Blog
Research, Reputation and Results: Lessons from the Latest Edition of Planning and Managing Public Relations Campaigns
06 November 2025
By Professor Anne Gregory
To write books about communication that are informative and timely is a challenge these days. No sooner are the words on the page than they are out of date.
Fortunately, certain principles remain the same. For example, all good campaigns or longer-term programmes need to be founded on solid research. The way the research is done may change, but the need for it to be accurate and insightful doesn’t. Similarly that programmes should have clear objectives and focus on impact and not just activity remains crucial.
Another challenge is to not only satisfy readers’ appetite for knowledge about all the new digital tools that are available in overwhelming quantities, but to help them step back and keep those fundamental questions about communication in mind. What the purpose of the communication task is – its aims? who are the stakeholders? what is relevant and important for them? which channels are best to engage with them? and what measures are used to judge if the aim has been achieved? All this has to be based on solid research. These principles are what Mandy Pearse and I focus on in the latest edition of Planning and Managing Public Relations Campaigns: A strategic approach, published by Kogan Page this month.
Our task is also to ensure those principles come to life. Strong case studies are the best way to do that, so that’s when we turn to the amazing practitioner community to help. I really don’t believe in the so called academic/practitioner divide, because that’s not been my experience – and I’ve worked on both sides of the fence. We are a great and strong, joint community working hard to ensure the profession advances in stature and improves the way it works.
This is the 6th edition of Planning and Managing and I’m delighted that Echo has been a partner for all those editions. Echo has provided leading-edge cases on evaluation and how companies, public sector and NGOs seek to ensure their work is properly informed so that their standing and therefore their reputation is advanced. The latest case is no different. It’s a great international example of how DP World has advanced from being a small company operating in the then relatively underdeveloped Dubai, to being a highly successful international company handling some 10% of the world’s logistics.
As the company has grown, so has the complexity of its stakeholder network – governments, customers, legal systems, partners; the number of languages and cultures it engages with the media ecosystems it has to navigate. Of course trust is a crucial component in all this and therefore DP World has to ensure it keeps on top of any issues maintain its good reputation. Echo has built a tailor-made reputation measurement programme for senior management to ensure that its strategic positioning, engagements and communication efforts materially build trust and support from its key stakeholders around the world. We use this case study to demonstrate the fact that ongoing research underpins every step of a solidly based programme and that it is evaluated rigorously.
Echo is just one partner practitioner that has helped us and we are grateful to all those who have supported our efforts to make Planning and Managing as contemporary and relevant as possible.
