Make a New Plan, Stan

Photo courtesy of Newman’s Own Inc.

In 1982 actor Paul Newman and author A.E. Hotchner decided to distribute a tasty homemade salad dressing in old wine bottles to friends as gifts.  It was a hit.  They invested a little seed money and thirty years later turned into a multi-million dollar company that makes food everyone likes to eat and then donates all the profits to charity. Poof – the world is a better place.  Sound like an easy model to replicate?   Sometimes we get lucky and word just gets around (it helps when you’re a famous actor).  For those of us who are dealing with items less like salad dressing and more like climate change, water quality, or resource allocation, it helps to get your message/product/information out there by taking the time to create a communications plan.

What exactly is a communications plan?  According to Rebecca Vidra, the DEL Environmental Communications Planning course instructor, it is a tool that can be used to successfully manage organizational change or help to bring information to stakeholders or a general audience.  Depending on your goals, they can be brief or lengthy.  In our deadline-driven world, taking time to generate a directed plan is often overlooked.  However, a well-crafted plan can save time, money, and resources and lead to a more successful campaign in the long term.  

What will students do in this course?  Each student will bring their own project to the class, and will emerge after six weeks with a solid communications plan revised with input from both instructor and peers.  Participants begin with an overview of the process, craft their message, identify an audience, write an Op/Ed piece, address formats like social media and internal communications, and end with evaluation and how to adapt the management of your plan to account for change.  Each week will build up a different section of the overall plan until a final product is ready for review.

Like other DEL Exec Ed courses, Environmental Communications Planning is ideal for working professionals because it allocates time to a project that often gets overlooked in favor of clearing out inboxes or posting random links on your company Facebook page.  Our boutique class size and synchronous online learning format enables individualized feedback from the instructor and networking among peers.  So if you have something to say and need to figure out a way to start saying it, join us this fall and tackle your very own communications plan.  Check the DEL Facebook page most Mondays for weekly updates from the class.  Or find a charismatic actor and a really good recipe for salad dressing.

Written by Allison Besch, DEL Executive Education staff