As a marketing consultant, you will need to consider various scenarios that could impact your client, and as a result you will need to work with your client to develop a communication strategy that will enable the client to address situations. This project is designed to help you understand the types of strategies that your clients could adopt to address their various audiences.

Milestone Three Scenario

Your chosen company (Starbucks Coffee Company) has approved a policy to address discrimination in the workplace. Examples of possible discrimination topics include gender, racial, religious, or age discrimination.

In Module Five, you will submit the discrimination communication strategy for the presented scenario. For the communication strategy, select either a defensive or offensive communication strategy, or you may choose an approach that utilizes a combination of these strategies. Your strategy will depend on the nature of the message along with the target audience

Examples of Corporate Communication Strategies

a) Defensive strategies: These are communications that tend to be reactive, with information transmitted after something has happened. Often this is in reaction to “bad” news, and the resulting publicity causes a response. It can also be undertaken when a corporation simply does not want to be perceived as generating publicity about an event. By way of example, a corporation may have made a donation to a particular charity or provided help during a disaster, but it does not want to be perceived as trying to generate favorable publicity. However, due to increased publicity, it “reluctantly” has to confirm its action.

b) Offensive strategies: These are communications that are usually proactive, with information transmitted before the media has reported an event or even before something has occurred.

This can be to pre-empt bad publicity over something that has happened, or to make an announcement about an issue or event that will reflect favorably on the corporation.

For the assignment, the following critical elements must be addressed:

I. Communication Context: Provide an overview of the scenario that your communication strategy will address, in the context of the company you have selected for your final project. (Starbucks Coffee Company)

II. Communication Need: Considering both internal and external audiences, explain the stakeholder management issue(s) that must be addressed due to this scenario.

What specifically caused the need for the identified communications?

III. Internal Communication:

a) Explain the type of internal communication and the purpose for the internal communication that you have chosen (i.e., informational, educational, and/or persuasive). Detail your process for selecting the type of communication that will address the scenario.

Provide justification as to why the chosen strategy is appropriate for the scenario.

b) Identify the intended target audience for the internal communication, and then explain why they have been selected as the target audience. Provide justification for selecting the identified target audience.

c) Develop a draft communication that could be sent to the identified internal target audience addressing this scenario. Ensure that the appropriate tone and message are communicated in your draft communication.

IV. External Communication:

a) Explain the type of external communication and the purpose for the external communication that you have chosen (i.e., informational, educational, and/or persuasive). Detail your process for selecting the type of communication that will address the scenario. Provide justification as to why the chosen strategy is appropriate for the scenario.

b) Identify the intended target audience for the external communication, and then explain why they have been selected as the target audience. Provide justification for selecting the identified target audience.

c) Develop a draft communication that could be sent to the identified external target audience addressing this scenario. Ensure that the appropriate tone and message are communicated in your draft communication.

V. Conditions Communication Strategy: Summarize the communication strategy utilized to address this scenario. Why was it the best approach for this scenario? What alternative strategies did you consider, and why was your approach the best option? Provide justification to support your communication strategy.

Guidelines for Submission: Double-spaced Word document, 12-point Times New Roman font, one-inch margins, APA format. Page length requirements: 3–5 pages, not including title page and references.