Organizational communication and public relations planning

CASE STUDY FOCUSED ON ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION AND PUBLIC RELATIONS PLANNING
You work in the Communications Department of EXCELLENT-IT. EXCELLENT-IT is a multinational company that provides IT services to big organizations. It is leading the IT services European market along with MBI-IT, its traditional main competitor. The company has its headquarters in Barcelona (750 employees), but also has important offices in: Frankfurt, Paris, Brussels, Rotterdam, Milano, Zurich and Stockholm (250 employees per office).
On November 27 (Friday), it will be official that a former CEO of MBI-IT (John Smith, a very well-known executive within the industry) will be appointed as new President of EXCELLENT-IT. The decision is part of an ambitious new strategy already approved by the owners of EXCELLENT-IT, the ZZZ and WWW funds; John Smith will be in charge of this new strategy, which will be unveiled and progressively unfolded in the coming months. It hasn’t been disclosed whether the new strategy will bring layoffs.
As Chief Communications Officer, you and your closest team (Media Relations Managers and Internal Communications Managers) have been asked to design the plan to communicate the appointment of John Smith, both to media and employees only (not to investors nor to clients). The Chief Marketing Officer is who will be in charge of communicating it to the top clients (the very same November 27, early in the morning).
The company has presence in all the mainstream social media platforms, and it has all the most common internal communications channels (intranet, newsletters, notice boards, etc.).
OUTCOMES
1) Design the best strategy to communicate John Smith’s appointment to the employees (keeping in mind that D-Day is Friday November 27 for the external official announcement). You should consider:
a. Analysis of the situation (there is room for likely assumptions)
b. Target Markets / Audiences
c. Internal media channels
d. Internal Communications strategy (activities that implies and timing)
e. Expected results of the chosen strategy

2) Design the best strategy to communicate John Smith’s appointment to the media, keeping in mind that D-Day is November 27. You should consider:
a. Analysis of the situation (there is room for likely assumptions)
b. Target Markets / Audiences
c. Target Media
d. Media Relations strategy (activities that implies and timing)
e. Expected results of the chosen strategy in terms of media coverage
Formalities:
 Wordcount: 1800
 Cover, Table of Contents, References and Appendix are excluded of the total wordcount.
 Font: Arial 12,5 pts.
 Text alignment: Justified.
 The in-text References and the Bibliography have to be in Harvard’s citation style.