AWC board member, elected official, and PR professional Jillian Henze on why every city needs a communications strategy that works in good times and in bad.
By Jennifer Krazit
For the last four summers, Waitsburg’s century-old community pool sat broken and unused. With no funding available, the city wasn’t able to rebuild it.
Then Waitsburg city councilmember Jillian Henze partnered with the city’s Parks and Recreation District to do something about it. As a public relations professional (she works remotely as director of communications at the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce), Henze knew that rallying public support around the project was key. And from her experience, the first thing that needed to be done was to gather data. Collaborating with the Parks and Recreation District, Henze created a survey asking residents to rank the parks and recreation infrastructure projects that were most important to them.
“Hands down, the community said build a new pool,” recalls Henze, who in July was elected to AWC’s board, representing 34 cities in seven eastern Washington counties. “So we worked to get a press release into the local paper to share the survey results.”
That simple survey, she says, created the momentum needed to move the moribund project forward. A year later, they gathered more data, circulating another survey to gauge whether the community would support a levy to fund a new pool.
“Support for the pool was up 10 points,” says Henze. “People had seen the community was working on it; more people believed there was energy to get it done; and now we have research showing that folks would be willing to fund a levy to support a pool. That gave Parks and Rec even more energy and motivation.” With support from the community, a private donor, and a fundraiser held last November, a feasibility study is now underway and should conclude soon, a milestone in moving the project forward.
What is Henze’s secret sauce for getting things done as a local elected official? A four-pronged approach to strategic communications she learned while obtaining her Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) from the Public Relations Society of America in 2017, dubbed CALM:
C – Clearheaded leadership in a crisis. “This is about relentlessly asking the question, ‘What is the problem we’re seeking to solve?’” says Henze. “We often jump to a laundry list of tactics, like sending out a press release, posting on social media, or holding an event.
But first, you need to pause, look at the bigger picture, and think about the outcomes you want to see.”
A – Action first. “This is specifically for a crisis moment,” notes Henze. “Act with clear goals. Decide with your team what to do, not just what to say. It’s very tempting to sit around and talk about messaging. But there are often things that we need to do first before actually doing the messaging.”
L – Lead with strategy. “Your strategy must be based on research. Run simple surveys or do some website research,” says Henze, who notes that leaders can take advantage of inexpensive options for conducting research, such as creating surveys using free Google Forms. “But make sure you have research that informs your strategy. Make sure you know the best thing to do based on your research. That research also often informs your messaging.”
M – Measure and track. Always define, measure and track success, advises Henze. It’s not any fun to get to the end of a communications effort and realize that something didn’t work, and that if you had been tracking metrics earlier on, you would have seen and been able to fix problems along the way.
Ultimately, it’s all about collecting data and providing transparency.
“Research is the first step. Yes, it’s nerdy and you may feel like you don’t have time for it. But it is the foundation,” she stresses. “The people you represent want to feel heard by you, and they will have your back when you champion their hopes and dreams and then go and make your city a better place.”
For more information: cityofwaitsburg.com