Towards the final frontier: using strategic communication activities to engage the latent public as a key stakeholder in a corporate mission

Abstract

Private corporations that do not normally interact with, nor regularly communicate with, the public often do not perceive the public as a relevant or active stakeholder. The public may not view themselves as a stakeholder, particularly when they are unaware of, have no direct dealings with, or do not have any problems associated with such a corporation. The current study, utilizing a national survey of the United States public (N = 424) found that through directed strategic communication activities of a private spaceflight corporation, utilizing social and new media tools, a latent public can perceive a corporation and its mission in a positive manner, and transition it towards a status of an aware public and possible active public. Positive perceptions were found regarding corporate credibility, brand awareness, public engagement, communicating a corporate mission, educating the public, and influencing public opinion. strategic communication aspects of this process, particularly the "purposive communication" (Holtzhausen & Zerfass, 2013, p. 74) is the primary goal of the current research. Corporations, like SpaceX, seek to use strategic communication to influence their stakeholders. However, under traditional Stakeholder Theory (Freeman, 1984), the public is not considered, or explicitly defined as a key stakeholder, or in some cases not a stakeholder at all. The public typically has no power, urgency, or legitimate connection (Mitchell, Agle, & Wood, 1997) to some private corporations in normal conditions. However, as Grunig (1983, 1997)) offers, there is a more nuanced way of examining the "public" in terms of it being a corporate stakeholder. In many cases, private corporations do not seek interaction or communication with the public because there is no inherent need or problem that requires this activity. However, when a problem or challenge arises, can a corporation use directed communication activities to its advantage? Can it successfully engage the public in a way that puts them on a path from latent public to aware public to possibly an active public, making them a key stakeholder in a corporation's success towards achieving its mission, goal, or solution to a problem? To answer these questions, an overview of Stakeholder Theory (Freeman, 1984) will be presented, along with Grunig's (1997) Situational Theory of Publics as a framework for understanding one corporation's communication activities. This is followed by a review of how the United States (U.S.) government communicated to the public during the key periods of U.S. spaceflight, from the Mercury program onward. This will set the stage for an examination of one corporation's attempt to engage a latent public in order to convert them to an aware and potentially active public, allowing the corporation to achieve their corporate mission. Review of the literature Strategic communication In 2007, Hallahan, Holtzhausen, Van Ruler, Vercic, and Sriramesh defined strategic communication as "communicating purposefully to advance the (the organization's) miss...

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