Ensuring the Fifth Step in the PR Process

The issues don’t exist everywhere, but they certainly seem more prevalent.

The customer service department that doesn’t readily serve customers. The AI-based phone system apparently determined to keep you from reaching the appropriate individual. The project estimator who doesn’t show up or call. The company’s contact form left unanswered. The chain store or restaurant that surveys you but doesn’t offer a summary of responses or directly follow up on concerns. 

Too often forgotten is an important addition to one of PR’s older prescriptive acronyms: ROPE, later bestowed an “S” to create ROPES.

The S stands for Stewardship.

When I first heard of R-PIE, I thought someone was offering me dessert.

However, I quickly learned its public relations meaning — Research, Planning, Implementation and Evaluation. My initial unfamiliarity with the acronym stemmed from the fact RACE — Research, Action and Planning, Communication and Evaluation — was the preferred formula during my APR study years earlier. 

RACE itself supplanted ROPE, or Research, Objectives, Programming and Evaluation.

The importance of stewardship

All these helpful mnemonics, though, have lacked an emphasis that the late Kathleen S. Kelly, Ph.D., APR, Fellow PRSA, advocated when she rephrased ROPE as ROPES. Stewardship, she wrote, represented “the fifth step in the public relations process.” 

It’s an easy step to forget. We take on a project, do our research, develop plans, implement them and then evaluate our work for effectiveness. 

But most projects are not one and done. Or shouldn’t be. 

If we’re effective in educating a public about our organization or an important initiative, then that’s great. But do we continue to follow up? Do we keep that public on our radar for the long-term? Do we maintain communication with them or seek any additional concerns? Do we check in with that public a year or two later?

Kelly’s concept arose from her groundbreaking work in crafting a PR-based theoretical framework for fundraising. In that field, long-term relationships are crucial — just as they need to be in every PR program.

Her transformation of ROPE into ROPES thus serves as an enduring reminder for us and our organizations. 

Productive relationships require never-ceasing nurture. 

They require stewardship, with a capital S.