Which efforts were successful? Which fell short of the organization’s objectives or expectations? Why?

Project 1: Research
Start Here
Having demonstrated your leadership skills and your ability to work on a complex project as part of a team, you’ve been promoted to senior account executive. Congratulations! Here are your brand-new business card and position description. You’re eating a piece of celebratory cake when you hear a ping from your laptop. It’s time for your first meeting with the Parabolic executives in your new role.
You leave the meeting feeling energized. You’re going to be consulting with a new client to plan a communications campaign. In Project 1, you’ll conduct your situation analysis using a blend of primary and secondary research, then share a 3–5-page summary of your findings with your Parabolic mentor for feedback. Your analysis will inform your campaign plan (Projects 2 and 3) and a few sample products you’ll create to support the plan (Project 4). Your research will also prove helpful in Project 5, where you’ll present your plan to your client and explain the choices you made. In Project 6, you’ll create a portfolio of your work that will help you attract future clients.
Because you’re a new senior account executive and this is your first project, you’ll submit your planning documents to your Parabolic mentor as you go along. Also make use of the Capstone Support discussion topic to share ideas and get feedback.
A Little More Context
In the next six projects, you’ll draw from everything you’ve learned during your time at Parabolic. You’ll also try out some new tasks. You’ll conduct interviews, perform a communications audit, build personas, and engage in message testing. At the end, you’ll produce something of value to a real-life organization and have some artifacts to showcase to potential employers.
This project—two weeks of research and analysis—lays the foundation for every part of your plan and, ultimately, your pitch to the client.
Your 3–5 page situation analysis will be formatted as shown below, with appendices containing your notes from each step (these don’t count toward the page total).
• Background—why we’re here, why you chose this client, why now
• Internal Situation—what you found out about the organization, how it works, how it communicates, its internal stakeholders and publics, any pressures or issues you’ve uncovered
• External Situation—what you found out about the larger socioeconomic, cultural, legal, and political climate; the external stakeholders and publics; what the media is saying; what publics are saying on social media; what are the concerns and interests of the publics; what are the levels of engagement and awareness; what external pressures does the organization face
• SWOT Analysis
• Problem Statement
• Appendices—neatly formatted notes on the following:
o Client Meeting
o Secondary Research
• client organization
• issue or situation
• potential target publics
o Communications Audit
o Traditional Media Analysis
• summary of results
• analysis of results
o Social Media Analysis
• summary of results
• analysis of results
In this project, you’re going to select your client and perform a situation analysis that will culminate in your identification of the problem or opportunity to be addressed in a campaign plan. You’ll summarize your research in a 3–5 page report.

Take careful notes as you go through the steps of this project; you’ll provide these as appendices to your report.

Developing new business for the agency is one of the responsibilities of a senior account executive. Sometimes, clients will refer other clients to you, or you’ll find new business by reaching out to your professional network or responding to a request for proposal (RFP). It’s also common for senior account executives to reach out to organizations who might benefit from the agency’s services—in other words, good, old-fashioned cold-calling (or perhaps cold-emailing is more appropriate).

With this in mind, research and choose your organization. Be thoughtful in your selection! All the work that you complete during the next nine weeks will be for this client.

Select an organization for which you currently work or volunteer, or find an organization that represents interests you have (music, agriculture, emergency services, etc.). Nonprofits, especially smaller local organizations, are often in need of help with public relations activities, and creating a public relations plan for an important cause can be rewarding. (As you recall from previous Parabolic projects, nonprofits have a 501(c)3 tax filing status. This information is usually located on the organization’s website, or you can search Charity Navigator.)

In addition to nonprofits, museums, libraries, community theatres, and professional associations can benefit from your expertise. If you choose a national organization, please consider a specific chapter or branch (Red Cross of Chicago, Make a Wish Foundation of North Georgia, etc.).

In selecting your client, consider whether or not the organization is a good fit for the assignment and timeframe. For example, if the organization has not yet officially “launched” or is undergoing a serious crisis, you might not have access to the information you need to perform the research for the campaign.
In Step 2, you will conduct a meeting with your client or a subject matter expert.
Step 2: Conduct the Client Meeting
You’ve identified your client for the next nine weeks. If your Parabolic mentor sees any red flags with your choice, he or she will let you know as quickly as possible.
Now, you’re going to meet with your client as part of the situation analysis. Client meetings are a vital step in any consulting endeavor, and one that will help orient you to the problem or opportunity that will be the basis of your campaign. The client meeting will help you gain information about the organization that may not be available on the organization’s website or in other public-facing materials. Insights from the client meeting can help inform your secondary research and SWOT analysis.
Contacting the Client
Contact the organization as soon as possible to request the client meeting. You may of course be working within your own organization and know with whom you want to meet; perhaps you’ve already had a preliminary conversation. If this is not the case, find a contact in the organization’s leadership or in a communications role. Personnel whose titles include the words public relations, public affairs (especially in the federal government sector), communications, or community outreach are closely related to the strategic communications functions. It is important to meet with someone who can provide information about the organization’s goals, structure, and needs; often, this is someone in a senior or leadership role. Look for contact information on the organization’s website or call the organization’s main number (or use a contact form on the website) to ask for contact information for a specific team member.
When you reach the right person, request approval to work with them on the campaign plan. As in any pitch for new business, explain what you’re doing and the potential benefit to the organization. Be clear about what the client can expect you to deliver and when. As time is of the essence, you will need to politely decline requests from the client to create materials or perform duties outside those listed in the project requirements. Also, make sure the client understands that the organization is not committing to anything in meeting with you and accepting your proposal.
Explain that you’ll need to meet with your contact only once and that the meeting will last approximately one hour. If you would like, you can request permission to email the client occasionally for brief questions throughout your campaign planning. Let the client know that you will be respectful of their time.
Once the client has agreed to meet with you, set up a time to meet as quickly as possible.
Note that it’s important to prepare for the meeting before even contacting the client—on many occasions, clients indicate that they are ready to meet during the initial phone call or on the same day that they’ve received your email.
Preparing for and Conducting the Client Meeting
Prepare to get as much information as possible during the meeting. You can arrange to ask brief questions via email or chat later on, but your client might be too busy to respond.
Conduct preliminary research on the organization (reviewing the website, conducting Google searches, etc.) before the client meeting so you can spend the meeting time getting answers to questions that can’t be easily found elsewhere. The UMGC Library Business Research guide might help you find information on your client.
Create a list of questions, but be prepared to ask follow-up questions and let the conversation unfold naturally. Take good notes throughout the meeting. Although it is not necessary for you to record the meeting, you may want to do so for your own benefit. If you wish to do this, please ask the client for permission.
Questions for clients will vary, but here are a few suggestions.
• Start by asking about the organization’s goals and objectives. What does your client want to achieve?
• It’s helpful to think in terms of the SWOT analysis. Ask your client to identify what they believe are the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Focus on what is going on inside the organization (the internal situation) as well as outside the organization (the external situation).
• Ask about the competition. Which organizations does the client consider aspirational? Who are the client’s rivals?
• Gather information about publics. Who are the stakeholders and other external and internal groups affected by or interested in the work of the organization? Try to get a sense of the demographics, psychographics, media habits, and consumption preferences of these groups.
• Begin your communications audit. A communications audit is a survey of current and previous communications and public relations efforts produced by the client. The purpose of the audit is to get a sense of what the organization has done in the past and whether or not it was successful. To start the audit,
o ask how the organization communicates, with whom, and on what channels. Does the organization create news releases? Blog posts? YouTube videos? Is there a social media strategy with designated staff communicating in designated ways on chosen platforms?
o ask about the organization’s previous public relations campaigns. Which efforts were successful? Which fell short of the organization’s objectives or expectations? Why?
Note that you’ll finish your communications audit in Step 4.
Collect as much information as possible in the client meeting. The analysis will happen later. Allow the client to do most of the talking without critiquing or making recommendations.
Finally, thank the client for their time and let them know when they can expect you to deliver your campaign plan and related documents.
For more guidance, review Interviews as Part of a Situation Analysis. You’ll gain further interviewing practice in Project 2, when you meet with some of your publics.
Whether or not you were able to meet right away with your client, move on to Steps 3 and 4 to flesh out your understanding of the organization.
Step 3: Conduct Secondary Research
Whether or not you’ve met with your client, continue your research efforts.
As you know, research can be either primary (using data you’ve gathered) or secondary (using data someone else has gathered). You’ve conducted primary research thus far. Secondary research is an integral part of the planning process. It helps you get to know the client organization, the issue or situation, and the potential target publics (cf. Hendrix, 2004).
• client organization: This is where you get an overview of the organization. In addition to conducting the client meeting and browsing the client’s website, you will need to consult external sources. Include keywords for specific programs or initiatives in your Google and library searches. Also, conduct a competitor analysis: look for information about similar and competing programs (organizations that offer similar programs or have a similar purpose).
• issue or situation: This is where you explore the issues relevant to the organization. (Remember that issues as used here are the topics relevant to the organization’s purpose and mission). For example, if your client is The Humane Society, you will want to look for research about puppy mills, spay and neuter programs, how the economy has impacted pet adoptions, and so forth. These issues might lead you to the problem or opportunity.
• potential target publics: This is where you identify and get to know internal and external publics. You learn about levels of awareness and engagement, concerns, and media habits of these groups. (As per the strategic communications adage: “Know your audience!”). If needed, refresh yourself with Stakeholder Analysis, Understanding Your Publics, and also Identifying and Prioritizing Stakeholders and Publics. Note that you’ll interview representatives of three external target publics in Project 2.
The following types and sources of information can help you in your research.
• background information on the organization, including its mission and vision, organizational structure (see if you can find an org chart), history, financial situation, and key leaders;
• information on the strategic communications or public relations team (if there is one)—and on other teams, such as marketing, legal, and so forth—how does information flow throughout the organization? How does the organization work?
• background information on your client’s sector or industry;
• information on the economic or sociopolitical climate;
• information on your client’s competitors, especially as related to potential campaign issues;
• “lessons learned” documents, including research reports, public relations program evaluations, and memoranda for the record regarding public relations plans and efforts;
• news clips from media coverage of the organization;
• results from public opinion polls or surveys regarding the organization or the issue(s);
• schedules of events and important dates relevant to the organization or the issue(s);
• policies, regulations, government publications, and legal cases relevant to the organization’s situation;
• academic studies reported in peer-reviewed journals about the organization, its stakeholders, or the issue(s);
• journal articles or blog posts about the organization, the industry, the sector, or similar organizations or problems;
• lists of organizational stakeholders (formal and informal leaders, unions, employees, contractors, stockholders, etc.), media contacts or representatives, beat reporters, key constituents, external opinion leaders, government regulators, legislators, and others relevant to the organization, its industry, or its situation;
• psychographic and demographic data on external and internal target publics (this will become very useful in Project 2); and
• media preferences and consumption habits of external and internal target publics.
Researching Publics
Research on the publics you’ve identified can come from a variety of sources. Public sources, like the U.S. Census Bureau or studies conducted by government, nonprofits, or NGOs, are a good first start. These sources can offer demographic information, such as the age range or average income of residents of a geographic area. You can find some of this information by browsing links in the library.
The Pew Research Center offers extensive and up-to-date national research on news habits and media and social media use. This can be very useful later when selecting tactics and channels to reach publics. Refer to Using Meltwater for Research and Evaluation as well for additional ideas.
Market research, also found in the library links, is helpful for learning about consumer preferences. Sometimes, large research firms or marketing and public relations firms will publish research findings in the form of a white paper through their website or LinkedIn. Academic journals in business, marketing, and public relations also publish studies in consumer behavior and audience attitudes (try the EBSCO Business Source Complete database).
Sometimes, the specific research you’re looking for doesn’t exist or isn’t currently available. It’s fine to note this in your secondary research summary. In pursuing a range of keyword searches, topics, and sources, you can still assemble an informative overview of the existing data, create useful questions for your target publics interviews (which you’ll conduct in Project 2), and create benchmarks for your campaign.
Next, you’ll complete a communications and social media audit that will round out your picture of your client and how it is connecting—or failing to connect—with publics.
Step 4: Complete Your Communications Audit
You’ve learned a lot about your client. You’re now going to take a look at how the client is communicating. If you’ve conducted your client meeting, you’ve begun this research already. If you haven’t yet met with your client, start your communications audit here and continue it in the meeting. Your goal with the audit is to see what your client is producing and where; in Step 5, you’ll assess how well those communications efforts are succeeding.
Auditing the client’s communications will help you identify gaps. What opportunities is your client missing? Does the messaging align with the organizational mission and vision? Is your client engaging with the right publics on the right platforms?
As you learned in Step 2, a communications audit is a survey of current and previous communications and public relations efforts produced by the client. The purpose of the audit is to get a sense of what the organization has done in the past. You’ll get a lot of this information from the client, or as much information as the client has, based on available documentation and institutional memory. Independent of the client, you can look at the client’s website to see if there’s a newsroom, blog, or other source of streaming information. Your goal here is to get a sense of the following:
• What is the client saying?
• How?
• To whom?
You’ll analyze these efforts in the next step, when you conduct a media analysis.
Take notes on anything you find. It may not be much, but that’s okay. Any gaps you see can inform your planning later on. For instance, if your client is sending all of its news releases to major national publications but missing the local gazette, this might help inform your campaign strategies.
Social Media Audit
Make sure your audit includes social as well as traditional media. The social media audit gives you an opportunity to see not only what the client is saying, but how—and whether—the client is responding to replies.
For the social media audit, scan the client’s social media accounts. Your client may have told you which platforms the organization is using, or you can conduct a Google search or browse different platforms to find all the organization’s accounts (note discontinued or “abandoned” accounts, unauthorized accounts, etc.). Also scan the client’s website for blogs and other shared media. Is the client active (posting regularly)? What is your client’s content strategy? That is, what messages is the client conveying? This is a good opportunity to see if the client is posting on social media (one-way communications) without engaging or interacting with publics through productive dialogue and responses (two-way communications).
If the client is engaging with publics on social media, is the client’s voice consistent between the post and the responses, or across posts? Sometimes, an organization will have no strategy behind its social media operations and no man-hours designated to this function. In these cases, messaging and tone can fluctuate according to whoever is writing the posts—hardly optimal for conveying organizational coherence!
Your findings in this area may inform your social media strategy. You may, for instance, identify platforms your client isn’t using but should, or creative ways of messaging your client hasn’t thought of.
Organize your notes on how the organization is communicating on traditional and social media and identify any gaps in strategy or messaging. Your notes will come in handy when you describe the internal situation of the client in Step 8.
Now, move on to Step 5, where you’ll analyze the traditional and social media coverage your client has received. This is where you’ll assess the success of your client’s communications efforts.
Step 5: Conduct a Media Analysis
Building on the research you’ve conducted, turn your attention to reviewing and analyzing media coverage of the organization and the situation. You’ll be looking at external sources, meaning that this research should not include communications created by the organization.
Traditional Media Analysis
To see how news organizations have covered your client, you can conduct searches on LexisNexis as well as on Meltwater and other platforms, such as Google Analytics. Although all these tools will direct you to articles on your client, Meltwater and other platforms go a step further. They have an algorithm that tells you whether the tone of the article was positive, neutral, or negative. You can access not only what has been written about the client, but the results of what is called a sentiment analysis. Refer to Using Meltwater for Research and Evaluation to learn more.
Conduct your searches on the various platforms using relevant keywords and search terms based on your client meeting and secondary research. Include the organization’s name, programs, and initiatives, as well as relevant issues.
You’ve compiled all the research you’ll need for now. Move on to the next step to conduct a SWOT analysis.
Step 6: Conduct a SWOT Analysis
You’ve completed an incredible amount of research. Now, it’s time to paint an overall picture of your client.
As you know, a SWOT analysis distills your research into key insights about the client’s situation.
Create a four-box table for your SWOT analysis.
In each category—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats—list at least three items based on your research. Recall that strengths and weaknesses are internal factors. Opportunities and threats are external to the organization.
In the next step, you’ll write a problem statement based on your SWOT analysis and present it to your peers.
Step 7: Write Your Problem Statement
Now that you’ve completed the SWOT analysis, draft a problem statement. This statement can describe either a problem to solve or an opportunity to take advantage of. What problem or opportunity have you found? Explain how you chose that particular problem or opportunity and what contenders you weeded out in your final assessment of the organization, publics, and situation. In the next step, you’ll compile all your research into a situation analysis report culminating in the problem statement you just wrote.
Step 8: Write Your Situation Analysis
You’ve shared your problem statement with your peers, received some feedback, and possibly made a few revisions.
Now, take the notes you’ve compiled and organize them into a situation analysis to present to your Parabolic mentor. This will be a document summarizing your research and culminating in the problem statement.
Your situation analysis will be 3–5 double-spaced pages, written in APA style. Include notes at the end from all your research efforts. These will not count toward the 3–5 pages, but will give the client more detailed information.
Follow this structure for your situation analysis:
• Background—why we’re here, why you chose this client, why now
• Internal Situation—what you found out about the organization, how it works, how it communicates, its internal stakeholders and publics, any pressures or issues you’ve uncovered
• External Situation—what you found out about the larger socioeconomic, cultural, legal, and political climate; the external stakeholders and publics; what the media is saying; what publics are saying on social media; what are the concerns and interests of the publics; what are the levels of engagement and awareness; what external pressures does the organization face
• SWOT Analysis
• Problem Statement
• Appendices—neatly formatted notes on the following:
o Client Meeting
o Secondary Research
• client organization
• issue or situation
• potential target publics
o Communications Audit
o Traditional Media Analysis
• summary of results
• analysis of results
o Social Media Analysis
• summary of results
• analysis of results
Cite your sources using APA style.