seven reasons comms getting involved early is a good idea
As we put together commsforchange14 there's a regular complaint... comms is always asked to come along too late. In this post we put forward seven things you'll find if you start early or late.
by Dan Slee
We've all been there when the email comes in with news of a major launch or announcement the next day at 6pm the night before.
You are already batting with one hand behind your back before you even start to look at what the project is about.
But to be really clear, what happens when you as a communications or PR person get involved sooner rather than later?
In this box we set out seven different scenarios and play out what happens if you plan your comms early or leave it late.
As you can see, getting to work earlier gives you the best chance of success. Leaving it to the last minute will only mean that you are playing catch-up and there's a chance that key decisions have already been made.
When faced with this scenario, your input as a comms person is limited to that of a glorified shorthand typist rather than a professional.
Later this week we'll look at how to increase the chance of getting involved earlier.
Dan Slee is co-founder of comms2point0.
Reader Comments (2)
Another top post by Dan. For so many projects comms is a vital ingredient but as Dan says is so often over looked until the last minute. I think my big projects have suffered greatly by me not considering the comms angle from the outset and I wish I had a comms person available for my own projects. But if you are in an organisation that has comms people then use them. Dan says that you have a better chance of success if you involve comms early. I would go further than that. Get comms wrong and you could have wasted you time. After all, you can build the best website in the world, but without a comms strategy to tell people about it then the whole this would be a failure.
Thanks, Peter.
I wonder what the answer is to getting comms involved sooner? There's probably no golden bullet but it seems as though there's maybe a list of things you could do.
From outside of comms looking in what would you suggest?