Olivia's Blog

Time to Reflect and Push On

WOW… what a semester.

It has been by far the most clarifying and growth driven semester of my 5+ years as a college student. I feel as though I finally have a little bit of control over my career and future after finally finding an area of study that I LOVE. Going into fundamentals of Public Relations I did not truly know what I was getting myself into. Looking back at my previous blog, I did at the beginning of class, it was clear that I had no idea what Public Relations is and just how involved the decisions in it are.

Now I may not have an exact definition of what PR really is, but I know enough to know what makes up PR, and through this I feel like after this upcoming year at GV(my final year YAY) I will be able to be successful in a PR career.

Something I enjoyed most throughout the semester and that I felt really helped me grow as a PR student was our blogging. At the beginning, I quickly realized there was A LOT of writing to be done in the PR world, whether it be through blogging, media relations, or the writing of campaigns. I have always hated writing, I could never seem to get my ideas across how I wanted them to be, and quickly would become frustrated. However, through blogging I feel as though I have found my voice and now, I enjoy writing much more and find my ideas are easy to express in the way I want them to be.

Another part of the semester that I felt helped me truly grow as a student in the PR world was working with a real client in order to create a Public Relations Campaign for them. To say this was a challenge for me would be an understatement. I struggled throughout the entire semester really to create this campaign, my main struggle being the secondary research. However, now looking back and have finished the campaign I can truly say I am PROUD of myself for completing it. It pushed me to rely on only myself to come up with content and ideas without the help or influence of others and showed me that I can really get things done. It also showed me that my ideas are enough to not only get good grades but be successful on my own in whatever I want to do or be.

This semester has been a whirl wind of confusion, frustration, and in the end accomplishment. I thought I was going fail especially once our classes were switched to online. I was stressed and procrastination became part of the stress. However, I pushed through and could not be more proud of myself. This class has taught me not only the basics of PR, but also, and most important to me, that Public Relations is where I want to be and what I want my future to be in. I look forward to my future career and have this class to thank for showing me something I love and cant wait to continue to pursue.

Branding Yourself ?

Photo by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash

I remember briefly touching on your “personal brand” in my CAP 105 class: Technology in Advertising and Public Relations. However, wanted to know more about this as I get more info about Ad and Pr, as I go through classes and learn more. So, I took this opportunity to research what a personal brand is, how to create your own brand, and its importance to you.

When I think of my personal brand, I think of what makes me, me or what I would want people to remember me as or how they even remember me now. What does a person think when they think of me? I know personal opinions and relationships can influence this but the broader image of me is what I think about.

Your personal brand is a combination of skills, experience, and personality. It is how you want to promote yourself and tells your story. Your personal brand can be created on its own if you let it develop as it does, or you can help influence it at let the person you want to be known. Before the internet this was difficult to do, business cards were the biggest way of doing so, as stated in the article. It was difficult to get into the public eye unless you were on tv, in a different source of media or were the face of an advertisement.

Personal branding is important because it is what makes you memorable. If you are memorable you have influence on people and help you to stand out. This can help you in many different aspects of your life whether they be personal or professional. Personally, this can help you be influential in your community, friends, or family, it can also help you show who you are and be your true self. Professionally, if you identify the brand of your company or business you work for it can help you reach the specific target audience you are trying to reach. It can also grow your reach of the company, a brand can help consumers relate to the company and relate to each other spreading the word and essentially advertising your company.

I found a list of 10 Golden Rules of Personal Branding, and thought a couple were important to emphasize or specifically touch on, although they were all good.

The first is be genuine, by doing so you will actually love what you are saying or sharing. It will also make it easier to manage your brand on a day to day basis, and will just amplify who you are, and what you’re sharing. While being genuine you should also be telling a story, the article states that by not having a narrative you can lose half of your potential audience. They recommend staring a narrative so that your audience can interact with your brand rather than blabbing on to whoever will even think about listening.

Being consistent was one that immediately jumped out to me as well. I personally have watched videos on influencers who said they were vegan and their entire image and brand was this great vegan lifestyle they live. However, they were seen eating meat or dairy products in the background of other influencer’s videos. This immediately takes away all of this person’s credibility, and the public’s view of this persons brand becomes unknown or even negative. The article cautions readers to not underestimate how much even simple small inconsistencies can derail the effectiveness of your brand.

After researching personal brand I see not only the importance of it, but I also am excited about being creative yet efficient about creating my own personal brand.

The Ever Changing Social Media

Social media plays a huge part in our lives from shopping, to keeping up with friends and family, and even in many of our professions. There are over 3.4 billion people currently active on social media and the average person spends two and a half hours a day on social media sites. Public relations is a way of communicating to the consumer and this is also true of social media, because of this, it is important that they play hand in hand. But this hasn’t always been the case.

PR Daily discusses 5 ways that social media has reshaped the PR industry. One of the five things that it focused on was how it has made the life of a news story shorter but has made its reach tremendous. Social media is a very busy place there are constant status updates, new news breaking, and always something new that you won’t believe. Journalists are always looking for the new thing that people want or need to know and that means PR professionals need to keep up and have the next big thing about their client ready to go.

With how fast social media can communicate to the public, crisis communication is ever more important now. PR professionals must always be monitoring social media and have strategic plans in case a crisis does in fact happen. The voice of the brand and the way the public views the company is increasingly vital.

A huge way that social media has caught the attention of PR professionals is through their use of influencers. There are now influencers in about any industry now, from a Youtuber who focuses on reviewing children’s toys, to a Instagram “famous” woman who tries different brands of clothing then posts them for here 300 thousand followers. PR professionals are able to take advantage of this opportunity to get these influencers to talk about their product and attract new traffic to their brand.

Social media has also changed some of the areas of focus for PR professionals. Usually their focus was on creating meetings with the correct media outlets or getting the head of the company an interview with the right person. Although this is still a huge part of the job, PR professionals now have to focus more on the customer specifically. Social media is often the first-place consumers go to complain, question, or praise almost anything. PR professionals need to keep up on these responses in order to keep the brands image and consumers interest.

Not only has social changed the way PR professionals perform their duties it also has changed and expanded how they can achieve and prove their success. Previously as mentioned before PR was done by landing a fantastic interview or getting your message out on the right media outlets in the right amount of time; and this was the only way you could measure your success. However, now with social media it is just as easy to have a successful run with an influencer representing your product as it was to have a hit on a tv media outlet.

Social media has greatly impacted the Public Relations career for the better. I want to focus on social media in my career path and am excited to see what changes and advancements there are to come within the field and social media itself.

Coolest WHAT in the jungle ?!

One of the major parts of Public Relations is crisis management. A business crisis as described by Kristin Baker, “is an event that has the potential to threaten the success and health of a company by tarnishing its reputation, damaging its business operations, negatively impacting its finances, or harming its employees.” There are so many different types of crises a business can go through such as financial, natural, technological, and organizational to name a few. A crisis management plan is important because it makes you prepared for things that may come and can protect you and your company from potential very long lasting negative effects. A crisis management plan is a set of steps that are prepared before a crisis happens in order to deal with or solve the problems that may arise in the future.

When thinking of crisis management, a crisis that instantly jumped to my head was one involving H & M in January of 2018. As part of their online platform a new arrival was posted including a photograph of sweet looking young black boy, however, the crisis was clearly visible as you began to read the green pullover hoodie he was wearing. The hoodie read “coolest monkey in the jungle”, immediately you can literally see the issue here. Social media went crazy, everyone was outraged, one person to note who was especially vocal about the incident was well known singer, The Weeknd (Abel Makkonen Tesfaye). After Abel saw the fire storm taking place on social media, he took to Twitter to express his feelings. Abel said in a tweet on Monday, January 8 “Woke up this morning shocked and embarrassed by this photo. I’m deeply offended and will not be working with @hm anymore…”

To evaluate this crisis, I have applied it to a model on how to communicate in a crisis. The model is found in the book Public Relations Strategies and Tactics by Cameron, Reber, and Wilox, and is pictured below.

Image result for crisis communication model wilcox

One of the things I think H & M implanted best was taking responsibility for their actions. The day after the picture was posted they released a statement saying “We sincerely apologize for offending people with this image of a printed hooded top. We believe in diversity and inclusion in all that we do and will be reviewing all our internal policies accordingly to avoid any future issues.” Making this statement so soon reveals to the public that they are aware of the issue and agree that it was a poor decision. From here H & M can begin to try to repair its image with the public.

Throughout the crisis H & M was honest with the public, they released details that made their apology believable and seemed to tell the truth about the matter. There was also no way H & M could have said they didn’t post the image seeing as it had gone world wide but the right choice was made in being open about things and keeping the public aware of what was going on in the matter.

There was not too much to be found on if H & M had a central command center during the process but it is recommended in the model. It seems to be a good idea to have everything in one place with everyone focused on the same thing. The company made a few official press releases or statements to the public however they were always from a spokesperson but not a specific one. I am not sure if they were coming from the same person or not but if they were it would have aided in keeping everyone of the same page and having the same voice through all of the media contact.

Once H & M made an official statement about he incident they also chose to at first remove the image of the boy and only keep an image of the sweater. This kept the social media fire still burning, it was not until a short time after that they decided to completely remove the product from not only their website but also to stop production of it completely. H & M followed many of the suggestions in the model. Following these suggestions, I believe put the fire out on the topic more quickly than it would have if they had said no comment or not wanted take responsibility for it. It is still insane to me that such a large successful company could let something so blatantly offensive get pas so many people including photographers and editors and still allow for it to be posted for the world to see.

References-

Wilcox, D.L., Cameron, G.T., Reber, B,H. (2016). Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics Updated Eleventh Edition. Person Education, Inc.

Why research ? Why in Public Relations?

I have had to do research for papers and presentations since middle school, they started out simple and evolved to be loner in length, more in depth, and contain more details. I have learned over the years the best practices for researching topics or ideas. These included not relying on Google as your only place of research, how to find and use trade journals and research databases, and how to narrow my searches so they produce the results I am looking for.

Not only have we been taught how to research for classes we also research everyday in our own lives. According to internetlivestats there are over 40,000 Google searches done every second. Whenever you search for something or investigate a product you are doing research. We all Google things before we buy them or look for reviews on an item. We Google restaurants, stores, parks, directions, our lives are basically filled with different research all day every day.

There are two types of research that can be preformed secondary and primary. Specifically, primary research in PR is research performed by you, a client, or your firm. This type of research can come in a variety of ways including surveys and focus groups. Secondary research is research that has already been performed by a third party, this research can be found online, in trade journals, or scholarly articles.

Research allows for people working in PR to learn about a client or potential client. The person is then able to present the best possible solutions to the client while sticking to the company’s brand. Research can also help you come up with a strategy for a client, starting with the campaign but also including creating a good budget for the campaign. Research also allows for people in PR to evaluate why past campaigns for clients have failed or why their service or product isn’t performing as it should. This then allows for them to correct and give advice on what is needed to fix the problem they are having.

Another aspect of PR that can be helped with research is media relations. Research can help with telling a story and creating content for a project. Not only this must research can show you where your client has been active in social media and what outlets they are using to express their ideas and products. After a campaign has been put into place research will be used to investigate how it is performing and its overall success.

Research also allows for PR professionals to prepare for change and follow industry trends. Through this they are able to best represent their clients and adjust to what is working best currently, in an industry that is ever changing.

When starting out in my journey to obtaining my degree in Advertising and Public Relations I was not aware of the amount of research that is needed to have a successful career in the field. I now know the importance and look forward to being able to use the many skills I have learned over the many years of schooling.

I FINALLY chose a major but, didn’t know what it was

When first going into my Advertising and Public relations major I had only a general idea of what advertising is. I knew it had to do something with marketing and in the business world but that was about it. As far as public relations goes, the most I could understand was that it was in the business world and it had something to do with relationships. My real first insight into Public Relations came from watching a show on Netflix where one of the main characters works at a PR firm and eventually goes on to open her own. I feel like it gave me a general idea of what could possibly be some of the parts of a career in Public Relations. I realize it is a show and obviously it’s not going to be 100% correct but this was my first look into what it could even possibly mean. I would highly recommend this show if you’re looking for a good laugh click here for more information on it.

More specifically PR is special to me because it allows me to be in the business world but also have a large involvement with people through the clients. I have always enjoyed working with people through my various customer service positions and always wondered how I could do some of the same things but make a living doing it and going to college. I first started out as a business major but quickly realized it wasn’t as “people pleasing” and people involved as I would have liked it to be. I get joy from helping people and successfully solving their problem or issue to my best ability.

After research online I found that PR does not have a “real” definition for it. However, one of the many definitions I found was, public relations is a strategic way of communication that mutually benefits a relationship between a company and their key publics. PR is important to me because it puts the relationship and human aspect back into a money hungry business world. Public relations builds and maintains the relationships between companies and the public. I think it’s easy for big businesses especially, to lose these relationships with the public, or to have the public lose faith in them quickly and easily with one bad thing that comes out about a business.

A good example of building and keeping relationships with the public that comes to mind is the share a coke campaign. Coke is a well-known brand name that I would argue almost every single person would recognize. So, what does a company that is so well known do to keep up the excitement and relationships with its’ consumers? Share a coke was a campaign where they replaced the Coke label name on the bottle with 250 of the most popular names among teens and millennials. The campaign was a very successful personalized brand experience. I remember when this campaign first came out and everyone was talking about “finding” their name on a coke bottle, this came along with numerous pictures being posted on social media, and even people sharing where they found a specific name so other could go and find it as well.

Video and Images in Ad and PR

Photo by Artūras Kokorevas on Pexels.com

Images and videos are everywhere we look !

Statistics show that only 10% of people recall information they read after just three days however when an image is added that number goes up to 65%. Images are used to boost recognition and create a longer lasting memory and impact on a consumer. When it comes to articles researchers have found that adding an image to certain categories boosts performance more than others, these top categories include general news, politics, and sports. Articles with relevant images were also viewed 94% more than articles without one. Social media has become a huge way for people to advertise, posts on Facebook with an image receive 352% more engagement than just a link alone, and 20% more engagement than a video. Images attached to ads also cater to visual learners, which make up a large portion of the population. Another huge way the images play a part in ad and pr is when it comes to consumers searching for your business or product. 60% of consumers say that having an image of a business show up when they search for it makes it more likely for them to contact the business or use the business. Search engines also realize the importance of image heavy content and often bring these search results to the top of the list. Not only is having an image very important but also the quality of the image posted is very important. 67% of consumers say that the quality of an image when selecting a product is very important to them. Images should be sharp, clear, and add to the post, businesses should also avoid using overused stock images to help stand out from other brands and companies (Gigante).

When it comes to using video in ad and pr it is important to think about the content of the video and do your research before creating one for your brand. Approximately 85% of all videos viewed on Facebook are viewed with no audio. This is information that would be very helpful when creating a video for Facebook. It is also important to become authentic and truthful. Consumers are not interested in what most call “click-bait” they take it as a company being untruthful when their expectations are not met in the video. Videos should be telling the story that you want them to but also be the right kind of video for the platform you are posting to. Without taking this into consideration you could be interrupting the consumers. Both images and videos are important in pushing the right message you want to portray and having effective advertising (Torossian).

Gigante, M. D. (2019, January 11). It’s All About the Images [Infographic]. Retrieved November 2, 2019, from https://www.mdgadvertising.com/marketing-insights/infographics/its-all-about-the-images-infographic/.

Torossian, R. T. R., Torossian, R., & Valerie. (2017, January 17). Video PR and Marketing – the Approaches that Work. Retrieved November 2, 2019, from https://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/video-pr-marketing-approaches-work-01757773.

Social Media and Me

Social media is growing and becoming a larger part of my life everyday. From the time I wake up in the morning to right before I go to bed I am checking my social media.

Some might think oh my gosh how could you be on social media so much throughout the day and have it be the first and last things you do. In my defense I use a lot of my social media to keep up with my family that lives overseas, liking pictures, saying happy birthday, and keeping up on each other. I also do use it to keep up on old friends and family from my hometown. But I must admit that I fall into the holes of celebrity drama, the newest products coming out, and what new shows I HAVE to watch. Professionally I do not use social media much, however, I plan(hopefully) to get into a career working with social media.

I see others using social media personally and professionally everyday all day. Advertising is heavily intertwined with social media, some people have even made their entire life personally and professionally on social media. YouTube creators often use their social media as their main way of advertising their YouTube channel, which to some is their only way they earn a living. Specifically, personally many people use social media to keep up on friends and family, their community, and groups they are apart of.

Over the past few years I have seen social media explode across the world. Growing up MySpace was the main social media that I used and then Facebook as it became more popular. It was mostly used to keep up on friends, however now it is used increasingly by all ages for almost anything. One thing that has surprised me in how much it has grown is the online garage sales on Facebook, to me it’s almost heartwarming that people are still trusting enough to meet a complete stranger for often a small amount of money.

Social media however, comes with its own pros and cons. To me the most beneficial uses of social media is being able to communicate and keep up on friends and families lives, whether they are near or far. Professionally social media can bring your brand and or product across tons of different consumers, which can be very beneficial. Although there are huge pros to social media I think professionally it can be particularly detrimental to businesses and people if something bad or negative is spread about the brand or even a person that represents the brand. The public’s view of a business or person can be changed for the worst in a matter of hours. Personally social media harms us because it can suck us in and pull us away from things that are more important even if we don’t think so in the moment.

Social media is becoming such a huge part of our lives in ways I never thought they would. Although there are some huge ways social media could be detrimental to me both professionally and personally, I think it still helps me in a much larger way. I am curious to see how far social media continues to grow in the future and how my future career may lead to become involved in social media.

Why Ad and PR?

I started as a Human Resource Management major however the classes were becoming increasingly difficult and I was finding it hard to keep my GPA up. I ultimately made the decision to switch to a department with a lower GPA requirement. I spoke with a few different departments and Ad and Pr seems to be the closest fit, incorporating business but also a large amount of people interaction. Through starting classes and getting to do more research into the job possibilities available with an Ad and Pr degree, I would say I have become increasingly interested and excited for the future. I recently was watching Netflix and in the show a woman worked in a Pr firm, I realize this was a TV show and made for entertainment, however her job seemed interesting and made me feel as though I had made the correct decision.

Technology has definitely played a huge role in my understanding and interest of Ad and Pr. Through technology I’ve been able to explore all of the ins and outs of the field and see the importance it plays. As I learn different websites to use to build myself before entering the Ad and Pr field , and about different ways to use technology in the field it makes me more interested. There are tons of ways that technology plays a huge role in Ad and Pr, and technology is ever evolving making its interactions with the field always changing as well.

During my lifetime technology has changed completely. When i was younger most people had a cellphone however most people did not have a data or even a smart phone. Most research of companies was done online through a computer and advertisements were seen on TV. Now most people do not have a landline and you can do almost everything on a smartphone from making appointments to shopping. You can find out almost anything about a business through a google search in your hands. The obvious positives to this is that you can find information about anything within seconds; hours, products, services, reviews, and even information about people. Although all of these seem like great positives this means that there are also negative pictures, reviews, and information that can be found just as easily.

With the advancement of technology has also come the advancement of social media. For me Facebook was the first main social media that I remember using I would message my friends and make posts but that was the extent of it. Now I have multiple different platforms where I share pictures, posts, thoughts, ideas, music, news in a matter of seconds across the planet. And the one thing these platforms all have in common are advertisements. What businesses put out for the world to see is being seen by the public and being critiqued. While this is positive when it comes to advertising, it can also be very negative from a pr aspect if news that the CEO of a company is seen killing an endangered animal. This being spread within seconds across the world would have a great negative impact on the company.

Technology has advanced and grown at an incredible rate over the past few years. It continues to greatly impact how we live our everyday lives from the people we choose to support to the products we purchase. Ad and Pr is ever changing because of its close connection with technology. It is because of the technology and ever changing field that finalized my choice to major in Ad and Pr.