Final Project: Public Relations Plan Thai Country

Chris Haddeland
Social Media Theory and Practice
Professor Weidman and Professor Sivek
December 10, 2014

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Thai Country is a restaurant located on Third Street in McMinnville, Ore. Thai Country is
one of two Asian style restaurants located on McMinnvilles main street, along with Kame
Japanese restaurant (Web results, 2014). Thai Country offers both lunch and dinner options six
days a week (Thai Country, n.d.). From living in McMinnville for the past 21 years, Thai
Country is the only Thai restaurant in McMinnville and is one of the most popular Asian style
places in the community. Thai Country offers dinning in the restaurant as well as take out.
The focus of this public relations campaign is to bring awareness and interest to the
restaurant through social media. The target audience for this campaign is college students in
McMinnville. College students are avid users of social media; 46 percent of people ages 18-24
post on twitter daily, 11 percent post daily on Facebook and 10 percent post daily on Instagram
(Bennett, 2014). One major issue with living in a college town is the turnover of students.
Linfield College looses students to drop outs, graduation and to other campuses and schools. To
fill its enrolment, new freshman attend the school every year. In 2013, 447 freshmen enrolled at
the Linfield College McMinnville campus (Incoming first year students, n.d.). By using social
media, Thai Country can reach these students, with a free service. This is especially beneficial
because with the turnover, Thai Country needs to acquire new customers every year, which is
generally more expensive than retaining customers (Stark & Stewart, n.d.).
The goal of this public relations plan is to increase awareness and interest among college
students in the McMinnville area. The overlying theory that will be used in this campaign is the
diffusion of innovation theory. This theory states how an idea, product or service is adopted. This
theory is a five-step process: awareness, interest, evaluation, trial and finally adoption. The goal
is related to the theory by utilizing the first four stages. Bringing the audience aware, generating
interest will hopefully cause the potential customer to evaluate the restaurant. Although we

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cannot force the audience member to evaluate the product, awareness and interest can spark
evaluation. After evaluation, the trial stage is set for the potential customer, where they can
personally try the food or conduct the trial through a current customer. If the customer passes
through these four stages they may adopt the product into his or her life.
The two objectives for this goal are: inform 800 target audience members of Thai
Country and gain 100 pieces of user generated content per month from the target audience. This
plan will be evaluated after three months of implementation. Evaluation of the objectives will be
done through views of Thai Country related posts and the number of user generated content
related to the restaurant.
To have a successful campaign, Thai Country must first develop three social media
platforms: a Facebook page, Twitter account and an Instagram account. Thai Country currently
has a Facebook account, but the account is a personal profile with no friends and has not had any
activity since 2012 (Thai-Country McMinnville, 2014). Another key is having a hashtag that is
universal among all platforms. #ThirdStThai is a short hashtag that most McMinnville citizens
and college students would understand and relate to the restaurant. This hashtag will allow for all
content to be connected.
The first strategy for the information objective is to inform the target audience of Thai
Country. To do this, a photo will be posted every other day on Twitter and Instagram. The photos
will contain pictures of various restaurant activities such as a chef preparing food, a waiter and
customers interacting or a customer happily consuming their food. The second tactic used to
complete this strategy is to post a fun fact on Twitter and Facebook daily. This fun fact will be
about Thai food, the culture or something related. The views, likes, shares and comments will
evaluate both of these tactics.

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The second strategy from the information objective is to promote Thai Countrys food.
To do this, two tactics involving weekly specials will be used. The first tactic is to use Instagram
and Twitter to promote one of the specials each week. This post will occur at the beginning of
each week and will be linked to a Facebook post described in the next tactic. These posts will
contain a photo of one of the specials, showing how delicious Thai Countrys food looks. The
second tactic implemented for this strategy is providing a Facebook post at the beginning of each
week with the photo used on Twitter and Instagram along with a list of the weekly specials. This
will provide more information for potential customers, giving them the knowledge of what
additional plates will be available along with the traditional menu. Views, shares, likes and
comments will evaluate both of these tactics. The first tactic will also be evaluated by the amount
of click throughs from the link provided to the Facebook post.
If the first objective (and its subsequent strategies and tactics) is successful, Thai Country
will inform and generate interest from the target audience. Facilitating the first two steps of the
diffusion of innovation theory will allow for potential customers to continue the process and
hopefully bring in more revenue for the restaurant.
The first strategy for the user generated content objective is to engage in two-way
communication with the target audience. The first tactic to act on this strategy is to respond to
the target audience. This involves sharing all positive user generated content and respond to
negative comments in a positive and efficient manner. The second tactic used for this strategy is
to create a contest to supplement two-way communication. This contest will be a photo of the
week contest, awarding the top photo, chosen by Thai Country, a buy one entre get one free
coupon. To participate in this contest, a second hashtag must be used: #MacThaiContest. This
can help getting more people into Thai Countrys door, will hopefully get user generated content

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and will allow Thai Country to engage in two-way communication with the target audience. The
first tactic will be evaluated on the amount of likes, shares and comments along with the
responses with Thai Countrys two-way communication. The second tactic will be evaluated on
how many participants the contest has.
The second strategy for the user generated content objective is to reduce the barriers for
posting about Thai Country on social media. The first step in completing this strategy is by
providing information on how to find the social media platforms. User names will be listed on
Thai Country menus, receipts and the social media platforms. This tactic is difficult to evaluate,
but can be linked to user generated content and follows on the various platforms. The second
tactic used for this strategy is to actively seek high profile follows. Inviting various members of
the college community who have large followings can do this. Hopefully they will respond to the
invites and follows and will start posting user generated content about the restaurant. This will
allow for others to promote the restaurant to our target audience who are not following or seeing
our posts. The amount of positive responses to our follows and invites is the factor that the tactic
will be evaluated by.
If the second objective is successful, Thai Country will engage in more two-way
communication and gain more user generated content. Through this the target audience can
complete the awareness, interest and the trial process of the diffusion of innovation theory. With
these steps complete all that is left is adoption. This step is reliant on the restaurant and the
experience the customer has.
By completing the two objectives, Thai Country will generate awareness and interest
among the target audience. From this point, Thai Countrys increase in customers and revenue
will come from the experience of the restaurant and the individual preference of the taste of the

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food. With confidence in both of these areas, Thai Country should see an increase in college
customers throughout the future and growing revenues.

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References

Bennett, S. (August 27, 2014). 70% of college students post to Snapchat daily (Twitter: 46%,
Facebook 11%) [Study]. All Twitter: The Unofficial Twitter Resource. Retrieved from:
http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/snapchat-facebook-twitter-instagramprivacy_b59632
Incoming first year students. (n.d.). Linfield College. Retrieved from:
http://www.linfield.edu/research/incoming-first-year-students.html
Stark, K. & Stewart, B. (n.d.). Its cheaper to keep em. Inc. Retrieved from:
http://www.inc.com/karl-and-bill/its-cheaper-to-keep-em.html
Thai Country. (n.d.). Yelp Inc. Retrieved from: http://www.yelp.com/biz/thai-country-restaurantmcminnville
Thai-Country McMinnville. (December 9, 2014). Facebook. Retrieved from:
https://www.facebook.com/thaicountry.mcminnville
Web Results. (December 9, 2014). Restaurants located on Third Street in McMinnville.
Retrieved from: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chromeinstant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF8#q=restaurants+located+on+third+street+in+mcminnville&rflfq=1&tbm=lcl