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Introduction to Bernstein's communication wheel
Bernstein's communication wheel (Bernstein, 1984) represents a checklist for analysing the possible combinations of different types of public (audience) and means of communication. The author pinpoints nine types of public: internal public, local public, groups of influence, commercial sector, government, media, financial public, clients and general public with whom he communicates through nine means of communication: product, mail, public relations, personal presentation, not-personal presentation, corporate literature, dealer, media and advertisement (Foroudi et al. , 2017; Fitsimmons, 2014).
For his checklist, Bernstein prefers the wheel to a matrix because only in this way does he easily manage to show that different publics can be reached with different means of communication. In fact, the author turns the internal circle (channels) within the external circle (categories of public) to show multiple possible public-channels combinations, keeping the firm as the wheel's fulcrum.
The wheel and sector positions are such that a reciprocal correspondence between the internal and external circles does not take place, so that no predetermined combinations between categories of public and means of communication are made (Cottrell, 2011). On this point, Bernstein highlights the fact that each means of communication has the same probability of being chosen to communicate with different publics. In fact, the wheel produces 81 possible combinations of medium and audience, that come from the 9 × 9 options that the communications coordinator (CC) may choose from. In fact, in searching for the corporate communication and means-coordination management, Bernstein is aware of the fact that this is a task for the fulcrum of the wheel - the firm - but the author also believes that a single person has to control this task: the CC.
Indeed, specifying that not all presumable combinations can be put into practice, Bernstein believes that the wide range of combinations allows the CC to express his creativity and, at the same time, to have a wide and global vision of corporate communication. In fact, Bernstein highlights that a lot of organizations often make the mistake of considering corporate communication not as one entity but rather as a sum of different messages made for different publics. Only a global vision allows the firm to pay attention to what it manages to communicate and to coordinate...