Strategic Communications for Reach Café

This assignment examines the strategic communications plan for Reach Café, a Singaporean initiative by the Reach Community Service Center. It aims to provide seniors with a social space and support their well-being. The analysis explores various marketing strategies like event marketing, social media engagement, and building strong media relations to enhance brand awareness, increase footfall, and attract investors, donors, and volunteers.

Running Head: Public Relations
Public Relations & Strategic communications
Reach community cafe

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Contents
Introduction: Reach Café Background............................................................................................1
Key Stakeholders.............................................................................................................................1
Strategic communication.................................................................................................................2
Recommended strategies.................................................................................................................2
Promotion during Reach community services society events......................................................2
Social media.................................................................................................................................2
Newspaper advertisements...........................................................................................................3
Fundraising campaigns................................................................................................................3
Media relations.............................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................5

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Introduction: Reach Café Background
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:
1. Senior volunteers
2. Senior customers
3. Other volunteers
4. Donors

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5. Management committee of Reach community center (President, vice president, honorary
secretary, honorary treasurer and six committee members who have been elected from a
team of dedicated volunteers (Reach community services society, 2018)).
6. Coffee shops that regularly tie up with the café for discounted coffee like kopi, teh
kosong and teh siu Dai.
7. Investors of the Reach community center
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 (Verčič,
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. At present Reach café is promoting
itself through newspaper articles that throw light on the existence of the café. The café also has a
Facebook page but their presence on social media is limited. These strategies have been helping
the café spread the word about its existence, however, there is a large room for improvement.
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:
1. All the stakeholders are respected.
2. Strong backing by the brand name of long existing Reach community center
3. Café and its culture live up to the organization’s identity

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4. Management team of Reach community center directly associated with the cafe
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.

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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

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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.

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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’,
http://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’,
http://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.
Verčič, D, (2016), Why Invest in Strategic Communication? Because It Creates
Value, Communication Management Review, 1(01), 28-40.