Long Time No Blog
It has been a long time since I have written anything here. I have mainly been so busy with school and since I am not in a class of Robert’s I am not being forced to write. I would like to keep my blog up though because I really do think all of this is important.
I am starting to look for jobs and that is becoming a job in itself. The more I research PR firms the more overwhelmed I feel. I am not totally certain on what I want to do yet. I have so many ideas. I want to work for NASCAR, I want to work with food and the culinary world, I want to do event planning. I want to do it all but first I need to find a job!
Almost all of the websites for the companies I am interested in are so great and I think that is really important. With everything we have been learning when it comes to social media and the internet, I am definitely judging these places on their social media competence. BUT I am not sure if that is necessarily what I want to be doing all day long. It is such a conundrum. Oh well I just wanted to get back on here and blog again. Hopefully it won’t be so long until my next posting. We shall see. Wish me luck in the world of job searching.
Lee Gaither Visits Auburn
Auburn Alum Lee Gaither along with collegue Alma Derricks came to Auburn on Friday to give a seminar to area Public Relations professionals about branding. “Walking the Walk: Marcom’s Role in Building, Growing and Sustaining Brands in the New Marketplace. You can look at the website here. I attended the presentation in place of my supervisor who could not go. I was the only student at the seminar and I felt a little out of place at first, but then some really friendly women who were sitting in front of me made me feel a lot more confortable.
The information that they were talking about was so interesting, the first part of the presentation was lots of “branding” vocabulary just to make sure everyone was on the right page as far as concepts. Then we talked about the branding process and all that is involved and then did a little fun case study with Jack Daniel’s and differernt target markets.
For my internship we are currently working on re-branding and this seminar was really helpful for me as I am preparing a presentation to share with my supervisor and then for her to share with the rest of the staff. Hopefully I can take what I have learned and share it with others to help re-brand our association.
Murray’s Visit
Rick Murray was in Auburn for the past two days talking and meeting with students. I consider myself very lucky to have been a part of his visit. He came and spoke in my style and design class and gave a wonderful presentation about the impact of social media and what Edelman is doing about it, what we should do about it and also gave us some great advice about going out into the world of job hunting.
Afterwards our class went out to dinner with him and got to have more casual conversation and ask personal questions that we had been wondering or even just things we were curious about. Murray was such a great guy and so nice to all of us- It was defintely a pleasure to meet him.
The whole thing just got me wondering about getting a job and thinking about what I really want to do. Apparently coming out of Auburn is going to give us much more than I personally ever expected. With everything that Robert is teaching us we are in the top percent of people who “get it” when it comes to social media. That seems like a pretty big deal to me- I didn’t truly appreicate everything Robert was doing for us until Murray’s visit. I guess I am just thankful and now hopeful about graduating and getting a job that I will be able to grow in and love.
Rick Murray and Edelman
Today and tomorrow Rick Murray from the company Edelman will be visiting Auburn and more specifically our public relations classes. This is such an amazing opportunity for all of us I am so excited. Murray is coming to talk to us about social media and the impact it is having on the world of public relations.
To prepare for his visit we have been working on several projects in class as well as just learning about social media and the revolution it is creating. Our biggest project this semester has been the loveliestvillage.org site, which our class and Robert’s other class created to give the “other” news about Auburn. We have been doing audio interviews and adding them to our stories along with pictures and other multimedia. This has been a great project and a great success because it has created a learning environment for all of us and given us something to show for the work we have been doing to learn about all this new technology.
We have also created and have been working with a wiki on the loveliest village site and playing with social media press releases. The other day Robert told us he thinks that we are the only students playing with these social media releases and to me that is so incredible. They are amazing pieces of social media that I think will eventually take the world of PR by storm. I don’t think that traditional press releases will be obsolete by any means, but I think the way people look at them will change drastically. And I don’t think it will be too far in the future either.
I am just glad to be part of such a great program at Auburn. Since graduation is practically right around the corner this kind of thing gives me a little more confidence going out into the job market- I guess we will just have to see… anybody hiring?
Should we fix that? or not?
In a lot of my classes we have been talking about ethics- more specifically ethics in regards to photographs. I think this is a very interesting topic especially as far as the technology has come in recent years.
Now any person who goes out and buys Photoshop can edit a photograph and make it almost impossible to tell that it has been altered. We talked about this in my photojournalism class the other day- we watched a video with a panel of people including photojournalist and a techie who was especially fluent in Photoshop. The journalist views were set in stone, you do not alter pictures for the news. Period.
This makes complete sense to me. When we read the newspaper we expect for what we see to be a visual image of the actual news that occurred. It shouldn’t be a brightened or lighted version of the news. I believe that nothing should happen to photos accept the traditional cropping that has gone on since the beginning of photojournalism. Then we talked about this in Style and Design- this is where I believe sometimes the line between what is and isn’t ethical gets a little fuzzy. What if someone you are including in some sort of profile piece in a media kit has a little blemish? Should you fix that? What about red eye?
In class we played with Photoshop the other day. We completely removed people from pictures, added new backgrounds to make a somewhat overcast day look sunny and beautiful, and changed the color of someone’s eyes. This is where I believe the technology may have gotten ahead of itself. Until there is time for rules to be made about this kind of thing people will continue to cross the line and push the envelope.
I feel this is a very important topic to think about especially since people our age are all going to be so computer savvy in the business world. Will it become a technological competition or a talent competition? Hopefully talent will still mean more than just being clever with a computer.
Auburn still being underestimated?
The new ratings for football just came out tonight; Auburn is now ranked number 2 in the AP poll, yet still only number 3 in the coaches’ poll, I have to wonder why? Auburn played great this weekend. All the stories that were written prior to the game were talking about how the winner of this particular game was going to be a force to be reckoned with. Why aren’t these coaches agreeing? Personally I think it has something to do with the brand of Auburn University. The other schools like Ohio State and of course USC have some of the strongest brands in college football. This is something that always tends to come back and bite us in the butt. In 2004 when Auburn finished undefeated some feel like we were robbed of our chance to go to the National Championship. I think that if Auburn had stronger brand recognition this sort of thing would not happen. I feel like this is very much public relations, very relevant to the fields of communication, marketing and advertising. What can Auburn do to increase the strength of our brand? I don’t know, I wish I did because Auburn has so much potential and is such a strong team and a strong university- It’s about time people stopped underestimating our ability and start to giving Auburn the recognition we deserve.
Diversity in Public Relations
Today in one of my classes we talked about diversity and more specifically diversity in public relations. Is diversity important in public relations? How? How not? Well personally I think diversity is important in any industry, especially an industry whose main goal is essentially to relate to publics? Don’t we want to try to relate to as many publics as possible? To promote our products as successfully as possible? My teacher told us that diversity is not just about separating people, it’s including people and giving everyone an equal chance to participate.
Yet then later in the lecture, she was talking about press releases, and how when you are targeting different groups that you may need to change your press releases to better target those different groups? Isn’t this the opposite of creating a diverse environment? Isn’t that exactly what we are trying not to do? By changing your press release you are saying, “These people are different, so we need to talk to them differently.” I think the goal should be to be able to issue a press release or whatever that is speaking to everyone on the same level. Not to have to change things between races just to “target” them better.
I know this goal may seem like a long shot, but I really don’t think that it is. If we stop separating people so much maybe we will realize we aren’t that different after all.
The View and Jessica Simpson
The View started its tenth season this morning, minus Star Jones Reynolds and plus Rosie O’Donnell as the new moderator for the season. The first episode of the live show seemed to go off without a hitch considering all the controversy that has swirled around the show the past few months. Rosie O’Donnell seemed to fit in pretty well minus a few akward comments about being Meredith Vieira.
There was the normal hot topics discussion at the beginning of the show and then they moved right into celebrity interviews with Jessica Simpson kicking the season off right. She denied claims that she is dating singer John Mayer, but this leads me to wonder if she was volunteering the information or if her publicist is trying to keep people out of her personal life for good. I think she is lying and she just doesn’t want the public to get involved in yet another one of her relationships, maybe not such a bad move on her part, but really who is she kidding. If she doesn’t want the public to be involved then she needs to learn how to not put herself out there so much. This is something I want to keep an eye on because I think she is trying to change her image some, and I think she will have a hard time trying to do it, oh Hollywood.
Skills in Poster Rolling
So, we are supposed to be writing about Public Relations, well I am doing my internship right now, along with taking classes so I figured that would be an appropriate topic to blog about from time to time. The point of an internship is to gain real working experience without actually being out in the workforce full on right? Well I have personally found in the last two weeks that the job description of an intern should look more like one for a secretary or an assistant. I mostly just do the stuff around the office that no one else wants to do. Roll hundreds of posters and put rubber bands around them, make copies, put together cardboard packets. Now I know I haven’t finished school and I am not qualified to do too much more, but come on, give me something. I want to have something to write on my resume besides, “Excellent poster rolling skills.â€Â I am trying to get a job in a very competitive market and I feel like I have more skills to show than pushing a button on a copier.Â
The good news is my boss has finally given me a semester long project that has to do with branding the association. I am excited about this opportunity to show what I can do. I just thought I would lament about the sorrow of being an unpaid student intern! See you later-