Assume you are the PR executive for the Reach Community Café. Develop a brief backgrounder of the Reach Community Café and include a description of its key stakeholders. Discuss the importance of strategic communication for Reach Community Café and evaluate.
About the Cafe
|
What |
Community café – Reach Café |
|
When |
Started in 2017 |
|
Why |
To provide support and social group |
|
Who |
To the senior citizens |
|
Where |
Bukit Batok, Singapore |
|
How |
Initiative by Reach community center |
Reach community service society is a charitable organization based out of Singapore. The organization was built with the aim of helping the underprivileged. Reach community café has been built in October 2017. The café is unique and one of a kind. It is entirely run by senior citizens of the country (Straits Times, 2017). The basic idea is remove these citizens out of their isolation and help them build a social circle and support system they can rely upon. The café has no paid workers and is entirely run by volunteers (The New Paper, 2017). The café is run by the seniors of the city for the seniors of the city. The café is located in a rather centralized area of Singapore, Bukit Batok. This report throws light on the target market as well as the marketing and public relations strategy that can be adopted by Reach community café in order to reach out to a wider audience and set the right positioning for their incredible endeavor.
Key Stakeholders
Stakeholder of any organization includes all the people who are directly or indirectly related to the organization. Stakeholders form the backbone of any organization and hence it is imperative to identify them and understand their needs. The key stakeholders for Reach community café are as below:
Strategic communication
In order to set the right market positioning as well as an effective brand image, strategic communication and promotion tools are required to ensure a wider brand awareness (Ver?i?, 2016). This is important to every brand as effective communication strategies can lead to increased customer footfall. For a café as unique as Reach community café, the marketing strategies adopted must also be unique owing to a budget crunch. However, in order to fulfill the aim of helping out every senior citizen of the country, it is imperative that reach café adopts effective promotional strategies to enhance brand awareness. The strategic communication strategies of the firm will also help them gain interested investors and donors from different parts of the country. Strategic communication is very crucial as the target market of reach community café is unique in nature.
Corporate reputation
Corporate reputation is the collective judgment of people about various aspects of the organization. For effective brand positioning, it is recommended that organizations must work towards securing a positive corporate reputation. Reach café has been putting efforts at ensuring an effective corporate reputation. Some of the efforts are as below:
Recommended communication strategies
The café has opened up rather recently and hence has not largely indulged in public relations activity on a larger scale. In order to increase their reach and be of service to a larger number of seniors, the following strategies are recommended for enhanced communications and improved brand image.
Promotion during Reach community services society events
The biggest advantage of the reach café is the strong brand name that it belongs to. Reach community services society in Singapore is a leading name and is well known for the considerable and highly effective work done by the society. RCSS organizes an appreciation day event every year where all of the donors, investors and volunteers are gathered and appreciated for their consistent service (Reach community services society, 2018). This event would be a perfect event to reach out to all the existing investors and volunteers and enhance their awareness about the reach community café. Event marketing is often used by organizations to promote their products or services to a select invited audience through personal interaction with them under a single roof (Lidback & Svensson, 2015).
Social media
Senior citizens are not active on social media and hence they cannot be directly targeted. However many young men and women are largely active on many social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. This young set of people could be informed about the café so that they would bring their grandparents and other senior citizens that they are acquainted with. These young people could also be motivated to volunteer at the café. In the present world, the reach of social media is vast and hence marketing through social media platforms has largely benefitted many leading organizations to enhance their brand awareness (Tuten & Solomon, 2017). Therefore it is largely recommended that reach café must work towards enhancing its social media presence through making personal Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Newspaper advertisements
There are many senior citizens who have a habit of reading the newspaper from cover to cover on a daily basis despite the use of increasing news applications on mobiles. Therefore, giving advertisements in newspapers would help in reaching out to these senior citizens and hence enhance footfall in the café. These newspaper ads are specifically useful while promoting a local café as local news audience is often limited to a smaller area as opposed to global news which affect people from different parts of the world (Sridhar & Sriram, 2015).
Fundraising campaigns
The volunteers of the café could take out a few days in the month to organize fundraising campaigns in the local area surrounding the café. These campaigns could be ideally organized in public places in parks, stations, markets or coffee shops. Such campaigns are a small effort in making people more aware about this initiative. These volunteers could also invite senior citizens in the process. Fundraising campaigns help organizations raise money for nonprofit organizations. Examples of such campaigns could include organizing marathons, music and dance events, book reading and exchanging seminars, silent auctions etc.
Media relations
The power of strong media relations must never be underestimated. The media has the incredible power of reaching out to a wide audience through different channels. The volunteers of the café must work towards establish relations with the media in order to make sure that the café could reach out to a larger audience. These media channels form a one way communication with their audience and are hence a perfect opportunity to set the right positioning in the minds of people.
Conclusion
Reach café is an initiative by the reach community service center in Singapore. It is a small coffee joint designed especially for senior citizens of the area so as to bring them out of their loneliness and enhance their social life. The café has no official paid employees and is fully managed by volunteers. Customers can consume the food and pay whatever amount they wish to pay as the café has no menu. Food is second priority for the reach café after the idea that requires senior citizens to move out of their house and spend more time with others.
Strategic communications form an important part of every organization. Therefore it is highly important that organizations work towards ensuring the right brand positioning in the minds of their target consumers. This report offers strategies that can be adopted by reach café such as event marketing, social media marketing, building and improving media relations as well as giving newspaper advertisements. These strategies are endorsed to reach café through this report in order to augment its brand awareness, increase everyday footfall and attract investors, donors as well as volunteers for the effective functioning of the café
References
Lidback, R., & Svensson, J. (2015). How Event Marketing is used to Communicate Place Brands.
Reach Community Service Society, 2017, ‘Community café launch’, https://www.reach.org.sg/index.php/component/content/article/17-upcoming-events/189-community-cafe-launch, retrieved on 16 January, 2018.
Reach Community Service Society, 2018, ‘Management committee’, https://www.reach.org.sg/index.php/about-us/management-committee, retrieved on 16 January, 2018.
Sridhar, S., & Sriram, S. (2015). Is online newspaper advertising cannibalizing print advertising? Quantitative Marketing and Economics, 13(4), 283-318.
Straits Times, 2017, ‘Café run by seniors for seniors’, https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/cafe-run-by-the-elderly-for-the-elderly-opens-in-bukit-batok, retrieved on 16 January, 2018.
The New Paper, 2017, ‘Community café empowers seniors’, https://www.tnp.sg/news/singapore/community-cafe-empowers-seniors, retrieved on 16 January, 2018.
Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2017). Social media marketing. Sage.
Ver?i?, D, (2016), Why Invest in Strategic Communication? Because It Creates Value, Communication Management Review, 1(01), 28-40.
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