Urban Communications Plan for Oakland: Strategy & SMART Goals

Stakeholder Groups and Communications Objectives

There are essentially three stakeholder groups for this communications plan. The first is the City itself: whatever the plan communicates will hold City agents accountable for following through on its promises. The second group consists of incoming residents and those considering a move to Oakland. False controversy over migration can dissuade people from coming to Oakland and investing in the city. The third group — current residents, especially those who are resistant to change — is a tertiary concern for the plan. The second group is the most important target at this stage because the City wants to encourage continued investment that will create jobs, decrease crime, and improve quality of life.

These primary stakeholders may be newer residents of Oakland, but they may also be people considering relocating there. Perhaps most important are those who are watching the area's shifting demographics and considering starting a business in Oakland. By leveraging lower rents, Oakland can begin attracting start-ups, artisanal businesses, and other engines of job creation.

SMART Goals for the Communications Plan

The communications plan must have specific goals. An uncritical commitment to SMART goals, however, ignores the fact that not all knowledge is captured in finite, measurable numbers. There is nothing smart about blindly assigning numbers and calling them goals — there must be a "why." The first step is to consider the overarching objective: to shift the narrative from one that frames newcomers and change as inherently harmful, to one that embraces Oakland's emergence as a modern city.

Global cities around the world are facing the same pressures — sharp increases in housing costs, rapidly changing neighborhoods, and resistance from residents unprepared to adapt. Oakland cannot stop global economic forces, and its messaging must not convey sympathy for efforts to do so. The City needs to change the tone of the conversation, emphasizing that newcomers are diverse, that they are families, that they create jobs, bring money into the city, and contribute to lower crime rates and a higher quality of life.

A key element of effective SMART goals is knowing where you stand today. This is especially important for a plan aimed at changing perceptions, since goals will have a starting point and an ending point. You cannot increase something by 10% if you do not know the current level. Formative research is therefore required before SMART goals are set, so that evaluative research can later be compared to that baseline (Macnamara, 2011).

Specific goals can then be tied to this overarching objective. First, there should be measurable output goals associated with each element of the communications plan — targeting the number of tweets, Facebook posts, ad placements, blog posts, and similar outputs. Output targets hold the communications department accountable to a consistent level of production, ensuring the program is not overtaken by other priorities. Goals should also address measurement and testing — for example, setting targets for the number of A/B tests conducted, and ensuring that a meaningful number of trackable metrics are developed and monitored. "Measurable" does not simply mean "quantitative"; it means that the metric must be accurately measurable in practice, which is harder than it sounds for complex communications objectives.

A sample set of starting goals for this communications plan includes:

• One blog post per week on the City website highlighting the positive dimensions of change
• Five tweets per week on a positive topic related to Oakland's changes
• Increase Twitter followers by 100% within one year
• Increase positive Twitter interactions by 50% within one year
• Increase website traffic to the Invest Oakland portal by 200% within one year
• Increase positive opinion of Oakland among Bay Area residents living outside the city by 10% within one year (requires a baseline survey)
• Shift the balance between positive and negative third-party media coverage by 20% within one year
• Increase awareness among current Oakland residents of available City services (e.g., job training programs) to 75% within one year
• Increase awareness among renters of their legal rights to 50% within one year
• Add one local Oakland high school graduate to the communications team

These are a sample only. It is expected that a complete plan would include a greater number of goals, covering both outputs and results. Results-driven goals are important because they provide focus for messaging and establish meaningful targets. Communications managers can adjust tactics when their approaches or messaging are not producing results (Bradley, 2017).

Conclusion

A communications plan that seeks to change the narrative about a city and the changes occurring within it must be comprehensive, durable, and supported by adequate staffing for content creation and dissemination. With those internal foundations in place, clear messaging and a compelling vision must be established at the core of the plan in order to galvanize both internal and external stakeholders. By setting annual goals that can be broken into quarterly targets, establishing the means by which those goals will be measured, and assigning thematic priorities to each quarter that connect to the broader annual strategy, the day-to-day work of the communications team becomes clearly linked to the overarching objective.

All City staff — especially those in senior positions — will play a role in executing the strategy, making high-level buy-in essential. With a clear overarching objective, a robust set of SMART goals distributed across teams and quarters, and effective measures including formative research in place, the City will have the foundations of an effective urban communications plan.

References

Anderson, L. & Anderson, D. (2015). Six faulty assumptions about organizational change. Change Leaders' Network. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from http://changeleadersnetwork.com/free-resources/six-faulty-assumptions-about-change-communications

Bradley, J. (2017). Measuring communications objectives. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/measuring-communications-objectives-74909.html

ILO (n.d.). Guide to writing SMART goals. International Labour Organization. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_mas/---hrd/documents/instructionalmaterial/wcms_393392.pdf

Macnamara, J. (2011). PR metrics: How to measure public relations and corporate communication. AMEC. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from

Stucky, S. (2014). Do you know your communications objectives? Well Said Communications. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from http://www.wellsaidcommunications.ca/communications-objectives/

Westminster (2011). Evaluating your communications tools: What works, what doesn't — The Westminster Model. City of Westminster. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from http://www3.westminster.gov.uk/Newdocstores/publications_store/communications/evaluating_your_comms_aw_lr.pdf