Celebrities and overseas aid. Publicity or goodwill?

It seems that more celebrities are getting involved in overseas aid. Angelina Jolie has been an United Nations Ambassador for a long time. I saw a picture of Madonna in Africa promoting AIDS awareness and just recently Nicole Kidman went to Kosovo as a United Nations Ambassador.

There are two stories that I found about Nicole Kidman.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/14/AR2006101400670.html

http://people.aol.com/people/article/0,26334,1546425,00.html

I often wonder if these celebrities are doing this because they really care or because it is another way for them to get their name in the media. I also wonder why organizations, like the United Nations, decide to use these celebrities to work on behalf of their causes. Is it because they know celebrities draw media attention, so it is the easiest way for them to get media attention for their cause? Maybe I am just being cynical, but I don’t believe a lot of celebrities do anything unless it benefits them.

To me, there are other ways to get media attention for United Nations work in other parts of the world. There may also be better qualified people, other than celebrities, to be United Nations Ambassadors.

What’s killing the sea otters awareness

I would like to bring your attention to an article from Time Magazine (which you ca read if you go to this link: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1538645,00.html).

The article is titled What’s killing the sea otters and focuses on the decreasing populations of sea otters off the California coast. Recently, the Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law raising the fine to $25,000 for harming those sea creatures and requiring that all cat litter that is sold in the state’s stores put a label on the product that asks cat owners not to flush their cat’s droppings into toilets or storm drains, which eventually may enter the ocean. Research has found that a parasite multiplies in cats and once in the ocean it makes its way to otters which die from it. I think that enacting such a law is a great step. The Monterey Bay Aquarium was also quoted in the article by commenting on the declining populations. The article does not go beyond that and does not give any specifics on public relations. I think that more could be done to increase the awareness and to publicize the issue such as involving the state commission of Wildlife.

New Media and Public Relations: The Influence of the Blog

It seems that everywhere I look lately I am bombarded with blogs and articles about blogs. I find the blogosphere to be very intriguing because people have so embraced this new medium of expression. It causes me to wonder who has time to read all of the information posted on the web. I, for one, only read this blog consistently. I simply don’t have the time to read more. But once I enter the world of a public relations practitioner, reading blogs will likely become a part of my daily routine.

While it’s easy to dismiss blogs as a Wikipedia- esq source of information (non-scholarly, no credentials, anyone can create them), they can wield a surprising amount of influence. Granted, many (if not most) of the personal blogs on the internet see very little reader traffic, but the popularity of a blog can increase seemingly exponentially over night. An example of this is detailed in an article I read in the Wall Street Journal, titled "How a Blogger Put Himself in the Middle of Mark Foley Story; Bill Kerr Set Out to Discover the Name of a House Page and Caused a Big Fuss." (You may have to sign in to the library website to view it.) A recreational, conservative blogger, William Kerr, was able to track down the identity of the page to whom former Representative Mark Foley sent sexual messages. It took some sleuthing, and he was able to uncover it thanks in part to a glitch on the ABC news website, but he blew the lid off the page’s cover. According to Mr. Kerr, his blog went from 32 hits a day to over 40,000. The widely known Drudge Report even linked to Kerr’s blog.

As public relations practitioners, we are often charged with reputation management, and we are responsible for keeping pace with the media coverage surrounding our clients. Blog are one grassroots medium that are difficult (if not impossible) to manage, let alone monitor all of them. How do you think you will handle the issue of blogs about your clients?

I’m not trying to say that blogs are bad for public relations. Indeed, they can be a very effective new media technology with which to reach your publics. They can be more effective than traditional advertising, and companies are beginning to include blogs in their marketing plans.

Blogs and public relations were a hot topic recently at the PR for Games Conference held last month in California. A conference for PR professionals who work within the gaming industry, they too struggled with both the pros and cons of blogs, explaining that bad press in a blog can spread like wildfire. They questioned the ability of a filter to help track blogs pertinent to their clients and industry. Fortunately, Edelman communications has just partnered with a Japanese firm, Technorati, to develop a program to track the more than 55 million blogs on the web. Click here for yet more media coverage on it.

What’s your take on the influence of the blog on the public relations field? How can you manage reputation through blogs? Do you think the blogosphere is here to stay, or are they a fad that will eventually pass?

Logo Effectiveness- Lauren's post

Lauren had technical difficulties, so I'm posting this for her.

Logo effectiveness

I found this week’s reading on message design very interesting and thought-provoking. As consumers in a society constantly encouraging us to spend money, we are affected by advertising images and logos hundreds of times a day. Many of us come to class in the morning with Starbucks coffee cups. We take notes with Bic pens. We walk around campus in our Nike sneakers. The text states that “a good logo is simple, can be used in all sorts of media, is easy to recognize, maintains its design integrity and is durable.” The three aforementioned examples fit this description perfectly.

Clearly, logo design and choice isn’t everything. BP, the world’s second-largest oil company, came under fire in August for having to shut down oil production while repairs were made to a corroded 16-mile feeder line to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, thereby sending the price of oil up. This revelation came after a string of public relations nightmares for BP – including an accident at a Texas BP refinery that killed 15 and injured hundreds more, and a new $1 billion BP platform in the Gulf of Mexico tipping dangerously during Hurricane Dennis in the summer of 2005. A New York Times article chastised the company for calling itself the environmentally friendly oil company; the reporter mentioned how, over the last few decade, BP changed its logo to put the letters BP in lower-case type (to play down “British Petroleum,” and later move to the forefront the tagline “Beyond Petroleum” instead) and feature more prominently the yellow and green sun, in essence touting the company’s commitment to the environment. Granted, BP is above all else an oil company, but the reporter argues that BP should have toned down its marketing if it wasn’t prepared to be the environmentally friendly company it positioned itself as.

(Lexis-Nexis search: The New York Times “Green Logo, But BP is Old Oil” by Joe Nocera. August 12, 2006.)

http://web.lexis-nexis.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/universe/document?_m=5b67c13231a59d9ebbb00f2fcde67d6f&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVzz-zSkVA&_md5=3cb158cdb01465ef9f35908603cfae52

Can you think of other instances where a company went through great measures to rebrand itself, only to face a similarly sticky situation?

Our very own University of Florida has polarized some in this community over the recent change to the university’s logo. This summer, UF revealed a new logo that quickly replaced the old University of Florida seal on all university materials, in advertising and even on the Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

http://www.alligator.org/pt2/060718logo.php

Although other logos were proposed in the redesign, a plain, blue monogram of UF’s initials was chosen. If a logo is “something like your face” as the text states, do you like the new “face” of UF? Does it make a positive impression? Is it simply-designed? Does it translate across media?

Lastly, this article is just a fun one I found that I had to share with the class.

http://www.hey.com/bydanegolden/super_size/

Although this article is clearly tongue-in-cheek, do you think there’s any truth in the red and yellow color scheme encouraging us to eat more fast food?

What Reporter hate about PR people

What Reporter hate about PR people
http://davidmaister.com/blog/200/

We’ve discussed that PR people and journalists do not have lovely relationships through Catherine Mack’s presentation. I just find out an interesting article on the reasons why reporters do not find PR people particularly endearing.

What’s the best thing PR person can do to counter this opinion? And also, what’s the best thing journalist can do to understand PR person’s behavior in order to make a friendly relationship?

Why are we here?

I am very impressed with the number of students who are pursuing a career in public relations despite all of the negative wrap practitioners receive. I found Chapter 2 in our text very interesting. In this chapter, Cutlip, Center and Broom discuss pr practitioners - "who they are, what they do, the roles they play and their professional aspirations. Practioners can operate under the titles of marketing, sales or customer service representative. Would a title like one of these bother any of you? According to Cutlip, "employment opportunities for pr specialists exist in almost every community but are concentrated in major population centers." Does it bother you that a successful career will most likely result from a move to a big city? Does it bother any of you that the salary gap between men and women in the pr field is so large (in the range of $10,000 to $20,000)? How do you know when you have all of the necessary writing skills that will lead to success as a pr practitioner? The life of a pr practitioner is not described as easy, but we all are hoping to establish a career in this field. So, what has drawn us here?

Jack Abramoff and the Reputation of Lobbying and PR

Recently, on msnbc.com there have been a series of stories on Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who laundered money between his clients and certain non-profit groups. This story upsets me because most of the non-profits involved knew the situation they were putting themselves in, and I hate the way that looks on the entire field of non-profits, and the public relations professionals who are trying to work for them. Because lobbying is a specialized field within public relations, how does it then affect the reputation of public relations as a whole? Our text says that “Despite occasional abuse and public rebuke, lobbying remains a legal and accepted way for…groups to influence governmental decision making” (Cutlip, p. 17-18). Unfortunately, these incidents are becoming more and more common. With stories like this happening every day – how long can we expect this to be the case? Besides the obvious lack of ethics here, what does this do for the reputation of public relations lobbyists and non-profit professionals?

Ethical Tactics

As far as grassroots, small-scale creative campaigns are concerned; none have recently interested me more than the annual stopping of traffic in NYC by the Black Label Bike Club. The Black Label Bike Club is a small anarchistic organization that, at its heart, opposes modern materialism and consumerism including the use of gasoline. As a counter cultural group, they are very interesting let’s say and uses interesting tactics to make their point heard. Their annual blocking of traffic in NYC is one of their less controversial practices. The club members in NYC ride their bikes in large groups and literally stop all traffic in the streets of NYC. Police always get involved and it is always a very violent protest in the end, but it is an interesting tactic to speak out against gasoline usage. Some members of the bike club eat thrown away food out of garbage cans in order to speak out against modern consumerism. I found the guerilla public relations tactics and staging interesting – as well as extreme. There is a trailer for a movie that chronicles the bike club up at YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=black+label+bike+club&search=Search

Just a warning, it is very loud. In cases other than the reasons the club members were protesting, do you feel that it is ethical to inconvenience other people from their daily lives in order to send an initial message of a statement as in the case of the traffic stopping? As an ethical consideration, is it ethical to inconvenience thousands of people in order to raise their awareness to an issue supposing that they will be better off knowing how harmful gasoline is to the environment at the cost of being late to work? Chapter 5 pages 119 to 122 is especially helpful on varying perspectives.

Video News Releases: unfavorably AKA “Fake TV News”

Cutlip et al. (1999) mentioned that success or failure of TV program, whether it is entertainment or news, is determined by “their ratings and the consequent amount of advertising the program can attract not by their quality” (p. 320). In such cutthroat competition environment in media industry wherein the lead-time is short and internal resources are limited, video news releases (hereafter VNRs) might be helpful outsource for media to utilize when producing TV program. It is a win-win situation for both media and VNRs-provider. Unfortunately, though, media watchers seem to have different view on such mechanism.

As previously discussed in our class last week, one of main criticisms on media’s use of VNRs lies in the phenomena that not many media label the footage that they use from VNRs. Center for Media & Democracy (CMD) Web site covers overall issues related to VNRs. CMD quoted a February 1992 cover article titled “Fake News” in TV Guide, written by David Lieberman, that “if footage from VNRs was used in news it should be labeled so that viewers were aware of its origin” and that “If not media outlets risked undermining their own credibility if they pretend out of pride that what they broadcast is real news, instead of labeling it for what it is.” Even though “Code of Good Practice” for VNR producers, which is adapted by the Public Relations Service Council (PRSC), strongly suggests disclosure of the origin in VNRs, it is obvious that not many VNR producers abide by the suggestion. And neither does media. (FYI, you can find the “Code of Good Practice” for VNR producers in our textbook.)

In addition, CMD published a report, titled Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed. The report describes how commercial propaganda is being extensively broadcast as TV “news.” The problem is that, because of a series of manipulative practices, VNRs in general is being widely referred to as fake TV news.

Moreover, CMD and the media reform group Free Press recently has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Communications calling for mandatory on –screen labeling of news stories.

My question is that do you think the FCC should apply strict rule on VNR disclosure? If labeling becomes mandatory, do you think such regulation will work favorably for VNR producers and PR practitioners? It worries me that if the origin of footage used in the news appears on screen, the viewers will automatically refuse the messages contained in the news, based on their built prejudice that all VNRs are manipulating public opinion.

Public relations in the recent Foley scandal.

Public relations strategies practiced during crisis situations destine the future of the corporation, organization, and individual. We know from classical cases such as Tylenol being the perfect example for “good crisis communication” and Exxon being the “bad crisis communication.”

In this extent, the recent e-mail scandal of former Republican Mark Foley is reported as a huge “public relations no-no.” According to an article GOP mishandled crisis management, clearly the public relations person for Mark Foley needs to refresh his or her knowledge dealing with crisis However, it is not fair to put the blame on the pr person only for this messy scandal.

While it is evident there are certain factors a public relations practitioners should bring into context during a crisis situation (scholars such as Murphy points out certain ways to communicate with the public during crisis situations such as be frank and sincere, take the responsibility and so on), what do you think is the most important role of a PR person during a crisis? Do you feel that in many cases, public relations people are only invited to the table when something finally turns over?