kristina

The Subway scrabble game that happens a couple times a year is a great example of public relations in action.  The company is being interactive with it’s publics.  It also makes the customers want to eat at Subway.  It draws their customers in, because there’s this chance that they could win something great, or something simple like a cookie.  So, you are able to eat one of your favorite foods while playing a game and having a little fun at the same time.

It is also a very creative way for Subway to get their name out in the public sphere.  The more your name is out in the public sphere, the more people will hear about you and possibly want to go to your company or restaurant.  It influences the public to go and be a part of this game that so many others are taking part in.  It’s a game that you can’t really lose in.  You get your sandwich and drink either way, but may possibly receive a little treat along with that.  Then, to incorporate this Scrabble game even more in today’s society, Subway recently put the Scrabble board online.  It used to be a fold out piece of paper, much like McDonald’s Monopoly board, but with technology booming and the use of interactive social media skyrocketing, they put it on their website.

This Scrabble game differentiates Subway from other sub restaurants.  Not every sub restaurant has a game to play or prizes to win.  And the game is not hard to win-at least not the small prizes.  A bag of chips, cookie, or drink is fairly easy to come by.  So, Subway makes all of their prized customers feel like winners.

(A press release about this subject)

Another crisis within a large company was the finger in Wendy’s chili.  Later on it was found out to be a hoax, but until it was proven, this was a major crisis for Wendy’s.  Who would want to eat at a fast food restaurant that was serving body parts in their food?  This could have some huge reprimands for the company and large lawsuits following.  There had to be quick action taken, because a finger in someone’s food was going to spread like wildfire in the dry mountains of California (no pun intended since this incident did happen in northern California).  And, at first there was a reaction that dropped their sales (only in that market of northern California, though), because Wendy’s had been known as a fairly clean and decent restaurant as far as fast food chains can be and all of a sudden a finger appeared in their great chili.  That’s enough to make anyone sick and go to another fast food chain for a few days or weeks.

The Wendy’s public relations representatives did react better than the United Airlines public relations representatives.  They released statements to the press and made all of their testing and analyzing, to see who the finger could belong to, public.  They were being proactive and preventative about this major crisis.

“During the investigation, Wendy’s (WEN)said no employees at the San Jose restaurant had missing fingers, and no suppliers of Wendy’s ingredients had reported any finger injuries. Authorities reported that there was no evidence the finger had been cooked (http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2005-05-13-wendys-finger_x.htm).” This was just one statement given out during this time.  Tom Mueller, Wendy’s Chief Executive, gave out many statements during this time as well.  This is how it should be-the people with the most authority giving out statements to the press to make it as credible and sincere as it can be.  And something great that was enacted with their crisis communication plan was the giveaway of free Frosty’s.  You did not have to buy anything else.  This was simply to “show appreciation to [their] customers[who]  stood by [them] while we defended our good name and protected our employees’ livelihoods,” said Tom Mueller.

This is a great reaction to a crisis on hand (no pun intended again).  Tom Mueller and spokespeople for Wendy’s did everything they could to not admit it was their fault, but to talk to the public and keep the public updated on everything they were trying to do to figure this oddity out.  And, in the end, it was found out to be a hoax, and a woman was arrested and put in jail for 9 years and her husband for 12.  This is one of the best endings possible to such a crisis for a company.  It wasn’t their fault AT ALL, but they still took every step as needed to ensure their customers and other publics that they were assuming full responsibility.

Crisis communication plans are of utmost importance to any kind of company, because no matter how low the chance of something unexpected happening, just having the chance there is a heavy enough burden.  Without crisis communication plans, the stress level would be even higher for certain companies about how to act in certain situations. This summer, there was a crisis that United Airlines had to deal with.  They might not have handled this situation with the best crisis communication plan, but it gives us a glimpse at how people can use social media to their advantage and make a powerful company have a crisis.

United Airlines was “charged” with mishandling a passenger’s (David Carol’s) guitar. While they were loading the luggage, he saw them throw his $3500 guitar on the luggage belt.  He told the flight attendants, but they failed to do anything.  Then, when he arrived at the destination airport, he confirmed the damages.  Later, he called the airline’s phone number to file a complaint and damage charges, but they didn’t do anything about it.  Three months later, he made a youtube video and was noticed.  Within days this video was noticed by many publics-not just the general public, but major publications such as the LA Times.  There were a lot of blogs about it as well.  In a matter of a week, over three million viewers had seen this video.  It was time that United Airlines do something about this outbreak before it became worse.  They were getting A LOT of free press, but very bad press.  On July 7th, United Airlines “tweeted” about this video, saying they had contacted David.  And, David made another Youtube video in response to them.  Later on, he made one more song for United Airlines, which talks more about the airline hostess that he asked to help out.

I searched for more apology statements to the press and to David Carol, but I only ran across the Tweet.  While looking at someone else’s evaluation of how United performed this crisis communication plan, I learned that they did not enact one very well.  They called Mr. Carol personally, and the terms they came to were that they would donate a certain sum of money to a charity.  But after doing only that, they decided to just used the video as a learning experience and to use it internally to learn how to train the luggage handlers and airline stewards.

This is an example of a poor execution of a crisis communication plan, but a great example of how social media can be used for the power of the people against a large company, and how fast social media works.  It connects people from across the country on a certain topic that they would have never known about unless it was for the powerful tool of networking and communicating with social media.

The Digital Revolution has made many “unimaginable” ideas come to life.  Everything is at our fingertips at this day in age.  From cell phones, to iPods, to the Internet, what do we not have that is compacted into something we can slip in our pocket for easy convenience?  New technologies are coming out everyday, but many of them will not be seen in stores for years to come because they are so advanced and would cost too much right now.  Some technology, like a minivan being driven by an iPhone application, just scream dangerous!  This was done in Berlin earlier this month (but the technologies for this were developed in 2007).  The application controls everything from acceleration, to breaking, to steering.  This is amazing that this can actually be done, but just imagine what happens when the internet stops working and everyone is using this application to drive.  Or maybe they are trying to drive the car while someone decides to call them on their iPhone.  We’ve seen wrecks caused by GPS devices.  Surely this is not a good idea to put out on the market.

Like the chapter says, it seems as if everyone is connected to the web in some way.  This has helped businesses out, big and small, because now, even if you own a small company, everyone worldwide can know about your business.  You can be your own public relations practitioner, publisher, and journalist in today’s world.  Youtube is one of the many vessels to be your own journalist or reporter.  This video is essentially a video diary of this woman’s car ride to go see a guy she likes.  It provides comedy to everyone and has almost 650,000 views.  No one would have ever known about this unless it was aired, and now people are joined by this video without even knowing each other.  It provides a context to unite people.  But, this short video, along with all the other little clips online are emerging a the same time as reality TV as well.  In the Digital Revolution, it seems that the culture is interested with everyone else’s life. Everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame, and this is the way to be “famous” for those 15 minutes.  Youtube is one of these redefined communities emerging from the Digital Revolution.  And somehow, today’s public relations practitioners must reach out to these different communities by still trying to target a specific audience.  It’s a challenge, but they find ways.  You can find all of the commercials for any product on Youtube.  Also, if you watch television shows online, such as abcfamily.com, there are commercial breaks.  During some of their commercial breaks online, there is PR for sexual activity.  They are providing awareness to the Internet users.  It’s health communication.  And they are using the characters from the show to make the audience aware during these 15 second clips.  This is a very smart idea, because if you regularly watch a show, you “get to know” the characters and become emotionally attached to some degree, so the message might transmit to the audience better.

With all the emerging technology, though, it must be noted that just as students prefer to read from textbooks rather than online, people still love good old fashion face-to-face communication and relationship.  This is what a good public relations practitioner will incorporate into his/her practice.  Be sure to have good, solid relationship in person as well as in the cyber world.

Social media has provided us with endless opportunities in today’s world.  Along with free publicity in many arenas on the Internet, there are surveys online to help guide organizations in the right way with the desires of their public.  It is an easy way to reach a large audience without much effort other than coming up with a questionnaire and posting it on your website.  We see these types of surveys all over the Internet, whether it’s a formal rating system where you have to answer questions and then it provides you with a percentages/ number rankings, or a rating based on 5 stars.  Both encapsulate a ranking for a particular object, but one is based on experts’ reviews that have a certain number correlation for each category so that it is uniform across the board and the other is based off of customers’ experiences.  They are critiquing a certain thing, though.  This is one way social media has played  a huge part in our society.  We can see many different ratings from various critics with the click of a button.  This could be helpful or harmful depending on the ratings the public sees.  These reviews are also a measurable part of the public relations job, though.  If you had a really good month in sales for your organization, you can see the ratings and reviews your publics gave you, and understand why you did that well.  This is part of the “Trinity” model.  It’s a great way to look at it.  Another way of seeing progress and letting people be a part of your community as an organization is by having a section on your website for testimonials or stories.

Stories are very important.  The narrative is how we create social meaning and enter a community.  We become one through the sharing of each other’s stories. This is great PR.  We love to see how other people reacted intimately to certain products, because we then can have a certain expectation.  Stories are easier and more personal than critiquing something.  Photos are also great stories from customers to be able to share with potential customers, such as for a wedding gown.  This is one of my favorite pages for customer stories.  First, you see all of these satisfied customers in their dream dress, and when you click on their photo, their story comes up about what they want to share with you about their husband or wedding or any fun story.  You can feel how happy they are, and wedding photos always radiate happiness, joy, and satisfaction.  A bride-to-be can imagine how her wedding will look.  One photo or one story can transport you to that place you will be if you embark on that path.

And, the same goes for public relations practitioners.  Our stories are just as vital in the social media as customers.  We can blog, and twitter, and and Facebook to our advantage for our clients.  We need to share our intimate stories with the public even more than we critique, because stories carry a heavier significance than do critiques in the eyes of others, and helps us foster a sense of community.

The social media is not going away any time soon.  It can be a very helpful tool for any organization that is trying to be more integrated in their community and understand how they can better their organization.  It’s also a great avenue for some free publicity.  And anything that is free is always a plus these days since companies are cutting their expenditures back in the PR department.  Use it wisely, though, and always represent your values in anything you put on the world wide web, because once it’s there, it will never go away.

Every step of the public relations process seems as crucial as the step before.  Each week as I dive into the next chapter, I always think ahead of time that the next little piece won’t be as intense.  This is never the case. Not yet, at least.  Chapter 9 is all about tactics.  And the tactics are important in your public relations campaign no matter who your public is.  Tactics are the actions that we devise and undertake to influence relationships with particular publics, so you have to figure out what type of tactic will best suit your audience.  Will it be through controlled media, special events, or uncontrolled media?  Their are advantages and disadvantages to both.

Special events always take a lot of advance planning and an incredible amount of effort on the practitioner’s part to make it perfect for the observer’s as well as the participants.  You want your message to reach as many people as possible.  So, you want to try and make it interesting.  To let people know about a special event, you could send out a newsletter, print it in a magazine, send videos, or send it out via newswire.  There are an endless amount of resources out in our technological world, today, to help you send your message to as many people as possible for them to come to the event.  The most important things to always remember in your release are “what, who, when, and how.”  Cold Stone Creamery and WWE teamed up yesterday to help support Make-a-Wish Foundation.  That’s a strange combination, you’re thinking.  But,releases help clarify everything.  September is Make-a-Wish foundation charity month where they try and raise a lot of money for their organization, so they want to host some awesome events that will make people want to donate money.  This is a great tactic.  WWE wrestlers served ice cream to the public.  If you’re a WWE fan, you’ll spot this as a prime opportunity to spot your favorite celebrities.  You’ll probably feel a sense of gratification for donating as well: killing two birds with one stone.  I also heard about this event on the radio, which is an actuality.  Cold Stone has these types of events nation wide during September.  Yesterday, one of my friend’s facebook status was about going to Cold Stone for free ice cream if you gave a donation.  This is an example of uncontrollable media, but a positive example.  It’s also free, which is always looked upon!

If there is ever urgent information that is breaking and important to all news media, you can schedule a news conference.  These are helpful if your news pertains to a lot of people and that public needs to hear this news immediately.  It is also helpful if the information you want to broadcast is an important topic for your organization.  For example, the white house always has news conferences on CNN.  Obama wants to convey a sense of urgency and intimacy with the nation.  This is a way he can connect with a large majority of our nation at the same time.  In this particular news conference, Obama clarifies and tables his ideas for our economic turmoil.  He wants our nation to know that he is doing everything possible to better our economy and that he is going to be using our tax dollars wisely with his new stimulus plan.  And the three conditions mentioned in the book that make a topic worthy of a news conference are at play here.

1. This story is extremely timely

2. This is advantageous to meet with reporters as a group, instead of individually.

3. The journalists were glad they came, because the story is good and worth reporting.

Tactics are important.  These are two very different tactics to convey a certain message to the public through two very different channels.  You have to know how to do this in order to keep the relationships with your public happy in order to have good free press or just press in general-so that the journalists will want to publish your story and not throw it out.

Planning is one of the most important things a public relations practitioner can do.  There are three types of plans: ad hoc plans (short term plans), standing plans (long-term plans), and contingency plans (crises plans).  Each help build long lasting relationships with the desired publics.  An example of an ad hoc plan found in another public relations book is an encounter that happened with Nabisco chocolate chip cookies.  It just so happened that a teacher was teaching her students to count, so they counted the chocolate chips in the Nabisco cookies.  The claim of Nabisco is that there are at least 1,000 chips in each package.  The students’ counts always fell considerably lower than that.  So, they wrote Nabisco many angry letters.  So, Nabisco sent a spokesperson over to the school and showed them there there were actually well over 1,000 chips in the cookies by soaking them until all dissolved but the chips.

This shows the public just how interested their company is in building their relationship with you.  They want to maintain their great standing with everyone and do not want to lower their integrity.  They are an honest and open company.  This could be part of Nabisco’s values and your public relations practices ALWAYS need to stay aligned with your company’s values (as noted in several chapters).  This is one of the reasons why practitioners plan.

So, this leads to how practitioners plan.  There is the consensus building, brainstorming, and the written plan.  The written plan is made up of goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics.  The written plan is the most important, eventually, because it could turn into a proposal which is sold to clients. In a PR blog, an expert defines how to make a good communication/PR plan.  And, almost in the same order as our book, he says that we need to set a goal, define our strategies, define the objective for each strategy, and develop tactics.  Objectives and strategies are reversed in our book, but each has the same definition on this blog.  And then he gives a simple example of what each of these things are.

A “real life” example of how this plan is drawn out is shown here.  They don’t provide their tactics, but they do show us the results of two case studies.  Most likely, these would be written out more formal for a proposal before pitching it to the company such as Walt Disney.  These plans supported the goals of the organization, stayed goal-oriented, it was realistic, flexible, and values driven (what a good plan looks like).

The biggest thing stressed in this chapter was the ABSOLUTE NEED to have a plan, because that is the basis for a good and lasting relationship.

I had never thought of being able to measure the success of public relations practices, but I guess companies would like to know the success of what they’re pouring a lot of their money into.  Research and evaluation are stressed in this chapter when trying to figure out how to do public relations within your organization. As said by Hauser and Katz, ” you are what you measure.”  In today’s public relations world, we need to show how our work as PR practitioners is impacting the company.  Especially in the economically hard time when dollars are hard to come by and these jobs are being outsourced.  If you can show that your work has a huge impact in helping them succeed, you might be less likely to get thrown out the door.  Public relations is more than just a media relationship.  Impact more publics!  There are things to be learned from the past years of public relations that need to be tossed out the door, and new things to be learned. The suggestions of how to have a better public relations sector for your organization are for your measurement efforts to be on marketing/sales and output metrics, have a new model for measurement to increase ROI (exposure, engagement, influence, action), and to use online measurement tools for analyzing your company/brand.  There are some great tips on how to improve your practice.

As mentioned, research is a must in every public relations strategy.  There is formal and informal research, but PR usually uses informal research.  It provides insightful information about certain groups.  There are five methods employed by PR practitioners.  The ones that I find the most interesting is the focus groups and survey research.  The focus groups are interesting, because you bring people together to focus on a specific topic or thing to help you decide which way to go.  Yogurt has been on an uprise for the past few years, and Yoplait wanted a new take on it to make it more fun for younger teens who need to grab something on the go. Gogurts had been fairly successful, so they had focus groups for a new carbonated yogurt.  The adult focus groups didn’t care for it, but it won over the tweens.  This just goes to show why it pays to have a different mix of ages, races, and sex within your focus groups.  If they had just tested it on one particular demographic the yogurt might have never made it to the shelf of the grocery store.  And, they got their results immediately from having a focus group.

There are many ways you can conduct surveys.  You have to choose the best one for what you are trying to do, which can be difficult. Some types of surveys are simple random sampling, systematic sampling, cluster sampling, and census taking.  Since I have already talked about Yoplait, I’ll keep using it as my example.  They recently conducted an online poll specifically for women about sweet cravings in the afternoon.  It helped them target a specific demographic that they wanted to have a good relationship with so that they could cater a product to their desires-to create an emotional bond.

After these sampling methods (and during) the PR practitioners are constantly evaluating before putting the product out.  Genius people they are!

One of the most important things to be learned from this chapter is that employee relations within the organization are of utmost importance for a business to succeed.  Without your employees you are nothing.  They have to be treated a certain way. The co-founder for Southwest Airlines, Herbert Kelleher, put it this way :  ”You have to treat your employees like customers,” he told Fortune in 2001. “When you treat them right, then they will treat your outside customers right. That has been a powerful competitive weapon for us.”  I read that quote, and thought he is absolutely correct.  There is no reason why employees should not be treated as customers themselves.  So, I sought out to find just how the employees of Southwest Airlines were treated, and what I found was that the airline company has 7 key elements in employee motivation.  It says that first and foremost, they put their employees first.  Also, at the beginning of that same article, it states the quantitative facts of Southwest Airlines, which is most likely linked with their employee performance, which is enhanced by their motivation.

Good employee relations are vital to an organization, especially if you want to maintain or achieve a good reputation. Another public that is of great importance is the relationship with the news media.  You want the best coverage for you organization as possible.  There are an array of media outlets to choose from.  There are newspapers, blogs, radio stations, advertisements, magazines, etc.  So, as good PR practitioners, we need to learn how to write well so that our news will pass through the “gates” of the gatekeeper. Gatekeepers (many times, journalists) set the agenda as to what is good news and what is not.  They serve to keep their audience interested.  Journalists are always wanting accurate news that will interest the public, so if they value your organization, good PR for  your organization is more likely to be in the media.  Customers also play a high stake in PR for your organization now that free blogs are available online.  Everyone can be a journalist of sorts.  One of the local ice cream shops that started in Greenville always gets good reviews online and people blogging about it.  So, if your organization is based on good values and maintaining great relationships with all publics, you can get free PR -and hopefully it’s good PR.  The technological world can either be a detrimental tool or a huge help.

Another public that is of concern today is the multicultural public.  You must foster good relations with people of all ethnicities, classes, races, etc.  America used to be segregated, but today everyone is equal, and that is a quality practitioners need to remember and practice at all times.  Everyone is valuable in a company-in any type of public.  As noted in the text, Denny’s was named one of the “40 best companies for diversity.”  Now, it is Johnson & Johnson.  They are number one.  Their board of directors is made up of 27% females.  That says a lot in itself right there. They’ve invested their time in minority institutions.  They have broadened themselves beyond just their company.

Another noteworthy company that I know of is Michelin.  Maybe I just know this because my father works for them, but they do a great job with multicultural publics.  This might be because it is a French company that came to the States.  I once lived in France where the company is, and Michelin was actively participating in the lives of the foreigners and trying to help the us out that lived there.  There was never anything negative about them in the media that I saw or anything negative within the work setting.  I would say that Michelin has great employee relations (they’ve thrown Christmas parties for us, given us tires, etc), news media relations, and customer relations.  Their tires are the best after all!

The history of public relations goes back a lot further than I originally thought.  I also didn’t realize how much of an influence it had among the citizens of the US at the beginning. I thought it was interesting that Theodore Roosevelt played such a huge part in the whole development of public relations, though.  The very first “founders” of public relations were all quite some characters.  Too bad they ended up with a spoiled name.

The whole section on propaganda really intrigued me.  It did not used to have a negative connotation with it and yet, today, it does.  And that’s because it’s absolutely everywhere.  It got it’s bad reputation from Adolf Hitler.  I have never studied propaganda, so it never crossed my mind that the Nazis were all about using propaganda to gain people to their side and keep them there, making his followers believe he was doing everything he could to keep from going to war.  In the speech he gave on June 22, 1941, he was trying to gain the German’s trust and rope them in on their side and persuade them that they were doing the right thing.  Invading Russia was fine.  Hitler was telling them that he had eliminated social classes and unemployment, so he and the rest of the socialists were the best of the best.

As we can see, now, all of what Hitler told the public was bad public relations.  He was manipulating the public for his benefit.  He put himself first above others-kind of like Edward Bernays.  And, as everyone knows, Hitler’s name was spoiled by all of his works as well.  It just doesn’t leave a great taste in your mouth after talking about him.

Some present day propaganda can be seen everywhere.  Turn on your television or look on the internet or turn up the radio.  Advertisements are a constant in our society.  You cannot escape the media, which has so many contrasting messages out there.  Every brand of food, clothing line, toy, or shampoo is the best for a certain reason and we tend to gravitate to certain labels because of the reputation they have with the public. I could name ten slogans and I’m sure most of you could match the brand with the slogan.

Think about it: we always want the new and improved toy, or the new lip gloss that a certain actress was wearing on a commercial, or a new purse for the season.  We get ideas in our head from the media we encounter on a daily basis that one certain thing will “change our life,” so we think we need it.  In this commercial, it seems as if our pores will be be miniscule and shrink if we wear this foundation.  Our skin will be flawless.  If one of your least favorite traits about yourself is your skin, you might be drawn to this commercial.  Maybelline is sending you a message that this product is for you, and it is meant for skin like yours.

Propaganda is an interesting topic.  One of my favorite things to explore now, i think.  It dives into the human psyche, which is an interesting place to be.  It’s a vulnerable place that public relations practitioners need to handle with care in order to avoid ruining one’s name.