Is this PR? (5) Facebook Fan Pages

It seems like everyone now-a-days has a fan page. Heck, for some reason...I've got a fan page (i'm not a fan of myself, nor did I create it if that's what you are wondering) but I'm under the impression that fan pages are a way of PR because most of the fan pages are of organizations. They advertise upcoming events, hot deals on their products, and latest news within the organization. While the companies themselves may not be running them, some of them have PR people running that site for them and interacting with the "fans" of their page. The good thing about it is you can invite people to become friends and continue to get your name out there in the public eye and it is a free way of going around the system.

Chapter 12

At some point in everyone’s life, there is going to be some sort of crisis whether as small as a bad hair day, or maybe as grand as what http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?id=4720322 is going through right now. Needless to say his situation is not rare coming from an athlete but from an athlete of his magnitude, this is devastating to his reputation. It wasn’t long ago where we heralded Tiger Woods as Who’s Now: the Ultimate Sports Star by way of a bracket system completed by ESPN where he beat out Lebron James in the final vote. For such a high-profile athlete, other than his golf tournaments and numerous commercials, he has chosen a rather low-profile personal life. However, his silence about the situation was not the best way of handling the wreck because at that point, in his silence is when all of the speculation began. He, then, attempted to appease the situation by coming forth with his apology for his wrong actions but by then it was too late because he had denied the very thing he admitted to doing later.

Chapter 11

We are in an age where technology is constantly improving. In December of 1990, there was only one web site and exactly sixteen years later, there were over 100 million web sites. We are able to things people thought of as unimaginable, for instance I recently flew from Atlanta to Los Angeles and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that our plane was equipped with satellite TV and wireless internet. Another use of cyber-relations in the digital age is this society’s tendency to interact by way of a mobile way. With all of the different types of phones (such as iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, etc) there is no such thing as being out of the office. The phones have network connectivity that can reach files that are on a computer thousands of miles away in a matter of minutes. The new phones are not only used for business, the phones have plenty of entertainment features which are good for PR as well.

Chapter 9

Picking up from the last chapter, chapter nine goes into more depth on what tactics consist of. One of the better tactical methods in today’s society is the use of social media. Social media has five major characteristics that set them apart from a PR stand point: participation because they encourage feedback; openness because they are easy to access; conversation because they encourage quick two-way communication; community because they form groups based on common interests; connectedness because of their ability to link to other social media.

Chapter 8

This chapter is all about planning and the steps required to do it successfully. Brainstorming is probably the simplest and probably one of the better methods of planning. We learned about brainstorming in elementary school because whenever we had to write a “long” essay, our teacher would have us brainstorm our ideas on paper before we wrote the rough draft. In public relations, brainstorming takes the process a little farther because they will usually ask the tough questions about the quality of their research. There are five discussion areas that a brainstorming session will try to cover:

Publics: Which publics are or must be involved in the issue?

Resources: To reach our goals, what resources do we require from each public?

Values: What are each public’s interests, stakes, or involved values?

Message: What message should we send to each public?

Media: You’re not limited to just one channel of communication when you send a message to a targeted public.

All five of those areas point back to the goal, which in the brainstorming grid is the head of the diagram. The goal is the starting point and is a generalized statement of the outcome you hope your plan achieves. Once you have a well-written goal, then the next step is finding out the objective which defines particular ambitions as opposed to being a general statement.

Chapter 7

In public relations, there is a process that all PR passes thru and the first step of it is research whereas the final step is evaluation. There are many ways that PR agents conduct research and one of the more accurate ways to gauge public opinion is by way of survey research. Many people use this method even though each survey is unique in its own way because there are five different ways to ask questions and many surveys utilize more than one way. One of the best ways to exemplify this is in the way that ESPN.com has allowed people to cast their vote for who they think the Heisman trophy should go to. ESPN was giving the public around 12 names to choose from as well as a write-in ballot box, if they so choose to use it

Chapter 4

A public is any group whose members have a common interest or common values in a particular situation. The word stakeholder often substitutes for the word public. Resource dependency theory is comprised of three beliefs: (1) To fulfill their values, organizations need resources, such as raw materials and people to work for the organization. (2) Some of those key resources are not controlled by the organization, so (3) to acquire those key resources; organizations must build productive relationships with the publics that control the resources. However it’s obvious that it’s darn near impossible to keep up with all of the publics that organizations have relationships, which is why categories are so important. Some of the categories include traditional and nontraditional, primary and secondary, and internal and external publics just to name a few.

Is this PR? (4) Eye Black...

It seems like it has become more of a fashion statement and a way of self-expression rather than a way to protect player’s eyes from the sun.

From Bible verses to family shoutouts, anything can be used to be promoted on Eye Black stickers. There is actually a website that specializes in creating messages on Eye Black whether for means of advertising or fundraising purposes. I feel it is only a matter of time before companies begin to pay NFL players to wear Eye Black with their company logo on it as means of PR. There is an endless gateway of opportunities for how this can be utilized.

Is this PR? (3) You down with OPP…

Ok if you have ever been to a Clemson University basketball game then you have probably noticed that at random times throughout the game, the in-house music will cue up “You down with OPP?” which is usually replied to in unison “Yeah you know me!” A lot of people have made that song synonymous with Clemson Basketball since our head basketball name is Oliver “OP” Purnell and apparently he has a Posse (hence the saying of you down with OPP – Oliver Purnell’s Posse). The constant playing of that song has inspired many people to go download the real version only to find out the real meaning of the song is not Oliver Purnell’s Posse (true story, I know a lot of people shocked to discover this) however that has not stopped the rap group responsible for the song, Naughty by Nature, from thriving on the interest of Clemson fans. Unless they are big time college basketball fans, I am pretty sure they are wondering why there is such a concentrated amount of Naughty by Nature fans in South Carolina when they are a West-Coast group. Either way, even though it was unintentional, because of our constant playing of the song we are essentially providing PR for Naughty by Nature.

Is this PR? (2) Shoes in songs...

Everyone in this generation has probably heard Air Force Ones by Nelly, and no doubt seen a few ihundred people wearing them as well probably as a result of it. It, however, was not the first song to include a popular shoe as the focus of the song. Once upon a time, Run DMC hit the hip-hop scene with their song called “My Adidas,” and even back then because Run DMC was so famous, many people went out and purchased a pair of Adidas similar to those of Run DMC. Adidas has been generous to the rap group (which recently got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) so much so that they have their own Run DMC pair of Adidas as well as using portions of their songs in one of their upcoming commercials.
Which raises the question, it is obvious that the songs produced PR for the rapper but did it make that much PR for the product? I would venture to say yes because since then, artists of every genre have given subtle shout outs in their songs that avid fans pay attention to and attempt to immolate. For example, not very many people where Reebok anymore ever since Kanye West has been dissing them in his songs. That’s also how music can affect your PR negatively as well.

PR History

I believe that public relations go far and beyond just the formal methods that we have come to know them as. I think the concept of public relations could be as simple as the spoken word in that people get good PR sometimes just by what is said. One example I feel compelled to point out is the unplanned PR that has come to the movie “Paranormal Activity.” On Twitter, they have a thing called Trending Topics and that is what people have been talking about the most and the top topic for the week and for the month of October was Paranormal Activity.
Looking back at the history of PR, Wikipedia quotes the father of public relations, Edward Louis Bernays, and his definition of PR by stating it as a management function which tabulates public attitudes, defines the policies, procedures and interests of an organization... followed by executing a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance" Public relations has come a long way from this humble beginning but I am still under the impression that the concept has remained the same, even if the methods have changed. Another example of how PR has changed is how people communicate across the internet. Back in middle school, if you an AOL instant messenger screen name then you were cool. That was the way people communicated across the internet back then but now, we have a whole new way of communicating and its thru Skype. Skype allows you to video conference from computer-to-computer or make calls to other phones as well for a small fee. In the comparison, 34% said they use neither (that is probably because they text) but 52% said they only use Skype whether with or without video.

Is this PR? (1) Eric Ber-rey, Eric Berry…

Before I start, let me hope on my soapbox and say what is it about athletes that think that they can rap. (I say that saracastically because I rap as well). Eric Berry plays linebacker for the University of Tennessee and has made a lot of noise on the football field individually, even if his team hasn’t. Most notably was his big game against Tim Tebow and the defending champion Florida Gators where he recorded 11 tackles and had one interception. Around that time, he was getting a miniscule amount of buzz for the Heisman. A couple weeks after his performance against Florida, a music video hit YouTube from Swiperboy a.k.a. Renaldo Woolridge from the University of Tennessee basketball team.

It was a remix to the song Halle Berry and it was called ERIC Berry, promoting his Heisman campaign. The video got over 160,000 hits in two months and it made Eric Berry’s name known worldwide. Despite him not being a finalist for the Heisman, I still consider this good PR because it brought a lot of publicity to Eric Berry Heisman campaign (even though he’s not a finalist, oh well join the club) and to Swiperboy’s music (because he did kill that remix).