Best Practices in Public Relations!

This semester has flown by! From our first advanced communication class until now our goal was to collect a list of the best public relations practices. Here is the list that I have compiled.

(1) Knowledge of business operations - If you don’t know how a business works and especially, how it makes money, you cannot succeed in PR. Period. Public perception is the ultimate referendum on good business operations or the ultimate check against poor operations. You need to be in a position to know your client’s business as well as the client does in order to advocate and deliver.

(2) Personal relationships – Smart content and distribution only get you so far. For best results, it is always who you know. Everything else is a cold call. That’s right: you’re a whore on Information Blvd. whispering “Hey baby, want some sugar?” at passing journalists. This supports what every class speaker has said. Networking is vital. Our last speaker Ms. Stacy Gaswirth of the Shelton Group PR emphasized how crucial networking was.

(3) Knowledge of consumer behavior — No consumers, no business. Wrong consumers, no business. Who target consumers are, how they think and how to reach them — especially on the Internet — is the lynchpin of PR.
Some factors that need to be considered are:
1) The psychology of how consumers think, feel, reason, and select between different alternatives.
2) The the psychology of how the consumer is influenced by his or her environment
3) The behavior of consumers while shopping or making other marketing decisions
4) Limitations in consumer knowledge or information processing abilities influence decisions and marketing outcome
5) How consumer motivation and decision strategies differ between products that differ in their level of importance or interest that they entail for the consumer
6)How marketers can adapt and improve their marketing campaigns and marketing strategies to more effectively reach the consumer.

(4) Strategy – If you’re not strategic, you’re simply tactical. Anyone can be tactical — it’s called telemarketing — or spamming. You’ll win some battles but always lose the war for media and consumer attention. No one plans to fail, they fail to plan. In PR one must devolop plans for crisis time.

(5) A great attitude-“If you think you can or can’t, you’re right” — Henry Ford. A can-do attitude is simply unchanneled passion. A great attitude builds confidence and trust, even if the end result is a loss. You always get hired on attitude, not skill. Being in the public relations field can be extremely stressful and those who succeed and rise to the top generally have the best attitudes and adapt well to stress.

(6) Journalism skills – PR pros are essentially corporate journalists with sales responsibilities. You have to think and write like journalists in order to out-think them and write stories they want to write themselves. This is why the best PR pros are generally former journalists, especially those who go to work for major corporations. Ms. Gaswirth is a prime example. This also proves Professor Flournoy's point on how crucial writing is to be successful in public relations.

(7) Rhetoric and negotiation skills — You need to know how to argue well and properly break down an argument into premises and conclusions. You need to know how to negotiate (fight) beyond one round. And to play poker and call bulls***. This is a sure-fire recipe for another important quality: thick skin. In public relations you must know

(8) Focus — PR is a non-linear, fast paced business with an ever-changing environment. It requires a lot of juggling — the kind with fire sticks. Good “jugglers” must focus on tasks at hand, stay calm and organized and know when to switch gears.

(9) Research- You must know everything about a person or a corporation before you take them on as your client. By doing research you can learn a lot about you client that you would have never known. I think this might be the second best PR tip after Networking.

(10) Blogging- Blogs are being incorpated in most organizations today. Another class speaker and CEO of IdeaGrove PR, Scott Baradell, spoke about how crucial blogging is. He started out as an avid blogger. You can use blogs as a public forum for discussion about news, events and products. Blogs are a tool that can be used to postion yourself as an expert and your company as a leader in your industry. Blogs can be used to build trust with your readers, stop the spread of false rumors, respond honestly to criticism and nip crisis in the bud before it gets out of hand. (Example, As discussed in class about the noki chocolates. Someone was blogging negative stuff about the chocolates and the company finally went bankrupt.) Finally, blogs enable you to tap into conversations already taking place about your company, industry and competitors. One speaker, Katherine Smith of Visible Technologies, introduced our class to TruCast which enables you to track and analyze blogs.

Entrepreneurs...A New Trend?

Recently, our advanced communication skills class teamed up with http://www.look-look.com, a California based trend-setting company. Our project was to identify a new trend on the Southern Methodist University campus: Entrepreneurs.

From firsthand experience, starting your own business requires a lot of cash flow. My sister recently launched a denim line, Fortune Denim, and if it was not for the help of my mom in regards to money, she would not have been able to start her business. Therefore, SMU students have an advantage over other schools because our campus of 11,000 students located in the wealthy Highland Park area have many students that come from families with above average wealth.

As I was browsing through the Internet I came across a site that affirms my statement that SMU is full of rich kids. http://www.urbandictionary.com allows you to type in your school’s name and it shows you what people think of it. I typed in SMU and here are some of the things I came up with: “Southern Methodist University... a place where the women are perfect, the cars are gleaming new, the boys are frat and the money flows like the David Yurman during rush week,” and “A private school in Dallas filled with snobby, rich kids who base their life on their material possessions and obsess over attire and transportation....That girl is so SMU, she drives a BMW, is carrying a Prada purse, and only got in because her dad paid for that building.”

Look-Look asked our class to give feed back on these three questions:

1)How and where have you seen New Entrepreneurs in your world?

Being a senior at SMU I have had many encounters with “New Entrepreneurs.” Some of them have been quite recent.

One of my good friends and former SMU student, Laura Bush, opened up her first boutique shop L. Bartlett in West Village upon graduating from SMU last May. You can visit her store’s website at http://www.lbartlett.com and receive a coupon for $25.00 off.

I recently also met another SMU student at Fashion Industry Gallery in downtown, Dallas. She had a booth set up at the show and her jewelry really caught my eye. Lindsey Marie makes her own line of fashion jewelry using mainly pearls and natural stones. You can visit her website at http://www.lindseymarie.com




I also have seen my sister’s struggles and successes in launching her own denim line. We have talked about it in depth and she has always said that without my mom’s monetary help she would not have been able to succeed in today’s dog-eat-dog society. You can check out her jeans at http://www.fortunedenim.com

2) Do you see a shift toward a certain type of attitude toward work?

I see more of a lazy attitude among students today. I see a group of people that do not want to be controlled or told what to do by someone in authority. At SMU many students’ parents own businesses or they are at the top of a corporation. I think that many students want to follow their parent’s success stories and go into business themselves because they have seen how successful their parents are. I think that SMU students have it a lot easier than most people in society because we have parents that are able to fund our endeavors.

Everyone in my family is an entrepreneur and one day upon graduating from graduate school I hope to start my own business and follow in the footsteps of my family.
According to Fortune magazine, a group of 1,000 college students were polled and 63.5% of them wanted to start their own business following graduation.

3)How do you think this will change business in the future, if at all?

I don’t believe if this so-called "trend" will necessarily change business in the future. Young entrepreneurs have been around for a long time. I have not seen a strong surge in entrepreneurship lately so I really would not regard it as a trend.

I think we learn enough skill sets during school that make us extremely capable of running our own business. We are definitely more in-tune to technological advances than our parents and therefore able to efficiently globalize and run a company.

With our economy somewhat in a slump right now, I think there will be much less of a desire for entrepreneurs because ultimately their key to success is cash flow.

Just like our last class speaker, Katherine Smith said, “You mush have money to start your own business.”

General Motors Case Study

I focused on a General Motors case study that consisted of GM hiring a blog set-up company, MS&L Blogworks, in order to set up a corporate blog for General Motors. This is the first automotive giant to incorporate a blog into their business strategy.

The blog launched in January 2005. It allowed GM’s Vice Chairman Bob Lutz and other GM executives to voice their opinions and challenge readers to take a new look at GM cars and trucks.

The blog has since received numerous hits and much attention from PR practitioners and press. The blog was made in order to increase communications with General Motors and its customers.

You might be wondering, how did the blog draw so many people in? Well, GM sent six e-mails to high-profile bloggers and from there word spread fast. Since then, the blog has constantly been updated with posts and even some podcasts. The blog also showcases new vehicles that the public has not seen.

So far, the blog has been a great success, but has not significantly increased the sales of their automobiles. However, GM hopes that this blog will bring back lost customers in the long run.

General Motors, still, is the only carmaker to have a public blog. Their media hits have been impressive and GM has received much press from: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News, The Financial Times, BusinessWeek, and PRWeek. This truly goes to show that blogging in the corporate world is a hot topic in the press world.

Due to the success of GM’s blog, I believe that more automakers will jump on the bandwagon and create their own blogsites.

Check out GM’s blog, “FastLane”

Spring Break

Currently in Los Angeles for Spring Break! Check back soon for a new posting!

Blog for Heal Magazine

One of the main objectives for the “Heal Magazine Blog” is to provide a forum that all cancer survivors can benefit from to improve the quality of their lives after diagnosis. The blog should have a reoccurring theme of healing faster, better and stronger.

The blog should have discussions and categories that talk about nutrition and exercise, setting goals for healing, prioritizing, stress relief, spirituality, their emotions, moods and how they are fighting fatigue. The blog should be extremely positive. It is a blog that should provide survivors with more than hope through a community of support, compassion and love.

The blog itself should be warm and inviting, pictures are always good as well as vibrant colors. Dark colors should not be used because this is not seen as a somber time since this is a positive blog.

On the http://blog.healthtalk.com/breast-cancer/life-with-breast-cancer/ they have a link called Ask the Doctor and I really like this aspect because it is comforting for many people to know that there is a doctor that is there 24 hours to answer your questions related to cancer.

Creating a community requires frequent reading and commenting on other people’s blogs. The Heal blog should be focused on making connections, supporting each other and celebrating cancer victories. Battling cancer is a whirlwind of emotions, it is something that does not disappear overnight. People inflicted with cancer go through a long, arduous, and sometimes unsuccessful treatment process. No one should be reminded of the struggles they went through to become a survivor, but this blog should be a blog appreciating a fresh start to their long life.

It would be nice if the blog could also attract well-known cancer survivors to blog on our Heal blog. Many celebrities such as actress Fran Drescher (uterine cancer), TV reporter Sam Donaldson (melanoma), and comedian Tom Green (testicular cancer) have been blogging on Yahoo! Health. Check out the link at http://health.yahoo.com/blog-for-hope/

On another note, http://www.blogforacure.com/ is a really nice site. It is a free blogging service for all cancer survivors. It allows cancer survivors a way to document their battle with cancer and give thanks to life. It provides pictures of the survivors that you can click on and read their blogs. Although this is not a community, it is still a unique idea.

Another good cancer community blog is: http://www.thecancerblog.com/

Vegas Project Show

Currently I am at Project Show in Las Vegas selling premium denim for the line Fortune Denim. We have been getting much press lately in publications such as California Apparel News, OK! Magazine, Allure and Vogue. I am about to attend a meeting with Women's Wear Daily because they will be doing a write up on the jeans in their upcoming issue. Sales generated at the show have been impressive and we hope to reach $90,000 in sales by tomorrow. Right now we are headed that direction. I would love to write more but I must go to meetings now! Check back soon for more updates!

GETTING INK FOR YOUR CLIENT...NOT AS EASY AS YOU THINK

Watch this interview! The actual interviewer is not adequately prepared but the communication specialist is quite knowledgable on media relations!



Research is extremely crucial these days to insure getting ink for your client. You must know who the main writer is for the topic you are trying to pitch for your client. Another technique is presenting your story in a creative way, not just offering up another lame press release. Nowadays, a press release is ancient and people are now using case histories, pictures and anything else that might make the story stronger and more enticing for the writer/journalist to report on.

Well-written press releases, creative media kits and strong relationships with the media used to be enough to get great exposure for clients. However, now you must incorporate all the above along with other innovative ways such as blogs to grab the attention of the media.

The media is surged with phone calls daily from people trying to get a story published about their product or company. People in PR are beginning to realize the easiest way to stand out from the competition starts with having a creative idea for a campaign or product launch, not with mastering the art of standard forms of communication, which seems to not get your very far these days.
www.prdomain.com

Often times, you feel obliged to take reporters out to lunch to increase your chances of having your story published. This a good technique but you need to do your research. Print and broadcast reporters should be treated differently because print reporters often have ethics policies that say what reporters can and cannot accept. However, broadcast reporters do not really have these rules and most of them are expecting free lunches and gifts. People good at PR can think of creative ways to tie story pitches to a good gift according to www.101publicrelations.com/sr43.html

Follow this link to find out more innovative ways to get ink for your client:
www.gettingink.typepad.com

Blogging as a Tool for PR!

According to http://www.mmimarketing.com/white-papers/the-small-business-blog-as-a-public-relations-tool, public relations agencies can benifit by blogging in several ways.

1) Using the blog as a public forum for discussion about new and current products or services, company news and events.

2) They are a tool that can be used to posistion yourself as an expert and your company as a leader in your industry.

3) Blogs can be used to build trust with your readers, stop false rumors, respond honestly to criticism and nip a public relations crisis in the bud before it spirals out of control.

4) Blogs enable you to tap into conversations already taking place about your company, industry and competitors.

5) Blogs are used to gain search engine prominence through RSS (Real Simple Syndication)

Five years ago "blogging" was a relatively unheard word but now, in 2007, it is a word that we seem to hear about every minute. It is becoming such an increasingly popular tool in the online community that companies and agencies are wanting a piece of the action as well. A blog can do great things for an organization. It can generate buzz, also known these days as viral marketing. For public relations practitioners a blog is simply another tool to reach out at customers and give them the inside scoop.

A blog can also be used to see what people in the workplace are thinking. From a public relations perspective, it would be nice to see what blogs are saying about your product, service or company. Blogging can also eliminate "PR Nightmares." People love to talk and that is precisely how rumors are also spread. It doesn't take long for simple and meaningless speculations to snowball into crises. Since blogging is an increasingly popular tool, there is a strong liklihood that these so-called speculations and rumors would be discovered sooner rather than later. Once discovered, the organization can take immediate action to stop the rumor and make clarifications before the rumor got out of hand.

Blogging is a type of social netowrking. Some social networking sites you might have heard of are MySpace and YouTube. There are many advantages for PR companies because most of these networking sites are free, and they are a cheaping way fo branding an image rathern than having to spend thousands of dollars on media and advertising. Using blogs, companies have complete control over what they say in their blog and what they promote. This is key becuase now they are seen as a corporation who actually has a passion for whatever they are promoting.

In my opinion, blogging will not disappear anytime soon. It is still a rising trend and I think we will see more and more companies and agencies jumping on the bandwagon!!

seriously who do they have working for these companies!

All of these stories were copied and pasted from CNNmoney.com in the Business 2.0 section:

Northwest Airlines
And don't forget, you only need one kidney...
In July, bankrupt Northwest Airlines begins laying off thousands of ground workers, but not before issuing some of them a handy guide, "101 Ways to Save Money."

The advice includes dumpster diving ("Don't be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash"), making your own baby food, shredding old newspapers for use as cat litter, and taking walks in the woods as a low-cost dating alternative.

General Motors
Then again, viral marketing can be screwed up in English too...
As part of a cross promotion with the NBC TV show The Apprentice, GM launches a contest to promote its Chevy Tahoe SUV. At Chevyapprentice.com, viewers are given video and music clips with which to create their own 30-second commercials.

Among the new Tahoe ads that soon proliferate across the Web are ones with taglines like "Yesterday's technology today" and "Global warming isn't a pretty SUV ad - it's a frightening reality."

Kazakhstan
Throw the cash down the well...
Amid efforts by Kazakhstan to prove it's not the backward land portrayed in the movie Borat, the nation's central bank misspells the Kazakh word for "bank" on its 2,000- and 5,000-tenge notes.

Rising Sun Anger Release Bar
You're telling us!
"The idea of beating someone decorated as your boss seems very attractive."

- Chinese salesman Chen Liang, on the newly opened Rising Sun Anger Release Bar in Nanjing. Bar patrons are invited to rant, curse, smash drinking glasses, and even beat workers equipped with protective gear and dressed as the target of their wrath.

Fiji Water
Crisp. Refreshing. And only ever-so-slightly poisonous...
Los Angeles-based Fiji Water runs magazine ads for its bottled water with the headline "The Label Says Fiji Because It's Not Bottled in Cleveland."

Cleveland officials retaliate by running tests revealing that Fiji bottled water contains 6.3 micrograms of arsenic per liter, while the city's tap water has none.

Fiji counters by saying its own tests found less than 2 micrograms per liter.

Heart Attack Grill
Goes great with a small Diet Coke...
The Heart Attack Grill in Tempe, Ariz., introduces the Quadruple Bypass Burger, featuring 2 pounds of beef, four layers of cheese, 12 slices of bacon, and 8,000 calories.

As a side dish: Flatliner Fries, cooked in lard. A Triple Bypass is also available.

Golden State Warriors
Please escort Eric to the locker room. Some of his 6-foot-10, 260-pound colleagues would like to have a word with him...
Eric Govan, PR manager for the NBA's Golden State Warriors, sends an e-mail titled "Ghetto Prom" -- featuring photos of black people in formal attire and commentary denigrating the outfits -- to the team's entire media distribution list.

Govan is summarily fired.

Sony
Mighty white of you...
Sony runs a billboard campaign in the Netherlands depicting a Caucasian model rudely gripping the jaw of a woman of African descent to promote its PlayStation Portable in "ceramic white."

Sony initially defends the campaign, saying it was meant to "highlight the whiteness of the new model," but later apologizes.

Crackheadz Gone Wild: New York
Crackheads all cracked up on crack...
Entrepreneurs David Singletary and Milton Greagory begin selling Crackheadz Gone Wild: New York DVDs for $10 in New York's Harlem neighborhood.

"It's basically a drug-awareness video," says Singletary, a former crack dealer.

The thriving business rakes in $2,500 a week at a single table across from the Apollo Theater.

Tesco"Mom, Kelsey's hogging the stripper pole again!"
"Unleash the sex kitten inside ... soon you'll be flaunting it to the world and earning a fortune in Peekaboo Dance Dollars."

- From a product listing by $75 billion British retailer Tesco, plugging the $100 Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit - which includes an 8.5-foot chrome pole, a "sexy dance garter," and play money for stuffing into said garter - in the Toys & Games section of its website.

After complaints from parent groups, Tesco decides to keep selling the item as a "fitness accessory" but agrees to remove the listing from the toy section.

Spin Master
Customers who bought the Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit also purchased this item...
Toymaker Spin Master releases the I-Tattoo, a $15 kit for kids ages 6 and up that features a "realistic, vibrating tattoo pen" and instructs youngsters to "get ready to 'get inked.'"

Hasbro
Customers who bought the Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit and the I-Tattoo probably would've been clueless enough to buy this one too...
To compete with the spectacularly successful Bratz doll phenomenon, Hasbro unveils plans to launch the Pussycat Dolls, aimed at girls as young as 8 years old and modeled after the risqué, burlesque-inspired pop group of the same name.

(Yes, the "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me" Pussycat Dolls.)

After protests by parent groups, Hasbro nixes the line

Wal-Mart PR Bloopers

Thought this might interest some people or make some people laugh....Out of the 101 Dumbest Moments In Business according to CNNMoney, Wal-Mart landed six spots. Number 4 on my list is the what the public relations world has been hearing about the most.

Because if there's anything America loves, it's a politician...
In an attempt to put a smiley face on its tarnished image, Wal-Mart hires heavy-hitting public relations firm Edelman, which sets about using tactics derived from political races to reverse public perceptions of the giant retailer.

Dubbing its campaign "Candidate Wal-Mart," the firm trumpets all manner of new Wal-Mart initiatives: improved employee health-care benefits, higher starting pay levels, new stores in downtrodden neighborhoods, reasonably priced organic foods, and a flat $4 fee for hundreds of generic prescription drugs.

As a result, candidate Wal-Mart quickly becomes, well, the most popular politician since Spiro Agnew. By year's end Wal-Mart suffers its first quarterly profit drop in a decade, sees same-store sales decline in November's run-up to the crucial holiday shopping season, and suffers a series of public relations gaffes so stunning that it lands six spots in this year's edition of the 101 Dumbest Moments.

Perhaps Michael Richards will be able to find work after all...
Availing itself of PR firm Edelman's deep political connections, Wal-Mart recruits civil rights leader and former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young to chair its company-funded Working Families for Wal-Mart.

In an August interview with an African American newspaper in Los Angeles, Young says the megaretailer "should" displace its urban corner-store competition.

"You see, those are the people who have been overcharging us.... I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans, and now it's Arabs."

We hear Lonelygirl15 is a huge fan of Sam's Club...
In September a folksy new blog called Wal-Marting Across America pops up on the Internet.

The blog documents the purportedly spontaneous discoveries of RV-traveling megastore megafans Jim and Laura as they pull over to chat with happy Wal-Mart employees, like the guy whose company health insurance saved his son's life, or the woman who worked her way up from cashier to corporate manager.

Unfortunately, it neglects to mention that Wal-Mart arranged Jim and Laura's itinerary, paid for the RV, and compensated them for the blog entries. Exposed by BusinessWeek.com, the stunt is especially bad news for Edelman, since it violates ethical guidelines it helped to write for the nascent Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

Cutting off your nose to spite your smiley face...
In December, six weeks after hiring Interpublic Group's DraftFCB as its new advertising agency, Wal-Mart fires both Draft and Wal-Mart senior vice president Julie Roehm, who led the agency search.

Roehm reportedly attended an expensive dinner paid for by Draft at a hip Manhattan restaurant, in violation of a Wal-Mart policy that prohibits employees from accepting gifts from vendors.

The move is expected to delay Wal-Mart's efforts to shift from a mass advertising strategy to one that tailors pitches to specific demographic groups, seen as key to reversing its slumping sales.

Don't worry, Andrew Young explained it to us. It's some sort of Jewish/Korean/Arab conspiracy...
Bringing the ever-friendly spirit of its in-store greeters online, Walmart.com offers DVD shoppers helpful recommendations for films they might be interested in purchasing.

Customers looking at the Web site's product pages for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Planet of the Apes, for instance, are steered toward "similar items" such as Martin Luther King: I Have a Dream/Assassination of MLK and Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. Wal-Mart spokeswoman Mona Williams says the company is "heartsick" over the incident but has "absolutely no evidence" that the connections were made intentionally.

First Post!

Hey everyone!!! This is my first post, I am very new to blogging so please bear with me. This blog is part of a class I am currently enrolled in as part of my major. I will begin to post often now that my site is set up! Also, I encourage everyone to look at our class blog at www.smuccpaclass.blogspot.com. Thank you so much! P.S. if you do look at our class blog and comment, please write a note saying that I sent you!!