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Archive for September, 2008
Your Other You
I couldn’t help but notice Clemson’s “Your other you” campaign pop up on the home screen of the Clemson website. It seemed to me that this alcohol education campaign had to be a type of PR promotion for something. While reading it I noticed that the company in charge of the campaign, Erwin-Penland, was mentioned several times. Erwin-Penland, a marketing firm that provides advertising among other services, provided the campaign as a part of a promotion for their own sake. This campaign not only helps out themselves by exposing their name for future clients but it also makes them look good and compassionate because the campaign is for a good cause to help people manage their alcohol consumption.
Blackboard Readings Sep 25th
KDPAINE’S PR MEASUREMENT BLOG:
1. Maybe Google Will Finally Replace the Clipping Services: The fact that Google is attempting to put all types of articles online “from the smallest local weekly paper up to the largest national daily” seems to me way overdue. There have been many times when I have wanted to look at an article from the past, whether for a class assignment or a personal need, and have been unable to find them. If Google can successfully create a database where newspaper articles from around the world are easy to find I feel like they could really attract many people!
2. Would You Spend $5 billion and not have good measures of success?: This blog post reminds me of what we have talked about in class about the RPIE (PR plan). Clearly, these companies spending so much money without an advanced way of knowing how they will evaluate their efforts shows that they have a lack of research and objectives. Through research these companies should set a goal and an objective that is appropriate for the amount of money and the amount of change they want to occur.
Not only is the fact that Paul Young giving up his birthday presents for charity generous, but it is a professional strategy to gain attention to his cause, his company, and himself. He uses social media channels, such as Twitter and facebook, to send out tactics like linking. He included these links in tweets and face book statuses periodically to promote the cause. The success in using these social media channels portrays the fact that Twitter and face book is a very popular means of communication.
Chapter 9-”Communication: The Tactics of PR”
1. Controlled vs. Uncontrolled:
-Controlled: advertising, employee newsletters, speeches, brochures and websites, we control the words and images but we also control when the message is sent and how often it’s repeated, special events and relationship PR personnel often use controlled media
-Uncontrolled: TV, radio stations, web sites, newspapers, magazines, can’t control what they publish
2. Tactics & Traditional Publics
-part of written plan that is tied to values-based mission
-target publics one at a time
-based on research
-send a clear message
-evaluated as they’re preformed
3. Publics:
-Employees tactics: face to face meetings, newsletters, magazines, videos, bulletin boards, speeches, intranets, email, instant messaging, special events
-News Media tactics: news release (unbiased news story that PR practitioner writes to distribute to news media), media kits (use to publicize stories), media advisories (issued to remind news media about events they may want to overcome), pitch letters, video news releases, actualities, news conferences, etc.
-Investors: newsletters and magazines, letters, annual meetings, annual reports, web sites
-Community groups: volunteering, donations and sponsorships, cause marketing, speeches, open houses/tours, face to face meetings
-Governments: lobbies and lobbysits, grassroots lobbying, political action committees, soft money, disclosure documents
-customers: product oriented news releases and media kits, special events, open houses and tours, responses to customer contacts, bill inserts, cell phone text messaging
-Constituents
-Businesses: magazines, stories in trade magazines, extranets
Chapter 8- “Planing: The Strategies of PR”
1. Different Kinds of PR Plans: PR practitioners devise different types of plans to reach their goals
-Ad Hoc Plans: ends misperceptions, “for this purpose only”, it is an important but only temporary plan
-Standing Plans:ongoing and long term plans to nurture relationships. They can be dangerous if they last too long. For example, if something becomes tradition and people no longer look for the best way to do things because they assume they should just keep doing the old way.
-Contingency Plans: “what if” scenarios, spot issues that may require addressing if they become more powerful
2. Why Do We Plan?
-to keep our actions in line with our organization’s values-based mission: prevents pointless actions
-to help us control our destiny
-to help us better understand and focus our research: does the relationship require an adjustment? does our organization want to make the adjustment? how will the public react to our proposed action? do we have adequate resources to implement the action successfully?
-to help us achieve consensus: take input as they plan
-to allow effective management of resources: resources are finite
3. How Do We plan?
-consensus building: have to have agreement on the action
-brainstorming: ask questions and ponder in terms of publics, values, messages, and media.
4. The Written Plan
-Goals: what you hope the outcome of your planning will consist of
-Objectives: define ambitions
-Tactics: begin with verbs, it is common to give:
*brief description
*deadline
*budget
*special requirements
*supervisor
Chapter 7-”Research and Evaluation”
1. The value of Research and Evaluation:
-some people think that these are just two parts of PR that allow us to get to the more important parts of planning and communication but untrue
-research and evaluation help us to find out if our assumptions hold true to the facts under closer examination and what we can learn that we did not know before
2. Research Strategy:
-primary research=generated from scratch
-secondary (library) research=published materials, organizational records, PR generated by governments
-feedback research= stakeholder groups’ responses to its actions (telephone calls, letters, etc.)
-communication audits=research procedures used to see if communication is consistent with mission and goals
-focus groups is informal research-meet with groups of people for their opinions
3. ROI (return on investment) vs. AVE (advertising value equivalence)
-how to find out the value of PR and if the efforts add to the bottom line
-sometimes value cannot be accounted for in ROI so they turn to AVE (a calculation based on advertising rates and the amount of media coverage)
4. Surveys can be expensive and time consuming but accurate way to get public opinion:
-A survey instrument makes it appropriate for the audience and the words have to be clear.
-There is nonprobability sampling (using available subjects when there isn’t enough time or money) and probability sampling (where every person within the sampling frame has an equal chance of being selected for the sample).
Chapter 4-”The Publics in Public Relations”
1. “Public”=any group whose members have a common interest or common values in a particular situation:
-types of publics:
-(non) traditional, aware, intervening, primary/secondary, internal/external, domestic/international
-stakeholder-has an interest in the same organization, can substitute for the word public
-we need relationships with publics to fulfill values and resources of the organization
2. What we need to know about each public:
-how much can the public influence our organization’s ability to achieve our goals
-what is the public’s stake, value, in its relationship with our organization
-who are the opinion leaders (advice givers) for the public
-demographic profile of public
-psychological profile of public
-public’s opinion of our organization
-public’s opinions of the issue in question
3. The traditional Publics: publics with which organizations have long term, ongoing relationships:
-employees (often the most important)
-news media
-governments
Chapter 3-”The History of PR”
WHAT DOES THE HISTORY OF PUBLIC RELATIONS TEACH ME?
The history of PR teaches me ways that PR practitioners have both failed and succeeded through different events in America’s history. By studying these examples and both the long term and short term effect the Public Relations’ attempts had on their environment, we can learn how to manage certain publics’ perceptions of an organization.
Bernays, who was the first to use the term “Public Relations” to describe the discipline which it consists of, used PR to increase sales of the American Tobacco Company by boosting their image. He created a “green ball” which allowed the public to perceive green as a “high class” color and therefore, buy the cigarettes with the green wrappers.
Another example of how historical examples teach us PR methods is the scopes monkey trial. A law was set that evolution was not to be taught in school but George Rappleyea, from Dayton recruited John Scopes to disobey the law and teach evolution in schools. When he was arrested, the trial was on and the political struggle over Darwinism was set in Dayton to draw attention to the town which had been going through rough times. The publicity stunt worked because decades later the town is still a focal point for the evolutionary debate. This was one of many pseudoevents where controversies or publicity events were formed from nothing to draw attention to a certain place or organization.
September 29th
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