Archive for August, 2008

Chapter 13-Public Relations and Marketing

{ August 29, 2008 @ 7:47 pm } · { Reading Notes }
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1. Public Relations, advertising, and marketing work together. These are three main pillars of IMC. They have a lot in common but some differences also.

-advertising-use of controlled media in an attempt to influence the actions of targeted publics.

-marketing-process of researching, creating and promoting product or service and distributing that product to targeted consumers.

-public relations-values driven management of relationships between an organization and the publics that can affect its success.

2. The Decline of mass marketing and growth of consumer focus marketing: Marketing focuses on consumers. It used to be that mass marketing was in because when companies wanted to sell something they simply brought commercials on certain television. Now, there are so many channels that one channel no longer delivers the message efficiently. Audiences continue to fragment and new media are now supplementing the old. Now, organizations are decreasing their dependence on media.

3. A Closer look at marketing: marketing makes the consumer want to buy your product. The marketing mix consists of different aspects. The four Ps of marketing are product, price, place and promotion. Public Relations comes into marketing by selling the consumers a certain type of publicity. Together PR and marketing persuades consumers to buy the product.  Marketing also helps send the customers one clear message.

Kevin Dugan’s Telephone Call

{ August 27, 2008 @ 2:31 pm } · { Responses }
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Kevin Dugan, director of marketing communications for FRCH Design Worldwide, spoke to our Public Relations course via speaker phone yesterday. After hearing from Kevin, who is one of the writers of “The Bad Pitch Blog,” which presents real live Public Relation pitches that are unsuccessful and almost comical, I had a better understanding of how to be prepared for an interview in the Public Relations field.

Kevin told us that the skills most needed for an interview in this field, especially for someone working for him, would require three main things. First, he stressed the need to be professional in every manner. He advised to pay attention to detail such as professional clothing, speech, and mannerisms. Also, he said that employers want to know that you can write so he encourages us to bring samples of our writing such as essays and articles. Lastly, Kevin says that we must have passion for the job and are willing to learn everything about the position.

Although it was hard to hear Kevin in a large class on the phone, I did understand from him that it is important to have strategies in the Public Relations field. This means we must have a goal in our mind and a purpose for taking certain actions.

Response to PR Examples for Aug 26

{ August 26, 2008 @ 3:24 pm } · { Responses }
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These three articles seemed the most interesting to me how Public Relations works through each of these situations to affect certain organizations or groups of people:

I found the “Best Buy and Sex in the City” article to be quite comical. Best Buy had to be very creative to combine two completely opposite subjects together in hopes of associating their “Geek Squad” in the minds of men every where with relief. No doubt that, because Sex in the City was as successful as Best Buy banked on, boyfriends and husbands were requested to watch the movie against their will. Best Buy’s strategy of providing a packet of excuses and tokens for video games was not only viewed as a favor in the eyes of those desperate men but also created a relationship between the men and the Geek Squad. Creating such a relationship will ensure that these men will call on the Geek Squad next time they have technological problems.

Greenville City’s Parking Bunny is a great idea to give the residents or visitors of Greenville relief for parking during the chosen five days. One out of the many parking enforcement vehicles will be disguised as a bunny. If this specific vehicle sees a car violating the parking rules, they will issue only a warning. The goal is to increase the enjoyment of everyone’s time in Greenville as well as increase the relationship between the parkers and the government. Assuming with less parking tickets the residents or citizens will be in a more enjoyable mood to visit the city more frequently or maybe even spend more money in the city and, therefore increasing the revenue.

Another article described the speech that Hillary Clinton gave in front of a back drop with the misspelled word “tommorrow.” This does not present a good impression on the audience because it decreases Clinton’s credibility. Although Clinton’s public relations’ workers may not be directly responsible for the grammatical mistake, they will take much of the hit for this mistake because it will cause many organizations associated with Clinton to be ashamed by the way Clinton was presented. This grammatical mistake could easily interfere with many of the relationships the Clinton campaign has with others, including the public because it makes her look incompetent.

Chapter 1-What is Public Relations?

{ August 22, 2008 @ 4:01 pm } · { Reading Notes }
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1. There has been a consistent search for the definition of public relations. After Harlow defined PR with a long definition, Hunt and Gruing finally developed a shorter definition as a “management of communication between an organization and its publics.”

2. Not every one in PR agrees with one definition of the profession. Therefore, it is better to agree over various elements of the profession itself rather than a definition itself. These include PR is a management function, PR involves two-way communication, PR relations is a planned activity, PR is a research based social science, and PR is socially responsible.

3. Although PR practitioners have their own individual role within their organizational structures, all PR people follow a four step model. First, they conduct research where informal or formal methods are used to discover the problem and the environment. Next, the planning period uses information gathered during the research period to create a strategy. Third, the communication process allows the execution of the process through direct messages to the public. Evaluation comes last to measure the efficiency of the process. For the most part this four step method is always used. However, PR is a dynamic process because the strategies need to be adjusted for each environment and organization and technology is constantly evolving.