After shadowing at a marketing agency in Greenville this summer I decided that I was really interested in learning about public relations and possibly moving in that direction upon graduation. Chapter 2 of our book was very important for me because it gave me better insight into the jobs I could possibly pursue when I graduate. For public relations there are five employment settings listed in the book; for profit corporations, non-profit corporations, governments, pr agencies and independent pr consulting. However, I feel that PR can be anything for anyone. Even if I weren’t interested in a career in PR I would still have to be aware of the public and how what I do could affect them.
Recent statistics found on at aboutpublicrelations.net stated that job opportunities in PR are holding strong and are expected to grow to a higher rate compared to the average of other jobs. There are about 122,000 individuals working in the PR field in the United States, and about 13,000 of those are self-employed. There are tons of job opportunities where you can start at an entry-level position and work your way up. Also, with PR moving into more social media outlets the possibilities and growing more and more endless everyday.
There are also websites devoted to helping you find a career in PR. The PRSA has a job center that allows you to create an RSS feed that will monitor and better target your search in Communications, PR, Community Relations and Media Relations. Like I said, in PR the possibilities are endless.
Fast Company magazine recently ran an article that asked the question “Can Hulu save traditional TV from itself?” This poses to be a very important question, a question that when asked 2 years ago, before Hulu was established, would have been an abrupt NO! Did NBC, Fox and Disney really plan to offer free access to full episodes and clips from over 800 shows? Well the answer to that question was an incredible YES! Advertising Age ran another article in which CEO, Jason Kilar proclaimed, “We have to do this, otherwise others will.”
Kilar decided to build the site with a handful of people he knew with contrasting abilities and resources. Before he knew it, Kilar was itching to release an invitation- only beta site before the official launch. Prior to becoming NewsCo’s CEO, Kilar worked for Amazon and through this had learned the importance of studying customer feedback. And so the listening began. Kilar says, “I’ve always said that our brand is what people say about us when we’re not in the room, and this is the best tool for hearing what people are saying.”
Now, with a couple years under its belt and the help of a very young CEO, Hulu has nearly 38 million viewers and $120 million in revenues, but where do you go from here, what’s next? Kilar is in the process of creating Hulu desktop, where viewers will double the time they spend on hulu.com. The new desktop will have a more movie like feel and have many more options and versatility. When browsing through the online library you will be able to add videos to a queue to watch later, share with your friends and be able to play videos one after another without prompting.
This article is a great example of public relations. Hulu has been faced with a lot of flack from the public in recent news because they are planning to start charging they’re otherwise free services. I think Hulu went about this in all the right ways. They’re underdog approach had you rooting for them from the beginning while also filling you in on information I didn’t know previously. Another aspect of this article that was great PR was putting a face to the company, Jason Kilar. By telling his story it brought you closer to the company and made it feel more relative. The last of the article was possibly the most affective piece of PR throughout the whole article. They brought awareness to a new product they will be introducing soon.
I recently read an incredibly interesting Advertising Age article on this new social media technology. Trendrr, a social media tracking service teamed up with Twitter and just introduced a new technology called “Twitter sentiment analysis.” It works by mapping certain words with the general feelings they tend to convey; positive, negative or neutral feelings. Essentially, through this analysis we will be able to get a general idea of how many people are tweeting about a certain thing and their overall opinion on the subject.
Obviously the technology isn’t down to an exact science but Trendrr believes that through this program one will hopefully be able to have an 80% accurate sentiment reading. I believe that this program is going to be an unbelievably important addition to social media and public relations. Now, not only will you be able to track more thoroughly how many people are interested in ones company to the point of tweeting about it on their own personal twitter account, but also what they’re overall opinion is. This could even move to comparing demographics, such as sex, age or race, to the overall opinion of the company which could in turn serve as a whole new basis for gaining research data.
This is a great form of PR because it gives companies a way to track how people feel about their company or product and then do what they need to to maintain the positive feelings or change what they need to to adjust the negative feeling. This is one more way that companies can engage in two way communication and listen to what the public is saying.
I previously posted on the importance of a crisis communications plan and why it is important to have a plan before an issue actually arises. Now that you know you need one, how do you write one? When faced with a crisis the most important thing is to not ignore it in hopes that it will disappear. As I said previously, social media can start a wildfire that once ignited is nearly impossible to put out. Before you get press crazy, one of the first things you should do is decide how you’re going to position the situation. There are some examples of positioning on a website that I recently read on crisis communication plans. You’re best bet in a situation like this is to do damage control, acknowledge the problem, be authentic and honest. You can apologize without admitting blame and insure the public that you are aware of the problem and that it will be taken care of.
If handled correctly, a crisis communication plan should stop the problem from getting out of hand. It should insure the public that you understand the wrong and are doing everything possible to fix it. Also, once the crisis as died down, the organization should be sure that they hold true to their promises. Regaining trust is always difficult, but will of course be even more difficult if you have no reason to be forgiven.
I learned a tremendous amount about crisis communication through the slides provided to us by Professor Vargas. You can have all the social media outlets in the world but without the proper communication plan none of that will do you any good. Having studied the importance of keeping up with social media in last weeks discussion it’s now important to discuss how this same media can damage your business just as easily as it can help. Social media can be a powerful asset for your business or it can shoot you in the foot by spreading a media wildfire that may or may not be contained.
There are some fundamentals of a Crisis Communications plan that need to be discussed. First you must be completely aware of the situation and how it is or possible could affect your company. From there it is also vital to understand who’s doing damage control, who’s in charge of the situation and what they need to say to remedy the situation. Once you have addressed the situation as best you can it doesn’t stop there. Your next step is how can you rebuild the trust and credibility of your company. I feel the most important aspect in having a powerful plan is not waiting until you are faced with some sort of company issue but rather assuming that it can and will happen and therefore being prepared for if and when it will occur.
Chapter 13 of our PR book talks about Public Relations and Marketing, their differences and their similarities. The books states that one of the biggest mistakes people make in defining PR is that it is always a function of marketing. Marketing obviously focuses on the consumers which is only one part of the public. PR focuses on relationships with all types of publics; employees, stockholders, news media and of course consumers. As the chapter progresses, we take a closer look at Marketing and define the Marketing Mix; product, price, place and promotion. When defining the promotional segment of the marketing mix we see that this is where PR comes back into the picture and the importance of this segment is constantly growing. There is a great article titled “The State of PR, Marketing and Communications: You are the Future” that goes into great detail about the changes of PR throughout the years and how it is evolving from public interaction to more and more marketing.
Also, I found a very interesting blog that gives some great insights on PR and Marketing. The blogger states that our job in PR and Marketing is to “present our companies or clients in the best possible light, but how far are we willing to go?” She talks about ethical situations we may be forced into and decisions we must make based devotion to our product/company or the public.
After receiving our latest news release assignment I decided to do a little more research on how to write a good news release and what aspects to keep in mind when completing this task. I believe this is something that is important for me to understand further because writing stories has never been one of my strong suits, but because of my interest in PR I need to become better at this.
I ran across some very helpful tips and guidelines on the Press Release Newswire. It first started by telling us to pay attention to the content of our press release. We have to make sure our news is “newsworthy” and that we start off strong. It is also very important to understand who our audience is, which is more likely to be the media outlets rather than readers initially. We have to write like we are journalists with very little fluff and embellishments. Another tip that will probably be the hardest thing for me is to write in active voice rather than passive voice, using strong verbs.
Once you have written the press release the question is how to format correctly. After researching this further, I found that there are many different ways to format a press release and while there is no specific right or wrong way the AP format is the most recognized in today’s society. I also found additional information of the format of a social media press release that I found very interesting.
I think the most important thing to consider when writing an effective news release is practice. The more experience and practice one can get, the better one will find their press releases to be.
I’ve recently been following the news war between President Obama and Fox News, a situation that has been receiving a massive amount of media coverage. This is a very important topic in public relations because of how much coverage this issue has been getting. I first became aware of the feud back in September when Obama refused an interview with Fox regarding his health care speech but accepted interviews with CNN, CBS and several other media outlets. His reason for refusal was because Fox chose not to air his speech but still insisted upon interviewing with him about it. Now it was also made aware to me in a recent news article that Obama is the first president since Richard Nixon who declared war on the Washington Post and New York Times.
If I have learned anything in this class it is that public relations can make or break you in today’s society. Holding such a high position as President of the United States, one is always going to be looked to with more criticism than others. It is Obama’s job to hold that position with honor and I don’t think declaring war against a media outlet is going to benefit anyone. In another article, the LA Times quotes David Gergen, a perennial presidential advisor, saying “It’s a very risky strategy, it’s not one I would advocate.” Having said all of that, I also highly disagree with Fox News tactics. It is the responsibility of the press to report honest and unbiased opinions. When wars are declared among people and press we lose the very thing we hope to gain through the news, the truth. Without this how can we exist as Americans when we are being fed things based on emotions rather than honesty?
As we learned in chapter 8 having a well thought out strategy and plan is very important, however it is also very important to understand the mediums you can use to reach your audience. After working in the communications department for a large company I understand the importance of these things. When it came to internal communications we were constantly informing and updating our employees of the various things that were going on throughout the company. We actively used an intranet along with compiling and emailing daily news summaries out and a quarterly newspaper After September 11, the plant installed a TV network where CNN and other information runs daily so the employees would be informed in case of an emergency.
When it comes to external communications it is important to understand the information that you can control and information in which you can’t control. Things we could control were press releases and media kits that we put together. Along with interviews and video news releases. All of the information was not only what we wanted them to know but also how we wanted the public to interpret the information. Many times though there were things that we could not control like newspaper articles and information sent out through the internet. When it comes to negative publicity through an uncontrolled media it is best to acknowledge it but not always comment on it, which won’t satisfy the reporters but gives you more time to make an informed decision on how to handle the situation.
Even though you can’t control all media it is still important to take a tactical approach to the information you can control. In our department we held weekly meetings where each team member explained what they were working on and expressed any issues they might be having. This was also a time to deal with new issues that might have come up and delegate and set deadlines if necessary. The most important thing I saw was the constant communication between team members which allowed us to be more successful in accomplishing our duties.
Research and Evaluation are two separate steps in the public relations process and the correct application of both steps is very important. Research is something that all businesses must do to compete in today’s market, which is constantly growing and advancing. However, if a business wants to continue to be competitive they must not only research and research well they must also know how to take the information they have learned and apply it to their company. Throughout most of my marketing classes, I have learned that the biggest issue when it comes to research and evaluation is that most businesses recognize symptoms of a problem and not the problem itself.
An example of the correct way to apply both research and evaluation would be the advertising war between Apple and PC. Apple began its very successful “Get a Mac” campaign nearly 3 years ago. Since then Apple as increased it’s market share a tremendous amount. The great thing about this campaign for Mac is that it targets all Microsoft PC’s and forced Microsoft to begin it’s own campaign to fight back where in the past Microsoft had simply let each individual PC company (Dell, HP etc.) advertise for their self. If you recall in the “Get a Mac” campaign, the PC is portrayed as a slightly overweight, nerdy guy in his late 40’s, and the Mac is a “cool” guy in his early to mid 20’s. In order to break from this stereotype Apple had placed upon them they had to first figure out if it’s what people really believed. This blog explains it perfectly. While Microsoft acknowledged that its product is perceived as lower quality than Mac, it is also acknowledged that it is the more reasonable choice for the everyday person. Hence, Microsoft came up with their “I’m a PC” campaign where they play off of normal, everyday people choosing Microsoft because it is the more reasonable, not to mention more affordable, choice which is important in today’s economy.
This is not only a great example of how a company correctly applied research and evaluation but also of the next chapter, Planning. PC was faced with a problem that needed to be addressed. They had to come up with a plan that would take what they know about peoples perception and either change what people think or make it positive.
There are many reasons why company’s plan, they need to align their values and actions together, better understand their research, reach a consensus and effectively manage resources. First one must come up with a goal, a starting place. In PC’s case, they needed to break free of the stereotype Apple had placed upon them. The next step is to set objectives with very specific tactics on how to achieve these objectives. In every plan, there is a starting point as well as a point they are trying to reach. Had Microsoft not realized where they needed to be it would have been hard for them to address how to get there.
