The Discovery Process

The Discovery Process

My CEO pokes his head into my office to tell me he thinks we need a company brochure and would like to set up a meeting for later in the week to discuss. When we sit down to talk details, what should be my next question as a public relations manager?

1. What information did you want included in the brochure?
2. When did you need this brochure?
3. Why do you think we need a company brochure?

These all seem reasonable questions, but it's the role of the professional communicator to consider strategy before execution, so you have to start with the "why?"  A big part of the job is asking questions and doing the research to ensure there is strategy – a reason why – behind a course of action.

After sitting down with my CEO, I learned that he recently attended a conference and noticed that other executives had materials that easily fit inside a suit jacket and gave them a place to take brief notes or quickly give out basic company information. We discussed his needs and ultimately decided to create a notepad slim enough to fit in a pocket that had the company logo and some basic contact info and lines for note-taking. It was less expensive and time-consuming to create, and better met the need.

For larger initiatives, a more in-depth discovery process is needed to find the "why" and explore other information relevant to development of a strong strategy.

Source: Mary Sterenberg, https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/writelikeapro/part/chapter-3-setting-strategy-finding-the-why/
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License.

Do the Research

Marty McDonald, president of Fahlgren Mortine, a full-service integrated marketing agency headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, says the discovery phase is where they start with their clients to get back to that question of "why". They look at the past and current state of the company or initiative and consider what's working and what isn't.

"We're given permission to be curious and get back to the questions that matter. It sets the foundation for everything we do from that point forward," McDonald says. And this applies to not just working with new clients, but new campaigns or phases of work with existing clients.

In the video below, McDonald explores what this discovery process looks like at Fahlgren Mortine.

Understand Your Brand

All communications, internal and external, should rest on a clear and unified understanding of an organization's brand. So what is a brand? Doug Frazier, former chief strategy officer of Columbus-based public relations agency FrazierHeiby, gave a definition of "brand" in a presentation to students that I liked and adopted. He said it was the emotional response customers have when they hear your name or see your logo.

Consider iconic and established brands like Coke and Apple. Emotions and images come to mind immediately at the mention of those brands. Smaller and younger organizations, like teenagers struggling to "find themselves," must proactively explore who and what they want to be and make calculated decisions to help define their brands. A firm understanding of a brand translates into greater consistency with messaging, images and actions that build trust and understanding with consumers.

Identify Audiences

With so many ways to share messages – from the language used to the channel where it appears – knowing the intended audience and what these people want, need and care about is an important area for discovery.

When you ask an organization about their target audience or "ideal" customer, many will say "everyone". That may seem like a good answer in terms of sales volume or making many different types of customers feel welcome. But it's a poor answer in terms of strategic public relations (and ultimately an organization's bottom line in many cases).

Identifying a target audience doesn't mean an organization won't provide goods or services to other people. It just allows the organization to be more intentional and effective in reaching or building a relationship with a certain group, whether it's for a shorter-term campaign or as long-term customers.

Audiences can be external or internal, positive or negative, consumers or influencers or media with the ability to sway consumers. The discovery process identifies past, current and potential audiences. It then digs deeper into those audiences identified as a target for the organization or specific initiative.

With a firm understanding of both your brand and your target audiences, you can seek out points of overlap or ways your organization can integrate into an audience's lifestyle or appeal to specific wants/interests/need (WIN). As the discovery process moves into the planning process, this information will support development of messaging, visuals and platforms tailored to the specific audience.

For example…

A veterinarian who specializes in guinea pigs might also care for many other animals. But if the vet identifies guinea pig owners as a key target audience, there are some strategic things he or she can do to build awareness locally that the practice knows a lot about guinea pigs.

The vet clinic still welcomes other pet owners, but its strategic public relations and marketing efforts focus specifically on guinea pig owners. The increase in business from targeting guinea pig owners alone likely would surpass increased business from more general efforts to reach pet owners (especially when they could be lost in the clutter of competing vet clinics spreading similar messages). It's also a win for the target audience. Guinea pig owners likely prefer a vet who specializes in their animal.

How the Pros Do It: Sonoma County Responds to Shifting Traveler Priorities

Fahlgren Mortine worked with Sonoma County Tourism in 2022 to encourage more tourism following the pandemic. Consumer priorities had shifted and research showed an increased consumer focus on personal wellness, authenticity and connecting deeply to culture and community, equity, responsibility and sustainability.

Sonoma County Tourism also needed to refine its core audience and target travelers who were open to wellness that was both personal and collective. Fahlgren Mortine helped SCT identify a specific "responsible traveler" audience and included demographic breakdown, behaviors and motivations of this audience to be considered across all campaign activities.

Targeting this audience, SCT launched a "Life Opens Up" campaign that positioned the destination as a place where life could open up following the pandemic through one-of-a-kind experiences. They showcased Sonoma County’s sustainable food and wine offerings, robust mix of outdoor activities, unique and immersive wellness experiences and laid back luxury. The campaign resulted in more visitors and higher spending from visitors in Sonoma County as well as media coverage on SCT’s focus on responsible travel and sustainability.

View a Fahlgren Mortine case study to learn more about the campaign’s success.

Target Specific Objectives

My family likes to play games. Whether it's a board game or a card game, whenever someone introduces a new game it always works best to state the object of the game. "You want to get rid of all of your cards". "You want to complete the most routes and stockpile the most points". With that object in mind, it's a lot easier to learn other details of the game and maybe even win.

The same goes for strategic message development. With strong objectives – knowing the "point" and what needs to be achieved – the messaging can tie back to tangible results that support business objectives. In addition to analyzing branding and identifying audiences, the discovery process should clarify the short- and long-term objectives of a specific campaign or effort as well as larger company objectives. These could be business objectives such as increasing sales, establishing brand awareness, improving productivity or driving business during slow times of the year. Or they could be relationship-based objectives like creating repeat customers, improving employee retention, changing perceptions or encouraging trials of a product or service.

How the Pros Do It: Overcoming Apathy to Register New Organ Donors

Fahlgren Mortine worked with Donate Life Ohio and the Ohio Department of Health on an award-winning campaign with three specific objectives: increase consumer engagement, drive traffic to a website and add 65,000 new organ donors to the Ohio Donor Registry in six months.

With these objectives in mind, the Fahlgren team embarked on discovery. A survey conducted several years earlier by Donate Life Ohio and the University of Cincinnati identified the top three myths people associate with organ donation. A successful myth-busting campaign addressed these issues but registration numbers had leveled again and the groups needed a new effort to challenge the returning apathy.  Fahlgren faced the choice of mining existing data for new insights or spending campaign budget on new research.

The team looked into the existing survey data, paying specific attention to respondents who said they would NOT register as a donor. They noticed that nearly a third of those people didn't have a specific reason for saying no. The data also showed that 86 percent of respondents said real life stories of organ recipients were an important factor when choosing whether to be a donor. Read this Fahlgren Mortine case study to see how clear objectives and a strong discovery phase resulted in a campaign that achieved its goals, won recognition from the Public Relations Society of America and ultimately saved lives.

PR Pro Advice

Stay curious. Have your eyes up. I like to use an analogy from race car driving. Today in communication and marketing we're going so fast. And if you're going that fast and you're looking right at the road in front of you, you're going to crash. But if you have your eyes up and farther down the road, you'll make better decisions and more thoughtful decisions about where you need to go.  Pay attention to what's going on in the world around you: What brands do you think are doing well? What are headlines in news and what do you think about them? Show curiosity and a point of view. And look for variety in internships and coursework. Bring an integrated perspective and think differently.