This assignment needs to be in AP style including references.
THER ARE TWO FILES THAT WILL BE DOWNLOADED WITH THIS ASSIGNMENT. Nazar Ops CommsPlan1 needs to be edited. Under Timeline, Budget, and Evaluation information need to be added according to instructions. Also the Parabolic Business Memo. Lastly, compose a TWEET. Please read all instructions carefully. All work needs to be done on these two files according to instructions. These files will be sent back to me with completed work. any questions please reach out to me. Thanks.
STEP 1
Great news! Due to your efforts, Parabolic has convinced NazarOps of the value of adding a professional strategic communications function to their team. Theresa stops by your workspace, triumph in her eye.
“You guys nailed it. They totally reversed their position—from being barely willing to talk with us to releasing a blizzard of invites. Of course,” she smiles, “you know what this means. A new assignment for you. This is a solo project, by the way … we’ve diverted your team members to other projects.”
Later that day you get a brief from Theresa with more information.
Memo From Theresa Bauman
NazarOps Project Brief
Click here to read the brief.
A Little More Context
This project will familiarize you with the elements of a communications plan, how they relate to one another, and how to evaluate them. You’ll learn about messaging, strategies, and tactics, and develop some of these elements yourself in helping the client reach out to the younger members of the military.
Before you revise the NazarOps plan, you’ll assess it and share your thoughts with the other junior account executives. Do this by Day 3 of the project so that you can get started on your research and revision efforts. Any feedback you receive, whether from Theresa or from your colleagues, will help inform your approach to the plan. Your main focus is the additional publics identified by Theresa, but you may find other areas of the plan that could stand improvement.
As an addendum to this project, you’ll also draft a career pathway plan. Parabolic is keen on professional development and, now that you’ve completed a few projects, Theresa wants you to spend a few minutes thinking about your future. You’ll send her a career goal and some objectives based on research you completed in Projects 1 and 3. Theresa may have some guidance for you regarding your goal in Week 11.
You’re going to review the NazarOps communications plan and share your preliminary thoughts with your colleagues. Do this within the next three days so that you can check your perceptions against others and get feedback before you begin your revision efforts. This step will involve a fair amount of reading as you learn about or refresh your knowledge of the parts of the communications plan. Knowing what the components of the plan accomplish and how they interact is vital; you’ll be working on communications plans of one type or other at each stage of your employment at Parabolic.
Remember that, as part of the revision, Theresa wants you to add messages and at least one strategy with associated tactics for what she believes are two neglected publics: millennials and Generation Z. In your assessment of the plan, first verify Theresa’s finding: Are these publics, or audiences, absent from the plan? If you added them, how would this affect the plan? Although you may find other areas of improvement, your review should focus on the two target publics and the potential impact of their inclusion.
young members of the military in camouflage talking and laughing
asiseeit / E+ Collection / Getty
Theresa sends an email to share the plan and guide you in your appraisal.
Email
FROM: Theresa Bauman, senior account executive
TO: You
SUBJECT: NazarOps plan
Good morning! Attached is the NazarOps comms plan.
My recommended course of action is to conduct two passes of the plan. The first pass is a gut check. Does the plan make sense? Will it work? Then, after reviewing the other materials I’m including here, read the plan more carefully. If you need to add a stakeholder group, does each part of the plan still work as-is? What might need to change? Do you see anything else that needs tweaking?
The Communications Plan gives an overview of how strategic communications professionals use this type of plan, its components, and what it’s meant to accomplish.
Here are some questions to ask whenever you’re creating, evaluating, or making changes to a communications plan.
Situation Analysis: What is the current situation? What internal and external influences and processes affect the client’s (DoD’s) ability accomplish its mission? This is largely based on a SWOT analysis, which assesses strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities. The situation analysis helps NazarOps determine the problem that the communications team can help solve.
Goals: How do you know when the communications team’s work is done? Goals are often aspirational statements that describe an end-state. Make sure anything you add to the plan is aligned with the organizational goals.
Target Publics: Are all publics identified and present in the plan? Is there a strategy in place to effectively communicate your messages with each public? Will your products (tactics) enable your strategies? Review our resources on segmentation of stakeholders and other publics.
Objectives: Are the objectives SMART objectives: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound? If you look at the evaluation plan, do the objectives align with the evaluation metrics? Are they written so as to produce the right kind of metric? The evaluation metrics should tell you whether you achieved the objectives. If they do not, what kinds of changes might need to be made?
Messages: Messages need to take into account the relevant publics and their concerns, interests, and cultural context. Are these the right messages to send, given the identified publics? Are there items to add or omit? What would you suggest regarding messaging (developing messages)?
Strategies: Do the strategies answer the question, “How will the objectives be accomplished?” Do they identify the desired result in the target publics (persuading, informing, etc.)? Is there a strategy for each objective? Is there a strategy that works for each target public? If you add new publics, can you leverage the existing strategies to some degree?
Tactics: Will the products created reach and be attended to by the target publics? Are there tactics for each public identified? Are there tactics for each strategy?
Evaluation: Will this evaluation tell you what you need to know about the achievement of the objectives and the attainment of the goal? Look at this in relation to the new publics you’ve identified.
Note that the Timeline and Budget sections of the NazarOps plan are blank; just ignore them. NazarOps doesn’t want us to draft these until we have a contract with the DoD.
You’re going to review the NazarOps communications plan and share your preliminary thoughts with your colleagues. Do this within the next three days so that you can check your perceptions against others and get feedback before you begin your revision efforts. This step will involve a fair amount of reading as you learn about or refresh your knowledge of the parts of the communications plan. Knowing what the components of the plan accomplish and how they interact is vital; you’ll be working on communications plans of one type or other at each stage of your employment at Parabolic.
Remember that, as part of the revision, Theresa wants you to add messages and at least one strategy with associated tactics for what she believes are two neglected publics: millennials and Generation Z. In your assessment of the plan, first verify Theresa’s finding: Are these publics, or audiences, absent from the plan? If you added them, how would this affect the plan? Although you may find other areas of improvement, your review should focus on the two target publics and the potential impact of their inclusion.
young members of the military in camouflage talking and laughing
asiseeit / E+ Collection / Getty
Theresa sends an email to share the plan and guide you in your appraisal.
Email
FROM: Theresa Bauman, senior account executive
TO: You
SUBJECT: NazarOps plan
Good morning! Attached is the NazarOps comms plan.
My recommended course of action is to conduct two passes of the plan. The first pass is a gut check. Does the plan make sense? Will it work? Then, after reviewing the other materials I’m including here, read the plan more carefully. If you need to add a stakeholder group, does each part of the plan still work as-is? What might need to change? Do you see anything else that needs tweaking?
The Communications Plan gives an overview of how strategic communications professionals use this type of plan, its components, and what it’s meant to accomplish.
Here are some questions to ask whenever you’re creating, evaluating, or making changes to a communications plan.
Situation Analysis: What is the current situation? What internal and external influences and processes affect the client’s (DoD’s) ability accomplish its mission? This is largely based on a SWOT analysis, which assesses strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities. The situation analysis helps NazarOps determine the problem that the communications team can help solve.
Goals: How do you know when the communications team’s work is done? Goals are often aspirational statements that describe an end-state. Make sure anything you add to the plan is aligned with the organizational goals.
Target Publics: Are all publics identified and present in the plan? Is there a strategy in place to effectively communicate your messages with each public? Will your products (tactics) enable your strategies? Review our resources on segmentation of stakeholders and other publics.
Objectives: Are the objectives SMART objectives: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound? If you look at the evaluation plan, do the objectives align with the evaluation metrics? Are they written so as to produce the right kind of metric? The evaluation metrics should tell you whether you achieved the objectives. If they do not, what kinds of changes might need to be made?
Messages: Messages need to take into account the relevant publics and their concerns, interests, and cultural context. Are these the right messages to send, given the identified publics? Are there items to add or omit? What would you suggest regarding messaging (developing messages)?
Strategies: Do the strategies answer the question, “How will the objectives be accomplished?” Do they identify the desired result in the target publics (persuading, informing, etc.)? Is there a strategy for each objective? Is there a strategy that works for each target public? If you add new publics, can you leverage the existing strategies to some degree?
Tactics: Will the products created reach and be attended to by the target publics? Are there tactics for each public identified? Are there tactics for each strategy?
Evaluation: Will this evaluation tell you what you need to know about the achievement of the objectives and the attainment of the goal? Look at this in relation to the new publics you’ve identified.
Note that the Timeline and Budget sections of the NazarOps plan are blank; just ignore them. NazarOps doesn’t want us to draft these until we have a contract with the DoD.
Step 2
Project 4: Communications Plan
Step 2: Research and Prioritize Publics
young female member of the military in a car, texting. Don’t worry, the car is stopped and the door open.
Sean Murphy / Image Source Collection / Getty
Now that you’ve completed an appraisal of the NazarOps plan, you can begin conducting research to inform your revision efforts. You’ll investigate your publics and also prioritize them to help NazarOps (and the DoD) allocate resources.
In Project 3, you performed research in order to put together a credible presentation on your field for NazarOps. In this project, you’ll conduct research to guide the firm in helping its prospective client meet goals and objectives—a much more common application of research skills in the field. Before you begin, review how research is used in strategic communications. The readings give you an overview of the role and importance of research in the field, and they delve into some methodologies you’ll use later on at Parabolic.
Now, research the target publics Theresa identified (millennials and Generation Z) and how these publics access information. What are their media consumption habits? What are their preferred sources of entertainment, and what do they see as a credible source?
Your research should help you answer the following questions:
Why should these publics care about the NazarOps simulator? What should we say about the simulator to these publics? How should we frame the conversation? What will the publics find relevant and interesting about our offering? (messages)
How do we approach these publics? Do we want to engage them? To inform or persuade them? To position the NazarOps product as “state of the art”? Through what outlets (channels) or individuals (influencers) do we want to reach them? (strategies)
What particular products will these publics find credible? How can we operationalize the strategies? (tactics)
You’ll continue this research in the next step as you develop these elements of the plan, but start out by looking at demographic data, publications (not just communications-oriented, but IT, military, gamer, etc.), and other sources to get a general sense of your publics. Meltwater might assist with this; you’ll use it again in Step 3 as you start selecting your tactics. Refer to Using Meltwater for Research and Evaluation to learn more.
After you’ve learned about millennials and Gen Z, consider them in relation to the other target publics identified in the NazarOps plan: DoD acquisition officials, TRADOC leadership, congressional staff, and the Texas congressional delegation. These stakeholders have been segmented by NazarOps, with strategies chosen tailored to their concerns and interests. Once publics have been segmented, it’s important to prioritize your publics so that you can determine where to focus your resources. Which strategies are most important to implement? If a strategy had to be cut because of time, budget, or resource constraints, which should it be? To prioritize publics and direct the flow of resources, it helps to consider the impact of the communications plan on each public—and the impact of each public on the goals and objectives of the firm.
You may have noticed in your assessment of the NazarOps plan that the publics were not prioritized. Now that you know more about Generation Z and millennials, determine how you would prioritize all the stakeholders. You can consider Gen Z and millennials as one public. The situation analysis in the NazarOps plan can assist with this, as well as any analyses you performed in your own research.
STEP 3
Step 3:
Develop Messages, Strategies, and Tactics
You’ve performed some research on your two target publics, millennials and Generation Z. Now, you’ll develop messages, strategies, and tactics for these publics to add to the NazarOps communications plan.
Messages
As you plan your messages, re-evaluate whether the messages identified in the NazarOps plan are sufficient for the two new target publics. If not, could the existing messages be modified to accommodate the new publics? If you think new messages are needed, what would you add? What information will interest the publics? You might want to refer to the company and product profile in Theresa’s memo in the Start Here section.
Write any messaging frameworks you’d like to include in the NazarOps plan. Note why you’re adding them—you’ll put this in your memo to NazarOps. Also note where you think the existing messages work for these demographics.
Strategies
Take another look at the NazarOps objectives, then conduct another review of the strategies. Will the existing strategies work for the new publics? Do you want to change these strategies or add more? If you want to include new strategies, consider the following questions:
How should the messages be communicated? In what context will they best be absorbed by your target publics?
Which influencers or channels should be used to transmit the messages?
What is the desired result of the strategy? To inform, persuade, engage? Thinking back to some of the communications theories you’ve studied, do you want your publics to change from one type of public to another?
Do your new or adapted strategies align with the objectives in the communications plan? Are any changes needed? If so, would you recommend that new objectives be added?
The Parabolic material on engaging with the social media landscape should help you in considering channels.
Use Meltwater to identify some of the appropriate media products or platforms for your publics—for instance, gamer publications and relevant influencers. Visit the Parabolic discussion topic Meltwater: Guidance, Questions, and Discoveries if you have questions or advice. If you would like to use another analytics tool or another means of searching, the discussion area is a good place to discuss alternatives.
Write any strategies you’d like to add to the NazarOps plan. Note why you added them—you’ll include this in your memo to NazarOps. Also note where you think the existing strategies work for the two new demographics.
Tactics
As with messages and strategies, take another look at the tactics in the plan. Will some of these work for the new publics? If you created new strategies, or modified existing strategies, how would you put these into practice? Keep in mind that each strategy usually has several tactics.
Ask yourself the following questions:
Should the communication of new or existing messages be timed in any particular way?
What is the best product to transmit the message?
What length should the product be? Consider the attention span of your publics.
What is the best form for your messages to take: testimonials, emotional appeals, statistics, stories, dramatic portrayals?
photo of a young male member of the military studying from a book and looking at his phone
Roberto Westbrook / Getty
Next, you’ll produce a short communications product—a tweet—for the millennials and Generation Z based on one of your messages. This is your chance to show how you would craft and deliver bite-sized yet effective products for key publics. You’ll include this in your memo at the end of the project as a sample of your work.
STEP 4
Step 4: Compose a Tweet
You’ve considered your messages, strategies, and tactics for millennials and Gen Z. Now, create an example of how you would put these into practice.
Regardless of whether you chose Twitter as one of your tactics, produce a tweet based on one of your messages. Keep in mind tone, word choice, your intent (e.g., to inform, persuade, engage, spur discussion), and your technique (e.g., use data, tell a story, appeal emotionally).
STEP 5
Step 5: Develop a Career Pathway Plan (Career Connections)
photo of a man walking up stairs with a briefcase
Prasit photo / Moment Collection / Getty
In Project 1, you used career exploration tools to browse the career paths and positions available to communications professionals. You considered where you want to be at the end of your graduate program, or five years after that. You thought about what kind of job you would seek the next time you were on the market.
In Project 3, you considered tactics for convincing others of your professional value—an important skill no matter where you are in your career—and learned about certifications you could attain, professional organizations you could join, and blogs and publications you could read to keep yourself up-to-date on the industry.
Now is your opportunity to put it all together in a career pathway plan. Follow the steps below to assemble a plan for Theresa in 12-point Times New Roman single-spaced font. Your document should take up around half a page and certainly no more than one page. With the thought you’ve already put into this, you shouldn’t need to spend more than half an hour composing it.
New Message: Theresa Bauman
I appreciate your taking the time to put together this plan; it will help me give you tips and recommendations during our Week 11 performance review. I’m interested to see what your career goal is and how you’re thinking of reaching it.
Career Pathway Plan Steps
Identify a career goal.
Conduct a gap analysis.
Identify at least three objectives that will help you achieve your goal.
Draft a plan for meeting the objectives.
What position will you seek the next time you look for a job? If you don’t have a specific job title in mind, or you want to refresh your sense of what’s “out there,” see the Career Connections box below these steps. It’s fine to choose the same job title you have now—you might want to seek the same position elsewhere to test your skills, hone new ones, or try out a different environment. You might even want to stay where you are but increase your value to the organization.
back to tab
Career Connections
Here are some resources that might help you in drafting your plan.
First, make sure you’re registered with CareerQuest.
The Strategies for Career Goals page provides links to O*Net, CareerOneStop, and other helpful job-seeking sites.
Candid Career, one of the Career Research Tools in the CareerQuest Career Tool Box, is a treasure trove of interviews with real people in various industries. Rummage around in this site; you’ll find lots to explore. The Skills Gap videos might be particularly helpful to you here.
STEP 6
Step 6: Revise the Communications Plan
photo of a young woman sitting at a desk writing in a notebook
Westend61 / Getty
You appraised the NazarOps communications plan, compared notes with your peers, developed some ideas for messages, strategies, and tactics, wrote a glimmering tweet, and came up with a brief career pathway plan of your own.
Since your initial assessment, you’ve learned more about publics, messages, strategies, tactics, and the other parts of the communications plan. You’ve prioritized your publics. You’ve considered goals, evaluated the SMARTness of the objectives, possibly conducted some research on the situation, and reflected on whether the evaluation metrics make sense and align with the objectives.
If you haven’t done so already, download the NazarOps comms plan. Save it and turn on Track Changes so that NazarOps can review your suggestions; the firm will want to carefully consider each change and accept or reject it. Go over the plan armed with all the feedback and new information you have. Revise and add to the plan as needed, keeping notes on what you do so that you can explain it to NazarOps in your memo. NazarOps has sent a pretty clean document, but if you find any errors in grammar, usage, formatting, or mechanics, make those changes as well.
To indicate your prioritization of publics, create the subheaders Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary (if there are tertiary publics) in the Publics section of the plan and then include the relevant publics in those sections.
STEP 7
You’ve revised the plan. Now, refer to your notes to draft a succinct memo to NazarOps explaining what you did and why, including your prioritization of the publics. Discuss what you liked about the plan and be diplomatic about what you think needed changing; remember, Parabolic wants to partner with NazarOps on a large contract! If you can draw from your Project 3 research on theory, history, laws, and ethics to explain any of your changes, be sure to do this; the NazarOps COO will take this as further evidence of the value of contracting with your firm.
Theresa sends you a template to use for your memo.
Email Attachment: Theresa Bauman
Here’s our template; save this so you have it handy the next time we send notes to a client.
Parabolic Business Memo Template
If you need assistance, review guidelines on writing a memo to make sure your document conforms to professional standards.
Also perform any final revisions of your career pathway plan. This is for Theresa to use in your performance review next week; she’s eager to give you tips based on your professional goal and objectives.
To keep yourself on track, complete the communications plan revision, memo, and career pathway plan by the end of Week 10.
Send the communications plan revision and memo to NazarOps, and the career pathway plan to Theresa.
Last Completed Projects
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