Question

Planning for a campaign involves setting goals, creating timetables, and developing budgets. The five E’s of a successful campaign are education, engineering, enforcement, entitlement, and evaluation. Consider the American PR campaigns with which you are familiar: the campaigns to encourage people to quit smoking, use automobile seatbelts, and consume healthy foods. Each of these campaigns has been tried in another country or culture but failed. Select one of the campaigns listed and answer the following questions.

Please write 1-paragraph for each question.

Why did these campaigns fail?

What elements of a successful PR campaign were missing?

How could each campaign have been changed to be more culturally sensitive and relevant?

What research or other information may be necessary to successfully transform a PR campaign from one culture to another?

Answer 1

1. The campaign that i have selected is - 'the campaigns to encourage people to quit smoking'.
This campaign in USA is an aggressive national media campaign. In the year 2012,
a three month campaign was launched in USA which resulted in around 200,000 Americans who quit smoking.
Now, the success of this hard hitting campaign could not be replicated in other countries.
The campaign failed because it did not focus on the "E's". For instance, the non smokers were targeted in the campaign and the smokers were not targeted.
In terms of enforcement, the campaigns can't be all negative.
A better approach would have been to focus on the positives of not smoking rather then focusing on the negatives of smoking.

2. The elements that were missing were education and enforcement.
Firstly, the campaign attempted to educate the non smokers and not the smokers.
Secondly, in terms of enforcement, approach of negative enforcement was used.
Now, as negative messages produce negative results, the campaign was a failure.

3. The campaign could have been more relevant by firstly targeting the smokers as well.
The smokers should have been educated. Secondly, in terms of engineering,
the campaign should have been engineered in a way so as to not vilify smokers.
Thirdly, in terms of enforcement, the campaign would have been more relevant by
focusing on the benefits and positives of not smoking instead of adopting a negative enforcement approach.

4. In order to successfully transform a PR campaign from one culture to another,
the differences in the values and ethos of different culture should be considered.
It will be very important to comprehend the cultural nuances of the country or culture
for which the PR campaign is being considered. Efforts should be made to acknowledge and
then incorporate the strong points of the culture in the campaign to make it more appealing
to the people belonging to that culture.