In an edited extract from their book Public Affairs in Practice, Stuart Thomson and Steve John share their thoughts on managing issues and building evidence to develop effective lobbying activity.
Issues managements is not simply about the delivery or messages to political or media audiences. It is, instead, about understanding the issues, building and developing them and then presenting them in a way that will secure support for your cause or campaign.
This can present significant challenges as some issues may appear simply too difficult to ‘sell’ or too complicated to understand for anyone other than those completely specialist in the area. This is not the case. Public affairs consultants need to be able to work on a range of issues sometimes outside their immediate range of experience.
At such times it is important that they rely on their public affairs expertise and work their way through the problem. Of course, those employed ‘in-house’ will be able to hone their skills and expertise and become specialists whereas many of those involved in consultancy may be more generalist.
For the rest of the article please see www.ipra.org
Frontline, December 2006