Wednesday, October 21, 2009

PR Jobs

When I did my search on PR jobs, I came across many statistics that I did not expect to see associated with a job in Public Relations, for instance, according to All About Public Relations:

“There are more than 122,000 PR professionals working in the United States. About two-thirds of those work in service industries such as public relations firms, advertising agencies, health care organizations, educational institutions, and social service organizations. Others work for manufacturers, financial institutions, and government agencies. About 13,000 PR consultants are self-employed.”

So that actually got me curious as to what the qualifications are to get a job in one of those fields. After doing a Google search, it led me to CareerOverview.com and it mentions many qualifications that one is usually recommended to have to obtain a job in the PR field. It mentions how many colleges and universities have plans in place to set the student on a track for a job in Public Relations if they so desire one. Students can take internships which are often helpful in later acquiring a full-time job later on down the road. It says that “Some larger organizations have employees pass through official training programs while organizations with smaller staffs usually just entry-workers learn from their superiors.” The best thing that can help someone get a job in the PR field is how much experience that one has, preferably a degree in either public relations or communications along with a specialization area that could give an organization an edge.

Chapter 13

I feel as though I need to get something off of my chest from the get-go. Personally, I do not understand why the book has Chapter 13 placed so far in the back of the book when it just goes into more detail about Chapter 1. It goes further in explaining the relationship that marketing, advertising, and public relations have, as well as focusing more on the marketing aspect of public relations. The book makes reference to the four P’s known as the marketing mix and those P’s are: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. The first example of marketing involving great use of those P’s would be the marketing of the new Playstation 3. The Playstation 3 (or PS3) was the third generation of Playstation gaming systems from Sony. When the Playstation 3 first came out, it had to compete with the XBOX 360 and in many areas, the two systems were completely similar but rather than give up on trying to get an edge over their rival, Sony decided to retool their PRODUCT by changing the packaging from a bulky, computer system to a sleek, slim, more compact model. As soon as the word got out via news releases, social networks and blogs, the PS3 slim was all that people could talk about. Then when it was reported that the PRICE was going to be cut at all the PLACES that sell the system even though Sony was adding more memory to it; decision on the price forced XBOX into making a decision on their systems’ prices as well. The PROMOTION of it was also interesting because their commercial has a line that I hear many people quote now from that commercial which means a lot of people watched it and paid attention to it. Here is the commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyVhP46xCQw (and just for the record, the released version is the censored version, Sony received some bad publicity from their comments in what was dubbed as the uncensored version.

In conclusion, Sony did a great job of marketing the new PS3 at a time that caught their competitors’ off-guard. They precisely executed all four of the P’s in their marketing (even if they did have a slight hiccough in the commercial aspect)

Chapter 1

In Chapter 1, the foundation of what Public Relations is by defining marketing, advertising, and public relations. The book defines advertising as the use of controlled media or media in which one pays for the privilege of dictating message content, placement, and frequency.) Marketing is the process of researching, creating, refining, and promoting a product or service and distributing that product or service to targeted consumers. Public relations are the management of relationships between an organization and its publics. In doing further research on the foundation of PR, I came across PRhistory.com and it talks about the four models of PR.

In the press agentry/publicity model, the focus of public relations efforts is on getting favorable coverage, or publicity, from the media. The website mentions that this could also be known as the sometimes called the P.T. Barnum (like Barnum & Bailey) model, is almost pure propaganda. It is one-way communication that is often more hype than fact. You can see this with any publicity for a major sporting event such as UFC102.

In the public information model, the focus is on the dissemination of objective and accurate information. The website says that truth and accuracy are very important. Many governments and nonprofit agencies use this PR model as a way to disseminate information relying on very little research and no feedback from the public.

The two-way asymmetrical model is a more sophisticated approach in which research is used in an effort to influence important publics toward a particular point of view. The website says that many corporations and businesses use this model. Evaluative research is conducted but the results are used strictly to alter public attitudes in favor of the organization's objectives.

The two-way symmetrical model is the model that focuses on two on two-way communication as a means of conflict resolution and for the promotion of mutual understanding between an organization and its important publics. The website says that this model is based on a free exchange of information that is used to alter attitudes in both the organization and it's publics. This model of public relations depends on good feedback and is used primarily by organizations that are governmentally regulated and must prove that they are socially responsible.