LC’s PR Thoughts

Hill and Knowlton has been hired as a consultant for the Being 2008 Olympic Games. This is not surprising because H&K China has built a strong reputation. Recently it was named the winner of the 2005 Editors’ Choice Public Relations Agency Award for Communications Monthly. Hill and Knowlton was also a mojor player in Athen’s and London’s bids for the Olympic games.
According to the Hill and Knowlton website:

“H&K will help BOCOG implement the communications plans for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing by providing support for major events, communications outreach to the international media and assistance in communicating Beijing’s Olympic vision.”

This is such a huge project to take on. We have been taught to segment our publics in order to communicate effectively. I wonder how you go about segmenting a global public? There are so many messages that must be communicated to different people- it seems over-whelming, but what a great accomplishment!
That is where experience and reputation come in handy. Having a successful track record and an amazing portfolio like H&Kj speaks for itself. It makes me wonder how much my portfolio says about me. I have created a few samples for Robert’s class and other PR classes. But I don’t have any experience to recommend my services. I hope that a job search won’t be hindered by that.

This is my last post for Robert’s Style and Design class. I am graduating a week from Thursday and moving on to law school. No turning back…
I have said in the past that I didn’t like blogging. Well, after a few months of it- I am not crazy about it, but I respect it. I respect that it teaches me to learn from industry leaders, to keep up with current events and to spend time learning new technology for my industry. Those are tangible benefits. So to Robert- thanks ( boy I never thought that I would say that!)

This semester I have also learned how to deal with a real client. Good research is priceless and basic questions are sometimes necessary. Our group presentation went well on Thursday. I was afraid that we needed more practice, but after 3 months we knew that project inside out. I hope that I will continue to learn how to communicate effectively and professionally with my clients.

Despite my best efforts I learned HTML code, podcasting, InDesign and skype. I kind of hope that I will never have to use them. But the point is that I could and I can tell other people specifically what I want. All of these went into my html portfolio for Robert to grade.

Finally, I learned that hard work and perseverence do pay off. It was hard to stay motivated in the last semester. But I am a little too Type A (if you will) to let anything slide. I put a lot of effort into my internship at the art museum and into my last classes. Although I hope to never stop learning, I know that the college environment lets me do this safely without dire real world consequences for a wrong answer. So thanks to all of the my professors and classmates and to the contributors to Marcomblog for your time and advice.

Until I type again…

I was watching the news a few nights ago and I heard of a little movie called “United 93.” You may remember that this is the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11 thanks to the efforts of the passengers to take on the hijackers. The news cast I was watching interviewed people in the streets about their reaction to the film. I heard one positive and ten negatives. There is a lot of protest against showing a film depicting that tragedy so soon. Even the trailers are upsetting people.

I decided to check out this movie. The website supported by Universal presents the movie as a thriller, but also a type of memorial to the flight. All of the families of the United 93 victims have approved the movie and some of the characters are played the real people. I think they are trying hard to be sensitive about the issue. But it still smacks of big box office bucks…

Another issue with the movie is that while the general events are known and they are historical, there is no exact account of what happened. A NY Times article covers the debates that the victim’s families had about how their loved ones would be portrayed. Would some be shown heroes and others not shown at all? Does that do a disservice to their memory?

“United 93” is premiering tomorrow at the TriBeCa Film Festival. The publicity both negative and positive may be enough to encourage people to go and see it. There is still a big chance that those who remember that day well won’t want to relive it for $8.50. The message from the official sources is a respectful as possible, but as everyone knows- you can’t control the press. We’ll see if this movie will fly with “Titanic” ratings or fall along the wayside with “Gigli.”

As I have mentioned before, I am in a sorority at Auburn. At a chapter meeting a few weeks ago, we talked about The Facebook. Now, before I get started, I like facebook- I do. I am not obsessed with checking it every day multiple times like many people I know, but it is still a great way to check out your best friend’s new crush from a safe distance.

Back to the point- the National sorority wanted each chapter to talk about the dangers of facebook. Namely, the opportunity for members and their friends to post pictures, write on the walls and join groups of questionable nature. There are two reasons that it matters. First, many of these girls have information on their profile linking them to the sorority. Second, high schoolers can check out the profiles before they go through recruitment week.

It all comes down to reputation. Organizations work hard to build their reputation and communicate that to their publics. We learn the importance of “one voice” at Auburn. The organization’s message must come from all parts of the company. If employees are contradicting what the PR department is sending out, they lose credibility.

With facebook, members can speak with their own voice. Often that can be a bad message for the sorority. Along with copyright issues, this makes facebook a very dangerous forum. But the problem is easily solved just by being smart about what you write.

This problem can transition over to your professional life. If a future employer could read your profile, would they still want to hire you? Plain common sense.

If you have lived in Alabama or probably in the whole United States, you have heard the name Natalee Holloway. If you have refrained from watching the news in the past year or even looking at the tabloids at the grocery store—Natalee was a high school senior from Birmingham, AL who went on her senior trip to Aruba and disappeared. She is still missing.

I was working in my representative’s office when she went missing. We got a flood of phone calls and letters. I have learned that the media often sets its own agenda. As a PR practitioner, you never know if the media will pick up your story. And if they do, how will they spin it? When tragedies like Natalee’s happen, the media usually covers the story about a day or maybe a week. With any luck, they can get a closed case by then. After that, you are on your own.

What is remarkable is that news stations are still carrying the news almost a year later. I have heard that Natalee’s dad hired a PR agency to disseminate the news. At first this sounds a little over the top, but in fact it was a good investment. In missing person cases the public interest puts pressure on the law enforcement- or in this case Aruba. She hasn’t been forgotten. I don’t know anyone from Birmingham that would travel to Aruba now (and I suspect other people feel the same way). The PR firm is pulling their weight by keeping this case in the public eye.

Happy Easter Sunday!

Well I am down to the last few weeks school- but not just school- college. And true to form all of my classes have piled on the work. This leads my to my topic- time management. One of the major life lessons of college is how to manage your time. How can you set your study schedule so you can attend that lake party this weekend? My question is how can I continue to blog with my giant final projects due?

Thankfully I know that this life lesson will be handy in my career and personal life. I read an article on MSNBC that states, “while the increased productivity makes companies more profitable, the greater demands on workers can leave many feeling overwhelmed, burned out and losing any work-life balance they may have had.” That is why time management has become so important to practice.

I am a list maker. I love lists and that feeling I get from checking things off. Somehow I still get stressed by the deadlines.

Timing is something we are taught to respect. In my campaigns class we practiced planning by doing a PERT chart for robbing a bank. Obviously, timing for each person in the robbery is important. Translate that to my campaign. Each part of my client organization must know what it is responsible for and when. For the project my group has created a Gantt chart. This lists responsibilities down the left side and uses X’s to mark the week or day that the task should be done.

Charts are so clear for planning. I am tempted to make one myself, but lists are still easier and take less time to create.

I have a confession- I don’t listen to Podcasts. To be honest, the first time I heard of them was in class and I had to go home and google it. I have an iPod and I (legally) download music, but no podcasts. Just thinking about it, I start to get that claustraphobic feeling that comes from watching the news with split screen anchors, a live feed from outside, a ticker and a breaking news banner.

I know that they can be great things. Subscribing to a podcast that will automatically load onto your iTunes is so easy! Everyone has a podcast, even Robert’s beloved Camp ASCCA. Schools have started podcasting classes. ABC has recently announced that “Lost” and “Desparate Housewives” will be available to download onto your computer.

It seems that this might fall under technology overload for me, but the public is eating this up. Podcasting News reports Forrester’s results of podcasting forecasts- 25% of American households are interested and 1% are downloading once a week. That number is supposed to grow to 12.4 million households in 2010. That is a huge audience. This is the technology wave to catch if you are marketing a new product or you need a way to communicate your message directly to your public.

So maybe I will have to start downloading podcasts to fill that space on my iPod. But I will hold out as long as I can. I have too much technology to learn from Robert’s class now.

Some not so recent events involving a scandalous “woman” and her PR blog have made me think about women in the workforce. After this blog popped up, my teacher arranged a conference with some women PR bloggers to talk about it. We spent half of our class time listening to and asking Kami Huyes and Susan Getgood. They pointed out that it can be tough for women in business. There are stereotypes associated with being a PR specialist and a woman (names like PR bunnies come to mind).

At Auburn, my PR and Communication classes are 98% female. I suppose that I just assumed that work would be mostly female. That may be true, but many of the management positions are held by males. To make matters worse, non-PR people seem to have a strangely distorted view of what PR is (i.e. women floating around parties in revealing clothes, no true skills needed, lobbying behind closed doors and coercion). These obstacles are unfair, but women practitioners must be prepared to deal with them.

I read a post on Marcomblog by Tara Smith and an article on the PRSA website about overcoming stereotypes in PR. The PRSA article suggests organizational changes that would make the workplace more accommodating to women. Marcomblog has things we can do. There are some things that are obvious- like acting and dressing professionally. You can control your behavior. Tara recommends making sure that you work hard and smart and develop a “thick skin.” You must separate your professional life and your emotions. Basically I have to work extra hard to prove that I am just as good, or even better than the men I will work with.

I don’t believe in making a fuss about stereotypes, but I do believe in being prepared. I want to be respected in my career- be it PR or Law- and I will do my best to earn it.

I have just returned from a wonderful spring break. Because it is my last one in college, I decided to go out in style. I spent half the week in Las Vegas and the other half in Park City, Utah (skiing). I am so sore from teaching myself to snowboard on the last day that I can hardly lift my arms to reach the keyboard!

I wanted to look at my break from a PR angle- one because I know the topic and two- because I think there is a little PR in almost everything.

Vegas was easy. You can imagine all of the advertising that goes on there. I think the PR can be looked at in two examples from my stay. Many casinos in Vegas use personal contact to make a big hotel seem to care about you. First, the hotels have a great system for building relationships with their valued cutsomers- comps. They know who is spending money at their casino and they thank them with rewards like dinner, show tickets or a free night stay (we got tickets to “Jubilee” at Bally’s). They build a personal relationship between the casino and the customer that will be remembered when they come back again.

The second example of relationship building is club promoters. One night my friends and I wandered around the Bellagio while waiting to see the Cirque de Soleil show “O.” We were approached twice by guys promoting their club at the Bellagio, Light. The chatted us up, offered cell phone numbers and free drinks at the club. They will get you in free at the front of the line whenever you call. It worked- we called after the show and went to the night club. I don’t think we would have tried it without someone approaching us and building a relationship (mutually beneficial I am sure). They know exactly who to target as their audience. Too bad after all of that we only stayed about 10 minutes. Too crowded and people looked like they had been taking Ecstasy…

Aside from that, it was a pleasant experience and we will remember the people who reached out to us as consumers and connected us with their casino. I hope that I can upload a picture of me falling while snowboarding soon!

It’s Spring Break at Auburn!

I am going to do a blog shout out to my friend Erin Caldwell. She is a brillant PR student at Auburn that started a site called Forward-Moving.com. This site is a self-proclaimed “springboard for new and upcoming PR professionals.” It has several contributors that are classmates of mine.

Each contributor adds some insight to current events and pr tactics that we learn in school. In addition to the contributors, there are investors. Current PR professionals are asked to invest intellectual capital. It is their experience that speaks the most to up and comers. The blog has information on resume writing and cover letters– These are practical tips that students do not necessarily learn in class. I think it is a great concept- kind of like a learning co-operative between pr students everywhere.

The only problem is reaching the “everywhere.” Now the blog is building support from Auburn students. Most of the supporters are seniors, like me, so when we graduate this May, Forward-Moving could die. They are working hard to involve younger classmen and other universities. Hopefully the buzz will give this blog enough strength to survive and thrive. Congratulations Erin- Job well done.