Persuasive Public Campaigns

Chapter 7 introduces the topic of persuasive public campaigns with a case study involving DoorDash’s #OpenForDelivery campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter content then opens by defining public relations and discussing the elements of advertising: emotion, logic, and credibility. This chapter explains the advertising process through Yale’s five-stage developmental model; this model includes identification, legitimacy, participation, penetration, and distribution. Then, the types of advertising are discussed, which include product-oriented advertising, person-oriented advertising, and idea-oriented advertising. Next, the text prefaces the elements of public relations (PRs) by explaining the definition of PR as well as an overview of the history of PR; this overview includes the debate of when PR began, Ivy Lee’s code of ethics, and Edward Bernays’ development of the term PR. Then, this chapter outlines the PR process by discussing the RPIE model: planning, implementation, and evaluation. Other topics discussed in this chapter include the types of persuasive PR campaigns, including community relations, consumer relations, employee relations, and public issues; crisis management, including the types of crises, crisis response strategies, image restoration strategies, and apologia; and new media and persuasive public campaigns, including two-way communication, relationship building, far-reaching strategies, and cost-effective persuasion.