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- STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS
- Introduction
- Audiences
- Channels & Vehicles
- Strategy
- Plan
Audiences
EXTERNAL AUDIENCES
Your Province, its areas and their activities have the potential to have impact on a wide range of people and organisations. The audiences we aim to reach may vary depending on the nature of the particular information being communicated. The following list may not be exhaustive but certainly gives food for thought:
Residents in the vicinity of your Masonic Halls
Voluntary organisations and groups within the wider community
School, hospitals, libraries, colleges, Universities, museums, cultural heritage centres
Local businesses
Government and District / Parish Council Offices
Community Leaders
Churches and local religious institutions
The media – press, radio and television – local and national
Organisations with similar interests and values – Rotary, Round Table etc
Visitors, Tourists and Information Centres
Specific groups – young, disabled, elderly people etc
Guests at social and charity events
Potential candidates and their families invited to open days and white table events
Internet browsers
Additional Masonic Orders
Other Provinces and UGLE
The best audiences to target may not always be the most obvious ones. Targeting audiences, like the press, might not necessarily help achieve our objectives. We may all like a higher media profile, yet activities aimed towards this might ultimately be self-serving and only communications driven, with no wider impact. They can even have a negative effect.
People attach more weight to messages that come from people they trust. Media coverage and awareness of an issue tend to evolve in a predictable pattern. Public opinion can be shaped over time by repeated messages in the news media but, the real source of enduring values and the greatest influence over what the public thinks, comes from the familiar faces and trusted voices of those closest to them: Family, Extended Family, Close Friends and Associates, Clergy, Doctors etc. Newspapers, Direct Mail, Internet and mass media are important, but less so.
So while we will continue to seek coverage in the local press etc, it is wrong to think that our message is reaching the public simply because a few favourable stories appear in the news. The media can help shape the attitudes of someone who has had no direct experience of Freemasonry; however, -the average person will look back to an inner circle of friends and family to sort out conflicting information to reinforce their beliefs.
Thus your strategy may primarily focus on activities and messages given through personal experiences to help build and mobilise support more quickly and effectively. The brethren of your Province are best situated to communicate to the wider world: the positive aspects of Freemasonry, the privileges associated with being a member and the good work that we do. They can, also, help dispel the myths and fantasies drawn against our Order over many years.
Simply communicating this to your brethren may not be enough. They need to be ‘marketed’ to in order for them to ‘buy into’ their Lodge or Chapter and the Province. They need to feel proud of being a freemason, proud of their Hall and feel part of the organisation as a whole. This process begins with awareness, being informed and understanding the message. Once this message is truly accepted, brethren may then be motivated into actively promoting the message externally.
MESSAGES
Key messages, whatever they may be, need to be aimed at the appropriate audience. To maximise impact our messages need constant repetition and remember that communication is about story telling – interesting narrative, human stories and arresting imagery that will emotionally capture the audience.