Pr Campaign

PR Campaign

Executive Summary

PR Campaign Objectives

We have identified five Public Relations issues that will be associated with our relocation of our Albany, Georgia manufacturing operation to Mexico. Employee job loss, moral, union relations, Government regulations and open and honest communication about our decision are the reasons we feel a strong Public Relations strategy is required. Additionally, ethical concerns can surround many of these issues, which make a strong campaign necessary to ensure the proper message is communicated to our publics.

There are multiple objectives within our Public Relations strategy that will be discussed beginning with our targeted audience. We will outline in detail our targeted audiences for our corporation as associated with this campaign. We feel that with the specific and potentially devastating news to some employees, a specific targeted communication will be required to ensure all needs are covered from a benefits perspective and that all employees affected will gain a thorough understanding of their benefits and opportunities. Our customers will have a concern regarding product quality that will additionally need to be addressed. A media release will be created and published to communicate our strategy to the media so that an objective opinion can be formed and communicated to the publics and media audiences. A tactical plan will be developed to include activities such as press conferences, community events, internal and external corporate newsletters, direct mail campaigns, and up to and including the announcement of our spokesperson. Our final objective for our Public Relation campaign will be able to show measurable results of the campaign as related to improving or declining business results.

I. PR Issues

a. Job Loss for the employees of Albany-helping employees cope and understand loss of work will be an important issue that will require attention. Offering assistance like re-training, tuition reimbursement, transition assistance, severance pay, COBRA insurance continuation and grief counseling to help employees cope mentally with the job loss are all items/activities that must be taken into consideration when planning our PR campaign. Additionally, relocation assistance will be offered to any employee currently in good standing to our manufacturing plant in Pontiac, Michigan, as positions are available. Special consideration will be give to qualified employees who apply to relocate to our manufacturing site in China or the newest facility replacing Albany.

b. Recovering and rebuilding employee morale in San Jose, Pontiac, and potentially in Hangzhou-This loss of work for our employees in Albany, GA while small comparatively to the entire company, will be potentially devastating to employee morale in our remaining locations. We must action ways to recover any loss in morale immediately that might be experienced to ensure there is no degradation to employee performance or company revenue and profits.

c. Union Relations in all locations-we must ensure that any actions taken during this action are all Union sanctioned to ensure positive Union relations throughout our business in every location that is unionized. Relocating operations requires specific Union involvement to ensure employees are treated fairly and provided opportunity as required by the Union contract

d. Government regulation-positive government relations should be upheld during this transition. We must place focus and emphasis on import and export regulations and laws to ensure we are fully compliant with our government and the government we are re-locating into. Additionally, we must ensure we are government compliant with our loss of work employee's pension funds, 401k and other investment opportunities we have allowed in the past. Along with that we have to make sure to comply with laws pertaining to notification of job loss and job placement efforts with the county and state legislatures.

e. "Maximize labor cost reductions"-with this being the main reason for the relocation from Albany, GA we want to ensure that a positive spin is placed on the action. We will continue to do business in Albany, and some employees will have the opportunity to continue their employ with us. A solid and positive campaign must be launched to ensure our customers, employees, the unions and the general public that this action is in the best interest of the company and not to take jobs out of the local market in Albany.

II. Target Audience

a. Overview- In order for our company to compete with the global economy and at the same time offer our customers a competitive price we at Riordon Mfg. will be moving our assembly lines to Mexico. In an effort to make this change less painful, we need identify our primary target audiences, identify appeals and points of interest that will attract attention, define audience lifestyles, and determine the relative strength of each possible appeal. In selecting the audiences we must first identify and categorize our stakeholder groups.

b. Primary Public- Our primary public will be our customers. We need to make sure that they truly understand why we took this decision.

i. Due to the most recent high oil prices, and to a lesser extent the weaker dollar, are contributing to raised expectations for inflation. An expected decrease in the rate of increase in labor productivity is another factor that it contributing to higher inflation expectations. On the other hand, there are factors that are contributing to lower inflation expectations. These include the fact that while it is expected that the rate of increase in labor productivity will decline, productivity gains are still relatively good or at least on trend. Other important factors are the relatively weak labor market (wage gains should be small but on an increasing trend), the expectation that Federal Reserve policies will restrain inflation, strong competition in the retail market, and strong international economic competition. These factors all balance to forecasts for the inflation rate continuing to be less than 3.00%. (2005 company forecast budget)

c. Secondary Public- Secondary, public will be our employees and the Albany community that for many years supported us. We will develop a training program with the local college to offer training for our employees to get another job and remain in Albany. A severance package will be given to all our employees depending on their service to Riordon. We will offer re-location for our engineers; middle and top management to our different