieve the goal of a clearer social media with wider outreach and increased engagement. The Pinterest page will receive better engagement through creating four ‘boards’ these are a project portfolio, inspiration, educational content and industry awards. Particular emphasis can be placed on the educational content where we hope to engage Harris in industry conversations and adding content of value on emerging trends.

This tactic links to the strategy of building upon traditional public relations methods, which in turn directly links to the objective of creating a more coherent communications and e-marketing approach. When considering this tactic we ensured there was a ‘logical progression’ from objectives, strategy and tactics (Gregory, 2015). The basis of this tactic is to research potential desired clients and conduct a mini audit on their communications, seeing where Harris could add value. This will then be emailed to the client explaining the research and what Harris could provide. This personalisation and time spent to research has proven to work before.

Above shows an example email of our tactic mentioned earlier. The tactic to send out personalised emails was found to be time efficient and uncomplicated depending on the selected client.

Running an competition is an inexpensive way of improving brand accessibility and reputation (Cain 2009:38). We felt that it fit perfectly within the budget of Harris and offered us an opportunity to increase the company's awareness to architecture firms, one of the key target audiences identified. As it would be contested by Leeds Beckett students, it would show Harris as having a strong interest in the Community while also looking to the future, especially given the importance of innovation and new ideas within the architecture industry. The finale would also tie in to our event, giving more people an incentive to attend.

- This is predominantly a networking event, but with a personal emphasis on ‘getting to know us’. Who’s going to be in attendance? Clients, prospective clients and the shortlisted competition contestants. This is where emerging talent can share ideas with already established industry professionals – this will help to inspire the next generation of built environment professionals. - This event will take place in a relaxed, friendly and informal atmosphere of the Smokestack bar in Leeds city centre. We chose this venue as it is in a great location, coupled with the fact that the hire is free with a £1000 bar spend. This feature of the event is quite common in the built environment industry – as it is a male dominated one.

- We feel that being different, and standing out from the crowd is an important aspect in today’s

competitive industry. Which is why we would look to create and source something a bit different for your business – such as these imaginative business cards. These can be handed out on the road at industry events.

When looking at the Gantt Chart there are some considerations, one of the campaigns tactics is to attend networking events within the built environment sector, these events take place throughout the year however so we could not put them on the chart. Another consideration is we have left this tactic open to discussion on which events to attend. This is because this can be reactive to how successful the campaign is going. Our decision to do this was guided by (Gregory, 2015) as these are external ‘deadlines’ thus can be changed.

This slide illustrates our budget projections. We felt this was necessary to show Harris where their money would be going and how we would like to spend it. In addition, it also illustrated, what we felt, to be one of the advantages of our campaign. Despite completing an array of different tactics, we calculated that we would still have money left over, which could then be spent on attending more construction and architecture events and boosting Harris' awareness "at ground level". It should be noted, however, that this budget did not include any calculation of staff hours and we recommended that Harris take this into consideration.

Completing an Evaluation is an integral part of Strategic Communications. One of the outcomes of continued effective evaluation is that it will create an embracing culture that looks to it for ideas and insights while also acknowledging that there are limitations to the methods used (Holtzhausen and Zerfass 2014:258). For our example on how the campaign's effectiveness could potentially be measured, we decided to use Gregory's (2010) model of evaluation. This module evaluates the campaign at every level, from how many people view our tweets, to how many people respond to our email marketing and attend our events, to finally how many new clients we recruit. The main issue with using this sort of method is that any evaluation would be that it would have to be conducted by either ourselves or Harris, opening up researcher bias issues. That said, with new clients at the top of "the pyramid" and the main yardstick for evaluation, we felt that this model was most effective for measuring the overall effectiveness of the campaign.

Caywood, C (2011). The Handbook of Public Relations and Integrated Marketing Communications New York: McGraw Hill Professional.

Houltzhausen, J & Zerfass, J (2014). The Routledge Handbook of Strategic Communication London:Routledge.

Al-Deen, H.S. & Hendricks, J (2013). Social Media and Strategic Communications Boston: Palgrave MacMillan.

Barker, R & Angelopulo, CG (2006) Integrated Organisational Communication Capte Town: Juta & Co.

Cain, S (2009). Key Concepts in Public Relations Boston: Palgrave MacMillan .

Hanania, R (2012). Power PR: Ethnic Activists Guide to Strategic Communications London: Lulu.

BibliographyAristotle, & Hittinger, J. (2013). Plato and Aristotle on the Family and the Polis. Houston: The Saint

Anselm Journal .

Gregory, A. (2015). Planning and Managing Public Relations Campaigns. London: Kogan Page.

Pages 43-44, 133-134, 164-165