Engagement

Engagement is a tough thing to achieve. No, I am not talking about the kind when two people commit or agree to marry. I refer to a different kind of commitment, one that represents a challenge for any professional communicator to achieve and maintain. Often, public relations practitioners are given the assignment of coming up with a campaign or outreach effort to, among other things, boost ticket sales, increase membership or  generate support for a particular cause. This means their goal is to motivate others - more often people they, at best, know only a little about - to take some type of action or adjust their opinion on a given issue. Neither are small things.


People, generally, are creatures of habit. We all tend to gravitate toward that which we are most comfortable. Once locked or settled in to a particular pattern or perspective, we tend to resist even friendly or non-threatening requests to alter our behavior. A good friend of mine and I, for example, meet nearly every month  for dinner at an Italian restaurant we enjoy. Our pattern is such we almost always order the same meal every time. This, of course, is no big deal except it might be for a public relations professional hired to stop us from requesting our usual order and begin getting something else.


It is this kind of challenge that communication practitioners are hired to meet. They devise sophisticated strategies to get us to switch brands of toothpaste, change our voting pattern, attend an event at a time when are normally at home lounging in front of the television in our favorite chair, or become interested in an issue to which we have not given any previous thought. Their quest is to elicit a level of engagement in us that many times requires our to step outside our comfort zone. No way is that easy. Nevertheless, this is probably the biggest challenge that public relations practitioners on most any given day.