Tag: PR

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PR

PR in Sports

It is important for sports teams to have good light in the public’s eyes. They make money off fans supporting them whether they are doing good or bad. If the public does not support the team or does not have access to information about the team, is it impossible for the organization to make money. This is where public relations comes in. The public relations department will ensure positive interaction between the team and its fans, allowing the team to have a profit every season. According to Jacquie L’Etang, the author of Sports Public Relations, “Public Relations is impacted at all levels whether handling major sponsorship and media rights deals, events, promoting stars or increasing participation” (p. 2). This quote shows all the different things that a teams public relation department is in charge of, and how important it is to the financial success of that team.

Top Agency reports that three of the most important things to do in sports PR are to utilize social media, connect with fans, and become familiar with reporters form all publications. It is important for sports teams to use many different social media plat forms. This allows for them to reach the largest amount of fans. If there were to be an emergency with the team, a PR crisis, or any need to contact a large amount of the fans social media would be able to provide the team to ability to do that. Next, it is important to connect with fans because that will increase your brand loyalty even if the team is not doing well. Some way to interact with fans are volunteer work, social media, meet and greats, or give sways. Lastly it is important to be familiar with reports because these are the people you will be working with everyday. News stations, both local and national, will create reports on your team, therefore, it is important to have healthy relationships with them in order to influence what is and what is not shared about your team.

Public relations in sports does not solely focus on the teams. They also have to worry about the players. It is important for the public to feel close and attached to the individual players. This is what drives the sales of jerseys and support even if it is a down season. Players also ad a big risk to the teams public eye. When a player is caught cheating or suspended for breaking the law or any other reason, it reflects poorly on the team. This problem then must be solved by the public relations staff for that team. On the other hand, there is also very good people on each team who the PR staff will share more information with the public about. This will bring light to the team as a whole, as it will make them look like a bunch of nice friendly players instead of cheating mean ones.

Sports Public Relations
Zoe Bernstein
Public Relations in Sports Industry. Word Press.

Joe Favorito, the author of Sports Publicity: A Partial Approach, brings up a third way PR is used in sports, which is working for the league. The things that a PR person for a league would do is, inform fans on any changes in the league such as rules, release stats and records, over see national or international media coverage, run championships or special events, and handle league wide crisis. These are things that individual teams are not in charge of or cannot control, so the league does it as a whole. Working for the league means you must communicate with the whole nation or world depending where teams or located. This is very large audience which must be reached, but it is important to make sure all fans are informed about what ever is happening. Not keeping fans update could cause them to lose interest in that sport, and possibly move on to a new one.

PR plays a big role in the sport business. It is important from each individual player, to the team, all the way up to the league. This keeps fans engaged with the sport and prevents any backlash that teams, leagues, or players may have throughout a season. PR is important in the finical success of any sports league.

Categories
PR social media

Social Media, Developing New Types of Communication for Businesses

Companies use to have a harder time communicating with the public The best way was to get the attention of a news station or a journalist. However, with the invention of the internet and social media, companies are now able to communicate dirtily and faster with their consumers. Today 81% of public relations professionals say they could not do their job effectively with out social media. Social media provides unique ways for companies to both advertise to customers, but also communicate with them.

When social media was first develop, it changed the way companies where able to communicate with consumers. This was the first time that there was two way communication between the two. For the first time the public could interact with a company at any time and any where. The public could complain to the company or they could praise them. Either way, it was important for companies to learn how to respond to these posts, or if they should respond at all. As of today, it is kind of expected for a company to respond to a consumer posting to them on any social media plat form. If not it appears that the company does not care about their consumers views, or worse that if there is something wrong the company does not want to fix it. On the other hand, companies who are very interactive with their consumers on social plat forms, or normally praised. People like to see a company respond or interact with their posts, it shows they care and are thankful for their consumers. By making the customers happy through social media it will make them enjoy your company and products more.

Two Way Communication
Alvi, M.
Retrieved on 2/23/2020. Pinerest.

One thing social media allows companies to do is give off a stronger brand imagine or voice. This is mostly do to the increase amount of communication between the company and business. With constant posting and communication it is important to have public relations professionals running this accounts. They are trained in sticking to the brand image and not drifting off. The public will feel notice and questions why a companies page is different than how it was the week before. It doesn’t matter if the image the brand is trying to achieve is funny, witty, or mean, it just matters that they stick to it. Social media allows brands to increase their personality and really show off their brand image.

Social media also speeds up the world of business. However, this is most prominent in the section of public relations. They must solve crisis, communicate with the public, and stay loyal to their brand image. Another part of public relations effect by this speed up realm of social media is the life span of news. Sense social media moves so quickly, the life span of a news story is much short than it use to be. This does not mean it reaches less people. In fact it reaches even more people due to social media, even with its decrease life span. To summarize, news has a short life span, but reaches more people than ever before. This is all thanks to how fast past social media is.

With the invention of social media. Public relations and business were changed for every. They had to adjust to this fast pace world. They also needed to learn how to deal with the two way communication they were not exposed too. Companies are now able to express their brands way more than ever before, which allows customers to know their company on a more personal level. When working for a business or a public relations firm it is important to understand the important of social media because its importance is only going to grow.

Categories
PR social media

Crisis in a Pod

In early 2018 Tide had a public relations crisis it never saw coming. A new internet trend was becoming popular with teens, where they would record themselves eating a Tide Pod and post the video online. As these videos got more popular they gained the name, “The Tide Pod challenge.” The goal of the challenge was to consume a whole Tide Pod. Obviously there are major health concern when eating a Tide Pod. They are full of chemicals which should not enter your body. One element that made this public relations crisis so unique, was that nothing Tide did started the problem. They did not post anything which resulted in backlash, one day teens just started to eat their product for attention. Tide had to stop this challenge for the health of their customers and to maintain a good public image.

According to Brooke Fisher Liu, Lucinda Austin, and Yan Jin, who are all professors in communication working for colleges across the United States, during a crisis you need to find the medium that the information is being spreed on, this includes traditional media, social media, or word of mouth. Once finding out which media the crisis is spreading on, the company should use that same medium to address or fix the crisis. In terms of the Tide Pod eating crisis, everything was happening on social media. Therefore, Tide used the same social media plat forms to communicate with it’s customers and address the situation.

How to Communicate in a Crisis
Dennis L. Wilcox, Glen T. Cameron, and Bryan H. Reber
2015. Public Relations Strategies and Tactics, Updated 11th edition

Above is a graphic from the book, “Public Relations Strageigies and Tactics, Updated 11th Edition” by Dennis L. Wilcox, Glen T Cameron, and Bryan H. Reber. In this digram it shows many things a company in a PR crisis should do.

Tide did many of the things they recommended to start, they put the public first. They cared the most about their customers health which was at risk from eating the Tide Pods. They quickly went public about knowing the situation and wanted to inform the public about the dangers of consuming their product.

The next thing on the graphic is to have a spokesperson. Tide went out and got Rob Gronkowski, at the time the Patriots tight end, to represent the brand in this crisis. Gronkowski appeared in twitter videos urging people not to eat Tide Pods no matter what. According to William Comcowich, who works in media measurement and analytics in both tradition and social media, explains that Gronkowski was the perfect for this situation. Gronkowski is popular among teens both online and on the field. By picking Gronkowskui they were able to gain more attention by the desired market.

Throughout this crisis Tide was involved in the media to inform about the dangers and also trying to get ride of the challenge. They worked together with social plat forms such as you tube to remove videos of teens eating the pods to stop the spread of the challenged. They did not want to allow the kids to gain attention from eating them and encourage others to do the same. However, the graph states the cover up story can become the story, Tide did not cover anything up. They just acknowledged what was happening. They let the public know that teens were eating them, and that Tide was trying to help.

Tide did not want to be at fault of this situation because they believed they did nothing wrong. They were not marketing Tide Pods to be tasty or that they should be ate, so in their mind, Tide was not responsible for the issue happening. The Wharton University of Pennsylvania explained how Tide made sure they would not be at fault for the social media trend. Tide reminded them off all the safety features they have to discourage people from eating the pods. To start they have a bitter film that coasts each pod. This film taste awful, it is there to make people spit it out if they were to put the pod in their mouth. The other safety feature Tide Pods have is their lid requires an adult hand to open it. These safety features of cores apply more to preventing young kids from eating the pods. Tide believes it is common knowledge that all teens and adults know to not eat soap or other dangerous chemicals, but they still shared their safety features with the public to show they do not encourage the consumption of their product.

Throughout this crisis Tide handled them selves very well and avoided any back lash these teens could have caused. The public did not think it was Tides fault and that it was the dumb teens fault for eating something they obviously should not. The fad of Tide Pod eating also ended shortly after Tides involvement on social media. If Tide would not have done anything about this situation then they probably would have received backlash for not caring about the health of their customers. Tide handled this crisis very well and prevented any negative views to form about their company.

References

Wilcox D.L, Cameron G.T, and Reber B.H. (2015). Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics: 11 Edition. Pearson.

Categories
Research

Research is Important Now and will be Forever

Just like many professional jobs, the field of public relations also relies heavily on research. This research can range from doing research on a product, to finding out what people think about the company, to finding the best way to reach the target market. They do research on their customers, but also on the business they are doing the PR for. Preforming research will insure they are doing the best possible idea out there, along with limit risks of back lash. According to Greg Leitchy and Jeff Springston, who both work for the Department of Communication at the University of Louisville, research is able to give researchers an insight to how managed communication influences the shape of the cultures it interacts with. This means that the way public relations acts in a community it can have a large effect on the people and culture it is taking place in. This is why it is important to research the culture of your target market to best communicate with them.

According to David Turier, a specialists in providing strategic counselling for large scale business, and Laurence Childs state, “Conducting Research is key to fully understand how to gain the attention of an audience when building a communications campaign. The last thing people want with a communications campaign is to find them selves screaming into the void…” This quote helps show that research is the reason that PR is able to reach the people they want to reach. With out research the PR will not reach anyone, and they will be talking to no one or “the void.” By doing research you are able to learn which media your target audience uses. Whether it is print, TV, or social media research will be able to figure it out. Research even goes beyond the media and sees what on that media they are looking for. If you are on the right media, but don’t get your targets attention then you are still not reaching them. Research will allow you to find and reach your audience.

With research being increasingly more important to PR, and other professional fields starting to do so much research, there have been new ideas of research. Some people believe that research can go too far and that there should be some rules you have to follow. This idea is supported by Don W. Stacks, the author of Primer of Public Relations Research Third Edition, when he stated, “With the increased reliance on research -both produced internally and framed out to professional firms- the question of data and research ethics has become more important than it was before.” There are laws and codes of ethics that keep research inline. They are there to keep the public safe from companies conducting unethical research. I think it is good to keep companies or firms within guide lines. It is also important for them to do things ethical and inform people what they are researching.

I am sure as time goes on the importance of research will only increase in PR. It is easy to see how important it is now, and there is no reason to believe it would ever back track. However, with research becoming more important it is also important to keep laws and regulations there to protect the public and keep companies ethical.

https://www.academia.edu/3792901/Importance_of_research_and_evaluation_in_public_relations

Why is research important in a communications campaign?

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/107769909607300215

Categories
social media technology

Public Relations is Not What I Thought it Was.

No matter how big or small a business is they have to worry about their public relations. To me public relations is the way a business interacts with the public, allowing them to create the brand image they desire. According to Caroline Black the author of The PR Practitioner’s Desktop Guide, “Public relations was born the moment the first organised group understood that it had a need to communicate with people- in other words it has been around since the dawn of civilization” (Black, p.7). This shows that all business have always had public relationships no matter when they were active through out time.

I am currently starting my first PR class at Grand Valley, and already through my first week I have learned so much. As an Ad emphasizes it took me an extra semester before getting to the PR classes. Before this class it was hard for me to see the difference between Ad and PR, but after this week I am beginning to see it. I now think of PR as the relationship between the company and the consumer where Ad is just trying to get the consumer to buy more or create new consumers. For example, on a social media for an Ad post may bring the price of a good and provide a link to buy it. Where on the other had, a PR post would focus on building the relationship between the customer and company, and would not show any mention of buying the product. Overall, I believe ads are focusing on making money where the focus of PR is to establish a bond between consumer and company.

As an Ad and PR major who is having difficulty understanding the difference between the two of these, it must look as if they are the same to people not involved in the industry. When research exactly what PR is I found a great quote by Robert Wynne, who is a Public Relations professional in California, where he states, ” The public relations industry does a terrible job of public relations.” In this quote he is trying to get the point across that people who work in the public relations field do a terrible job explain what there job is. This is very ironic sense they are paid to communicate to the public for a company, but fail to inform the public what exactly they do as a professional.

I believe the public relations field is full of gray areas and over laps with many jobs. However, no matter where you work there will be the same underlying duties. According to the Public Relations Society of America in their articular titled, “About Public Relations,” the main duty of public relations is to analyzing the public’s view of the company, issues that may impact the company for good or bad, crisis communication, manage the reputation of the company, preforming research on the audience and how to reach them, planning and implementing campaigns, setting goals, planning, budgeting, and overseeing content used to gain customer engagement and turn into leads. I use to think advertising and public relations were pretty much the same thing but in the last 7 day’s I have learned how different they are. Between the articles I have read preparing to write this along with what I have learned in class, my view of public relations has changed directly. I still plan on finishing my major with the empathizes in advertising, but my interest in public relations has gone up a lot. I want to be the best employee possible so what ever will expand my skill I will happily learn.

Black, C. (2002). The PR Practitioner’s Desktop Guide. EBCOhost. 7-18

About Public Relations. (n.d) Public Relations Society of America. retrieved from: https://www.prsa.org/about/all-about-pr

Wynne, R. ( Jan 21, 2016). Five Things Everyone Should Know About Public Relations. Forbes. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwynne/2016/01/21/five-things-everyone-should-know-about-public-relations/#25632f262a2c

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