While these boards play an advisory role, they also serve as advocates for their local community, and their decisions are often viewed as binding by elected officials and city agencies. Navigating the Community Board process can be very daunting for a first-timer. Back to your restaurant, let’s say you were looking to open in the St. George area of Staten Island. First you find a nice location, perhaps on Bay Street or Victory Boulevard. You’ve, hired a lawyer to help you navigate the permitting and approvals process. You’re prepared to deal with the Board of Health to get inspected, hoping for a nice crisp “A” to hang in your window for opening night. Your lawyer will then tell you if you want to sell beer, wine or liquor, you will have to apply to the Community Board, one of their legal purviews is liquor licensing.
This is where the confusion can set in. The application process varies by Community Board. If you were trying to open this restaurant in Manhattan then most Community Boards there have a dedicated licensing committee. But you’ve chosen an outer borough, so now you will have to contact the District Manager to find out the process. In the case of the St. George neighborhood, you are dealing with Staten Island Community Board 1. Their process is to have these licenses first heard by the area committees, of which there are five. St. George falls in their “West Brighton/St. George” area committee. Once you apply, you will be told when they hear your application at their monthly meeting. If you are successful in the committee hearing, then your application will be voted on by the full board.
Once your application has been put on their meeting calendar, they will contact the residents in the vicinity of your proposed establishment to let them know about the hearing. This is a time when it is beneficial to be more proactive than reactive. Reach out to the residents in the neighborhood, if this is done early and with the right message it can make a big difference at the hearing.
This task may seem daunting to some, but like getting a lawyer to help with the approval process, there is help available. Firms, like ours, which are very familiar with the Community Board process, can help. For over 25 years, Zetlin has worked with our clients to understand the communities they are working in and to refine our client’s message into a communication the community will absorb and understand. We also specialize in determining how best to distribute the message to maximize its effectiveness, turning a daunting process into a manageable one.
Crisis communications is an essential tool in preserving an entity’s image when its reputation faces a challenge. For individuals, companies, organizations and agencies, challenges can come in many forms: lawsuits, legal or ethical violations, media inquiries and criminal and civil accusations, to name a few. In these situations, crisis communication requires proactive outreach, timeliness, transparency and accessibility.
On the flip side, the Exxon Corporation’s response to the Valdez oil spill in 1989 permanently tarnished the company’s reputation. When 10 million gallons of oil spilled into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, the company neglected to do their best in containing the spill, refused to acknowledge the extent of the problem and did not comment on the incident to the media for almost a week. In addition, they blamed government officials for the delay in cleaning the spill and said they would raise gas prices to pay for the cleanup. Exxon’s reaction left the public with the opinion that the company wasn’t taking the incident seriously and angered many customers, causing boycotts of Exxon products for years. Their inadequate response to the crisis and the resulting severe impact to the organization’s image still affects the company twenty-some years later. Sadly, BP followed much the same approach, reacting and playing catch-up instead of being in front of the issue after the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf.
While tactics for crisis communications have changed with the advent of social media, the approaches taken serve as lessons learned for today. Timeliness is a major factor in effectiveness and appearance; a rapid response is key to upholding reputation. Messaging that is clear and concise is another important aspect of managing a crisis – before, during and after. Although a crisis is defined as something unexpected, it can be anticipated that the unexpected will happen. Having a crisis communications plan in place before a crisis hits will help manage how it’s dealt with. Defining chain of command, references, allies and media outlets proactively can save time and money in the midst of a crisis. Overall, crisis communications is a complex practice, but when appropriately and effectively implemented, can transform the unexpected into a positive opportunity.
Continue following our blog to learn how to design and implement a crisis communications plan…
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Looking at the term Strategic Communications may be intimidating. In reality, we all use strategies to solve problems and communicate our ideas in many aspects of our daily lives. From simple daily to decisions, such as selecting the best route or mode of travel to a specific destination- to more complex business decisions- the way we communicate our needs and develop a strategic approach plays a prominent role in determining the success of an outcome or decision.
Communicating effectively is a learned skill. Knowing how to reach a specific audience, with a clear and concise message is something that is important to any communications strategy. Getting the right message to the right person at the right time can make or break a project, and focusing on your audience’s needs will help to achieve positive results in outreach.
What is a strategy?
First, let’s discuss what a strategy really is. A strategy is a plan or approach designed to achieve a specified goal. Zetlin Strategic Communications, Inc. believes that a strategy should be inclusive, flexible, transparent, customized and strategic, in order to be successful and meet the intended outcome.
1. Inclusive. A strategy must seek out and embrace all affected parties, not just those who are already mobilized, vocal and aware. Extensive research of your audience and their needs is a necessary step to be able to successfully tailor your strategy.
2. Flexible. A strategy must have the ability to be easily responsive to added tasks or requirements, have the ability to be re-worked and revised, and be able to adapt to unforeseen issues.
3. Transparent. A strategy must be able to be readily understood by all parties, broken down into a clear and concise message, with a commonly agreed on goal. The message should be communicated with simple language, in order to be easily digested by all audience members.
4. Customized. A strategy must be situationally specific, tailored to its distinct audience, community, project and issues. It is important to keep in mind that there are no cookie-cutter solutions.
5. Strategic. Probably the most important part of all development criteria- a communications strategy must be strategic, meaning it must include a rigorous tactical alignment of tasks with clearly articulated goals and objectives. This is required to streamline your strategy right to the finish line.
What’s a good example of when a strategic communications plan should be developed?
Grassroots campaigns are easily one of the most common examples of a situation requiring a strategic communications plan. A Grassroots campaign mobilizes a community at the local level, to solve a problem, or promote awareness of an issue, with the goal to gain more support and a firm message. A strategic communications plan should be developed to answer the following questions:
What is the message I want to communicate?
Who is my audience? What is the community demographic?
How am going to communicate this message to the necessary people (i.e. local elected officials, community leaders etc.)?
Which channels of communication will be the most effective to utilize?
Which mediums of communication will be the most effective to gain support and leverage information?
When can I best reach them?
A classic example of a company who uses grassroots marketing is the Mozilla Corp- known for their Firefox web-browser- one of the most popular web-browsers among internet users, alongside Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari. Mozilla does not use traditional marketing techniques to get the word out about their services, but rather does so by mobilizing people to spread the word and promote their software. One of their initial marketing campaigns called for “Campus Reps” which targeted college students to inform them of the company’s product through activities which were promoted via social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. This helped gain a following with a younger demographic, who are notably more likely to use new technology. Currently, one of their main marketing strategies includes an interface called SpreadFirefox.com. This communication tool establishes a virtual “community” among users, and actively engages them to provide ideas for future campaigns through features such as community message boards and chat features. It also provides them the opportunity to put firefox download “buttons” on their personal webpages or blogs, to further facilitate the opportunity to download the web-browser to others. Another creative feature offered by the Mozilla Corp., is the Mozilla Community Store, in which customers can design their own custom t-shirts to promote the company, and spread the word among the general public by simply wearing their shirt. Not only does this give the designer ownership in the company’s outreach efforts, but also it spreads the word with little effort from the customer.
What have we learned from Mozilla’s grassroots efforts? It is definitely safe to say that the Mozilla Corp. developed a strategic message that allowed the common person to easily promote the company at their own convenience, using their own ideas. The company chose to provide its customers with free and creative resources to its marketing efforts, which was tailored to interest web users. Mobilizing its patrons to spread the word by providing them with a few simple outlets for communications helped the Mozilla Corp become the second most popular web-browser in the internet world.
What types of things should I keep in mind when creating and disseminating of a unified message?
Referring back to the previous grassroots example- always keep in mind the needs and desires of your intended audience-this will help you determine which outreach tools are appropriate in order to target and engage them. Analyzing the audience’s needs and their dynamic will help to create a clear understanding of what medium or method will successfully convey your message, to have your audience be able to internalize it. Overly creative outlets of communication, like in the case of the Mozilla Corp., are not always feasible or applicable to the problem you are trying to solve. Sometimes, simply working with your audience to develop a two-way dialogue, such as via a public forum or workshop event, can be the most beneficial. Face-to-face interaction can help establish rapport with a community, which will ultimately promote the spread of the cause.
