Public Relations Strategies for the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP)

This report examines the public relations crisis faced by the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) in 2016 due to allegations of misspent donations. It highlights the negative impact on the organization's image and explores strategies to rebuild public trust and enhance donor relations. The report emphasizes the importance of integrating public relations with marketing programs, targeting the right audience with relevant information, and leveraging both traditional and contemporary media channels like social media, event marketing, and news releases. The goal is to promote transparency, highlight the organization's mission, and showcase the positive impact of donations on veterans' lives, ultimately restoring WWP's reputation and attracting more support.

Running Head: Public Relations
Developing Public Relations

Public relation campaign
The Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) is a non-profit organization situated in United States.
Motive of this organization is to provide food, shelter, and other services to the citizens of
America who affected with the terrorist activities. Due to terrorist activities, various people got
seriously injured due to which they are unable to help themselves in relation with the basic
activities of life. The mission of the organization is to ensure that wounded warriors are
empowered and honoured. With the help of these activities and practices, organization developed
an effective and reputed image amongst the public. But from 2016, these relations went towards
negative phase and media and news agency declared that WWP suffered from public relation
crisis. The major reason behind this was the inappropriate utilisation of donations and charity
received for good cause. It was observed that organization miss-utilised the money over lavish
employees’ trips and conferences. These trips were not much necessary from the perception of
organizational objectives, thus, organization suffered from several allegations such as millions of
dollars was spent over unnecessary things like, employees’ lavish treatment, dinners, hotel
bookings, etc. which were not necessary because mission of organization is to provide basic
facilities to the victims of terrorist activities (Austin & Pinkleton, 2015).
With the effect of these activities, organizational image got affected in negative manner and in
relation with enhancing organizational image along with acquiring the lost position in the target
market, management decided to adopt appropriate media strategies as per organizational
functionalities. In order to enhance organizational performance along with gaining the lost
position, it is required for the organization to design an appropriate media mix as per
organizational requirements. This will help the organization to develop an effective and reliable
position amongst the target audience for the organization (Stacks, 2016).
It is required for the organization to design its marketing strategies in such a manner so that their
primary mission, objective and vision could be highlighted. This will help the organization to
attract more donors. In relation with this, it is required for the organization to enhance its
efficiency by providing appropriate services to the victims of terrorists. This is the primary
functionality of organization and this helps organization to adopt appropriate strategies such as
effective marketing tools, traditional and contemporary media mix, etc. Public relations of WWP

suffered in 2016 and this was given the title as public relation crisis and this was the biggest tool
which affected organizational performance and let down the organizational image across the
United States. Apart from this, organization had misrepresented its financial position in the
market. Approximately, 80.6% of their total revenues were claimed that these were spending on
the veterans and these claims were found fake which resulted in big public relation crisis.
For improving its public relations, advanced and unique marketing strategies need to be adopted
so that organization could easily promote its functionalities. Thus, organization requires certain
effective and efficient measures through which positive message amongst the target audience
could easily be forwarded. This will help the organization to enhance its goodwill in the public’s
perception. It is required for organization to change public’s attitude for the organization. To
attain these goals and objectives, organizational marketing team has come up with an idea to use
traditional as well as contemporary mediums of marketing in order to build an effective brand
image along with regaining the lost position in the target market. It is necessary for the
organization to develop an appropriate and effective image amongst the public because it is the
determinant factor for company’s success (Theaker, 2017).
Following strategies are being used by the organization to build an effective brand image in the
target market so that positive public relations could be developed:
Integrating public relation campaign could easily be executed with a marketing program in order
to improve effectiveness of the organization along with communicating with the target audience.
This is the best measure for convincing target audience towards organizational products and
services. In this scenario, WWP is a NGO and their main purpose is to provide basic services and
facilities to the victims of terrorist activities. Strengthening public relations is an important
aspect for the organization and this is mainly used for developing public relations along with
gaining positive image amongst them (Gregory, 2015).
Target audience: The main motive of marketing campaigns are developing positive image
amongst the target audience. This could easily be done with the help of advertising, email, etc.
Apart from this, there are numerous platforms of communication which could be used for the
purpose of interacting with the target audience. Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) is a not for
profit organization and the primary objective of the organization to remove the allegations

imposed over the organization and its functionalities so that desired goals could easily be
attained (Protess & McCombs, 2016).
Information: Target audience should be informed about the availability of organizational
products and services. This technique is helpful in developing effective relations with the target
audience. For spreading awareness and information about the organizational products and
services, organization could utilise various marketing platforms such as internet, email
marketing, television and direct marketing tools. Amongst the available options, internet
marketing is one of the most appropriate and effective tool. Social media is one of the biggest
platforms over internet which is adopted by almost every business enterprise as one of the
primary tool of marketing campaign. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc. are the
primary sources of social media and these are mainly used for the purpose of interacting with the
target audience along with developing effective relations with them. Apart from the social media
platforms, organization could also focus over traditional forms of marketing techniques such as
newspaper advertisement, pamphlets, board hoardings, etc. These tools are bit expensive but at
the same time, these are effective too. Event marketing, radio marketing and television marketing
are another form of effective marketing tools through which public relation could easily be
improved by spreading positive information amongst the target audience regarding
organizational activities (Rose, 2017).
Influence: The tools used by the organization in developing public relation campaign, it is
required for the organization to seek for appropriate and effective marketing techniques. The
tools used by organization will be mainly used for the purpose of spreading awareness amongst
target audience in relation with the organizational functionalities. Apart from this, those tools
should be sufficient enough to influence the target audience towards the organization. In terms of
developing better public relations, organizational mainly focuses over the crucial and effective
marketing strategies such as social media, traditional forms of marketing, event marketing, etc.
(Felix, Rauschnabel & Hinsch, 2017).
Social media: Marketing effectiveness has been enhanced with the usage of social media tools.
Growth of social media technique has created a positive influence over the outcomes originated
from marketing techniques. Thus, organization will mainly focus over the social media strategies
as it provides option to the organization for getting connected with its employees as well as with

the target audience. Apart from staying connected, customers could share their opinion and
views regarding organizational services. These reviews and feedbacks help organization to
increase the effectiveness of its services for improving customer satisfaction. For developing an
effective brand image, organization should use an effective dialogue through which a positive
impact could be developed amongst the target audience (Culbertson, 2016).
Apart from the media and promotional mix, organization could also adopt certain techniques
through which organizational image amongst the government could be enhanced. This will help
the organization to develop appropriate and effective image amongst the public as governmental
relations would help WWP to enhance its image amongst the public so that appropriate goals and
objectives could be attained. Apart from developing public relations, organizational another
objective is to influence donors so that organizational revenues could be enhanced so that large
area of the target market could be served along with enhancing the quality of services offered to
the victims.
News release
Following will be key highlights for the news release of WWP to make effective relations with public:
 Government relations;
 Measures taken for attracting more donors;
 Feedbacks and reviews form the people who had consumed WWP’s services will be posted;
 Customer centric approach will be adopted so that donations from donors could be utilised in an
appropriate direction;
 KRAs of the organization will be highlighted in order to strengthen the public relations along.

References
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