ENG 204-001

Proposal Report Draft

Proposal Report for the Draft Press Release

· Purpose: The ConAgra company, who owns Peter Pan, needs to deliver a press release, containing an apology and explanation, to its customers, investors, and other companies who buy peanut butter from them, because their peanut butter was contaminated with salmonella, which poses health risks. After the press release is given to the public, it would be good for ConAgra if the audience understood the situation better and accepted the apology. The best possible outcome of the press release is that the audience would understand that this was an accident and a onetime only situation, and they would still have faith in Peter Pan and want to buy its products. The worst possible outcome would be that the audience is so outraged by the situation that they do not even listen to what the company has to say.

· Audience: ConAgra's audience is its costumers, investors, and related companies. All of the audience groups are going to be angry at ConAgra, because their health is at risk from salmonella poising, and they are going to lose a substantial amount of money. The costumers are going to have nothing in common, except that they will all be upset. The investors and related companies will be made up of older well educated people. Hopefully, all of the audience groups will pay attention to the press release however; they will be very hostile and not very forgiving.

· Context: The press release will be given during the day, shortly after the salmonella poising was found in the Georgia plant. The audience should be attentive and irritated because the news concerns their health and financial stability. The press release will be given in a very formal setting.

· Strategies: The press release will need to be extremely sympathetic and understanding to the needs and situations of the audience. It should be informative of the situation but, it needs to be short and simple not a book. The press release needs to have a public apology and promise to do everything possible to fix the situation as soon as possible.

· Medium: The medium will a document. It should be pretty formal, but it needs to be able to be understood by many. This means that the situations needs to be put as simply as possible with a simple vocabulary. There is no need for any multimedia.

· Arrangement: The arrangement of the press release should start out with an apology. It should be heartfelt but short. Then the press release should move on to describe what happened. This part should be informative but short, people do not need to know all of the details right away, just the reason why this happened and their concerns. Then it should end with another longer apology and a promise to do whatever they need to fix the situation and make it up to the audience.

· Testing: To test the press release the document should be read and reread several times. If it is possible, a group of customers and investors should read over it and make changes, so the company can sound more heartfelt and understanding.

Proposal Report- Recorded Message

The Purpose of the recorded message is to inform customers of ConAgra’s plan of action to deal with the salmonella crisis as well as reassure them in the interest of keeping those customers for future buisness.

The Audience is the customers of ConAgra and in particular those who were affected by the salmonella outbreak.

For Context, the recording will be posted on the ConAgra’s corporate website, conagrafoods.com.

Strategies include appealing to forgiveness of the customers who were affected, as well as presenting a full plan for dealing with the salmonella crisis to express a genuine desire to right the mistakes and give assurance.

The Medium will be a recorded video or audio recording, which will allow the audience a sense of actually interacting on a personal level with the corporation.

To start off right with the customers in terms of Arangement, the apology should come first followed by the detailed plan. Afterwards the apology should be briefly reinterated.
The Testing will of the recording will be through evaluations from many editors with an eye for certain attributes such as empathy and clarity.

Proposal Report Draft- Internal Memo

This memo will be sent to all the employees of ConAgra Foods. It will be required for all employees to read and follow the guidlines laid in it. It will be a very serious note do to the serious nature of the circumstances. The memo will remind employees of how important it is that they be aware of the consequences of their actions and how careful they must be in doing their job. It will also address that employees should not say anything to the press or even discuss the matter with any of their friends as we have a public relations team working on addressing the press. The memo will likely begin with a paragraph stating the purpose of this memo as well as ConAgra's mission statement: "One company growing by nourishing lives and finding a better way today … one bite at a time!" The memo will then breakdown some of the major points of the incident in bullet style formats. The memo will end in a paragraph reminding employees to be diligent in their work and to be aware that every action they take can affect someone else even overseas. The one way to test the effectiveness of this document will be to give a sample of the memo to a handful of employees on various levels (a plant manager, a factory worker, janitors, etc.) in order to make sure everyone will understand it. This memo will be short and to the point.