The Man, The Myth, The Legend

To do a Public Relations take on the "Intel: Sponsors of Tomorrow" ad campaign: A small, yoda-like man walks onto the stage podium and smiles at the crowd of students that have gathered. His hair is combed back and the reflection from the over-head lights beams off his glasses. But despite this non-assuming man's appearance, his presence is Olympian as the students applaud his entrance.

Harold Burson; Co-founder of Burson-Marsteller, one of the world's largest public relations agencies and PRWeek's most influential public relations person of the 20th century. Public Relations: Our rock stars aren't like your rock stars!

That was what went through my head when Harold Burson spoke yesterday as he addressed students in the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics main auditorium at the University of Mississippi's Meek School of Journalism and New Media.

One thing is for certain, I can only hope to be half the public relations specialist that Burson is and he truly is the real "Mr. Public Relations."

During the hour he spent with students yesterday, Burson reminisced about the early part of his career, the creation of Burson-Marsteller, and the agency's defining moments; including its work in cleaning up Exxon's image after the Valdez oil spill incident in 1989 and Johnson & Johnson's confrontation with a second outbreak of cyanide-laced Tylenol in 1986.

One of the main points in his presentation was what you know. Burson emphasized the importance of specializing in something but also knowing something about everything. His big tip was for students serious in working in corporate PR to have a business background. In today's market, those with business minors and (even better) an MBA have the upper edge over those with English and history minors. It was a cold, hard fact that made me sigh in relief that despite the grievance it has been, I've been minoring in business.

Additionally, I felt a personal connection to Burson's life story when he told us about his graduating from the University of Mississippi (the same university I now attend) and his dreams of being whisked away to the life of New York City. Given the opportunity to hear him speak ensured me that with hard work, determination and a strengthened belief in the need for effective public relations, maybe someday, I too could be the professional he is.

The Chamber Internship

I'm very excited to say that this fall semester, I'm taking instructor Robin Street's Jour 491 Public Relations Techniques class. The second of three public relations classes offered in the journalism school, the class focuses on developing individual PR skills and style.

Throughout the semester we will cover writing effective press releases, learning how to do surveys, professional PR case studies and developing our own campaigns.

Additionally, Ms. Street's class provides internships doing PR work for local businesses in the Oxford community. Though the internships are not paid, the credit and experience are worth the time and effort in giving students the competitive edge over other PR students.

Luckily I was able to receive my first choice in internship with the Oxford-Lafayette County Economic Development Foundation and Chamber of Commerce. One of the most sought after internships, The EDF is dedicated to a strong commitment in seeking new business and supporting existing industry for the Oxford-Lafayette County area. The chamber provides marketing, publicity, savings and client opportunities for nearly 700 businesses and members. The EDF uses community resources to help business needs and create healthy partnerships.

Its also pretty cool to note that Ms. Street was named the Public Relations Association of Mississippi's (PRAM) Educator of the Year this past spring. That fact, no doubt, continues to prove that the University of Mississippi journalism staff is one of the best in the south.

In both the class and internship, its going to be a great semester learning to become a better public relations practitioner.

Promoting the 'Half-Blood Prince'

This past Wednesday, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released in theaters nationwide. In the sixth installment of the series, Harry Potter discovers an old book marked mysteriously "This book is the property of the Half-Blood Prince" and begins to learn more about Lord Voldemort's dark past.

And in the spirit of spreading excitement for the film, I put together a small promotion for the opening weekend at Westbrook Cinema 4. As I had done with other premieres in the past, I made my own Harry Potter costume from scratch. Of course, though my past promotions have always been fun for the patrons, I wanted to expand on the idea to make the promo more fun for the rest of the Regal "Cast Members" as well.

So in order to take the Hogwarts "nerdiness" to the extreme, I made individual Hogwarts house badges (including Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw) for the other members to wear, letting each person pick which house they would belong to. Oddly enough, everyone seemed to pick the house most fitting for them. And as I had hoped, the added effect made the experience even more enjoyable for both the patrons and the rest of the Westbrook staff.

Needless to say, it was a great weekend to be a Harry Potter nerd!

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Above photo: Me as Harry Potter working in concessions. Below photo: Cast members Sam O'Rorke and Dianna Beachum wearing their Ravenclaw house badges.
Bottom photo: Cast members Michelle Henly and Jonathan Hart wearing their Hufflepuff and Slytherin house badges.

Promoting Pixar's 'Up'

Starting yesterday, Pixar Animation Studios released its tenth computer-animated feature.

In "Up," the story revolves around the main character, Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Edward Asner), who, frustrated with his mundane life and impending enforcement into a retirement home, ties thousands of balloons to his house and sets off for adventure in South America. A small boy named Russell (voiced by Jordon Nagai) who is trying to earn his last Junior Wilderness Explorer badge for helping the elderly accidentally ends up on board, and hilarity ensues. The film is distributed by Walt Disney Pictures and "Up" is also Pixar's first 3D adventure.

Having seen the movie premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, critics boast that the film continues to exemplify Pixar's flawless record in never releasing a bad film.

The film is a "captivating odd-couple adventure that becomes funnier and more exciting as it flies along," wrote Variety's Todd McCarthy. "The two leading men are 78 and 8 years old, and the age range of those who will appreciate the picture is even a bit wider than that."

After seeing "Up" for myself, I could not help but fall in love with it. The plot line of the movie will touch audiences hearts. The 3D effect is remarkably and tastefully done unlike other 3D films in recent years (i.e. Spy Kids 3D, Shark Boy and Lava Girl). In this case, you truly feel as though you are in the movie. But even if you see "Up" in the traditional 2D format, you are still in for an epic adventure.

Now that I'm back working at Regal Entertainment Group's Westbrook Cinema 4 for my last summer, I wanted to get the lead out on my promotional technique by doing something for this film in particular (mostly because I'm an avid Disney/Pixar fanatic). Since Westbrook is typically the short stick of the draw when it comes to getting promotional materials it created more of a challenge (though welcomed) for me.

Before opening yesterday I assembled a cut-out, with a cardboard backing, of the the house used in "Up" to attached to the marque box for theater hall one. Then I went out to get a few helium balloons to attach behind the cut-out using a dead weight to hold them in place. On the bottom side of the marque I attached a cut-out of Fredricksen holding on to the garden hose to make it appear as though he is holding on to the house.

I'm happy to say that as families came into the main lobby, quite a few of the small children would tug on their parent's shirts, pointing at the promotion and/or yelling out "Look at the balloons!" Knowing that the younger guests enjoyed the display was all I needed to see for the display to be a success.

And one specific note I want to mention about "Up" before I close was Pixar's triumph in the animation of the balloons. For this feat they used a process called procedural animation which uses an algorithm, or set of equations, as well as Newtonian physics which allowed software to simulate the actions of each individual balloon without animators having animate each balloon themselves. To read more about what it took to create the amazing sequences, read CNN.com's report "How technology lifts Pixar's 'Up'"

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/05/28/pixar.up.technology/index.html
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Above photo: The promotional display above theater one at Westbrook Cinema 4.

pr-IMPACT on Improving Press Releases

Today I happened upon an interesting Public Relations website called http://www.pr-impact.com/ by PR pro Jerry Brown. On his site, Brown promotes a practical, effective approach to promoting PR to stakeholders through his e-books. Deciding whether to purchase his e-books is a personal call but the site does provide some great insight. The following exerts from his section on "Improving Your Press Releases."

Three reasons press releases fail:
1. They’re too self-serving. Reporters won’t write stories about you for your benefit. They write for the benefit of their audience. Give your audience a reason to care about what’s in your press release and reporters who write for that audience will be more likely to use it.
2. They’re boring. Reporters are competing for the attention of readers or viewers. They work hard to make their stories interesting – with the language they use and the way they tell their stories. People who write press releases often do just the opposite, then wonder why their press releases didn’t get used.
3. There’s no clear objective. You can’t succeed unless you know what success is. Getting a “positive” story isn’t specific enough.


Five tips for writing really good press releases:
1. Give your audience a reason to care. Everybody’s favorite subject is me. Make your press releases relevant and interesting to your audience.
2. Localize your story. Reporters are always looking for a local angle for their stories. Provide a local angle in your press releases. Localizing your press release often is about geography. But it can also be about community of interest. You can “localize” a press release by providing an angle that makes it interesting for trade or specialty publications.
3. Humanize your story. News is about people and things that affect people.
4. Use the Big Four. Do one or more of the following four things (they’re not mutually exclusive) in a way that affects enough people and turn almost anything into news:
– Solve a problem or create an opportunity. Flip sides of the same thing.
– Provide useful information (tips)
– Identify a trend. Better yet, tell me how to take advantage of it or avoid being harmed by it.
– Help the community. Charity events for example.
5. Optimize your press releases for the Internet search engines. Press releases aren’t just for reporters any more.

The Overby Center Internship

Yesterday I concluded my semester-long internship as student assistant at The Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics.

The Overby Center is funded through a grant from the Freedom Forum, a foundation dedicated to educating people about the importance of a free press and the First Amendment. The Center's mission is to create better understanding of the media and politicians and the role of the First Amendment in U.S. democracy.

The Center features programs, multimedia displays and writings that examine the independent and interrelated relationships of the media and politicians; past, present and future. Because many leaders in media and politics have come from the South, the Overby Center pays special attention to Southern perspectives.

The Center is named for Charles L. Overby, editor of the Daily Mississippian at the University of Mississippi from 1967 to 1968, executive editor of The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson from 1982 to 1984, former vice president/news of the Gannett Co., former member of the management committee of USA TODAY, and now chairman, chief executive officer of the Newseum.

During the semester I worked for and did research for Overby fellows Curtis Wilkie and John Hailman. Wilkie is a revered Southern journalist and author and was a reporter at The Boston Globe for over 25 years before teaching journalism at the university. Hailman, a federal prosecutor, also teaches at the university and was a wine columnist for the Washington Post and was nationally syndicated for over a decade by Gannett News Service.

Under Curtis (as he prefers his students to call him), I transcribed phone calls for a book he is working on involving one of the most recent Mississippi fraud cases. For Professor Hailman, I worked on typing and editing the chapters for his next two book projects, Midnight to Guntown and Good Wine. Both fellows were unique personalities to work with and it was great getting to know them.

For Dawn Jeter, the Operations Manager of the Overby Center, I helped set up for different forums and speakers that visited the center throughout the semester. I also handled other administrative assistant work that she needed.

My time with the Overby Center also provided me with a chance to meet and work with many journalists and politicians such as NBC broadcaster Sander Van Oker, Oxford Mayor Richard Howorth, state representative Jim Evans, Pulitzer Prize writer Gene Roberts, and NBC anchor Tom Brokaw who I had previously worked for during the presidential debate last fall.

Although at times, work was rigorously fast-paced and seemingly over-whelming, I did enjoy my time interning there. It was my first job where I had my own three-sided, oak desk and how cool is that! Since yesterday was my last day, Professor Hailman gave me a signed copy of his book Thomas Jefferson on Wine and a 2007 bottle of Hogue white Riesling wine. As a dessert wine, the Hogue is wonderful and the book has been added to my on-going book collection.

Saying Goodbye to Sacred Heart

After eight seasons, Scrubs, the sitcom I watched throughout high school and most of college, finally ended tonight.

For those who have never seen the series, Scrubs is an comedy-drama that premiered on October 2, 2001, on NBC (which I still remember watching) and follows the lives of the employees of Sacred Heart hospital. The show's title is a play on surgical scrubs in addition to “scrubs” being slang for the inexperienced.

The show is primarily viewed through the eyes of the central character, John Michael "J.D." Dorian (Zack Braff) and his adventures with his friends; Christopher Turk (Donald Faison), Elliot Reid (Sarah Chalke), and Carla Espinosa (Judy Reyes). Great characters in the show like Chief-of-Medicine Bob Kelso (Ken Jenkins), J.D.'s mentor Dr. Perry Cox (John C. McGinley), his nemesis "the janitor" (Neil Flynn), and Sacred Heart Lawyer Ted Buckland (Sam Lloyd) continued to bring the laughs and added depth to the show.

Each episode of Scrubs is amazing because of the show's plot lines that always have good morals and values mixed in with overwhelming humor. It is probably why I love watching Scrubs so much. Unlike most shows it is not just an escape from reality, but instead the journeys of the characters relates to viewers in a way that inspires them with positive perspectives to make it through their own every day hurdles. By the end of each episode, Scrubs taught viewers lessons on life.

Some of my favorite episodes include "My Musical," "My Way Home," "My ABC's," "My Fallen Idol," "My Catalyst," and "My Overkill."

Another unique aspect of Scrubs is that it is filmed on location at the North Hollywood Medical Center, a real decommissioned hospital located in the North Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, Calif. However, the location of Sacred Heart Hospital within the fictional world of Scrubs is left ambiguous, leaving it easier for its audience to connect with the characters. It's probably another reason I've been able to relate with the show. It has never been about where Sacred Heart is, but the experiences of the lives within the hospital.

During the seventh season more than a year ago, NBC announced that it would not renew the show. To make matters worse for the show's future, in November, the Writers Guild of America went on strike, which put the production of the show's seventh season on hold. When the strike started, only eleven of Scrubs' eighteen planned seventh season episodes had been completely written. The show's creator and director, Bill Lawrence refused to cross any WGA picket lines to serve any of his duties for the show, so ABC Studios had non-WGA members finish episode twelve, which the studio had unsuccessfully pressured Lawrence to rewrite as a series finale prior to the strike.

Shortly after a very weak, ill-fitting seventh season finale, ABC announced that it had bought the rights to the show and on January 6, 2009, the eighth season of Scrubs premiered on ABC. Once again, Lawrence and the cast of Scrubs were able to rekindle the heart-felt reasons many viewers had come to know from the earlier seasons of the show.

Even the last episode kept true to the same themes that have carried the show since the beginning: people grow and change, but life at the hospital just keeps going. People leave, people die, someone makes a life-changing decision, and life just keeps going. To Quote:

"I'm real sorry there, newbie. But this is not a special day for me. It's just a day," Dr. Cox almost-convincingly said during one of J.D.'s attempts at getting an emotional goodbye from him. He was right. And Sacred Heart did not make much of a big deal out of J.D.'s departure.

And as J.D. walks out the exit for the last time, he reflects on the individuals that influenced his life during his years at Sacred Heart. Then he starts to daydream about the the future. And as always he sums up with an important life lesson:

"It's never good to live in the past too long. As for the future, thanks to Dan (J.D.'s older brother), it didn't seem so scary anymore. It could be whatever I want it to be... Who's to say this isn't what happens? And who's to say my fantasies won't come true just this once?"

For all of the wonderful memories, laughs, and lessons learned; I have to say thank you to Lawrence, Braff, and the rest of the cast and crew of Scrubs for an incredible eight years.

PR Profiling in the News Media

I recently came across a great Public Relations practitioner’s journal article from PR Journal, published by the Public Relations Society of America. The title of the article is “Influence of the Gender of Reporters, News Topics, and Circulation Size on Framing of Public Relations.”

The study itself explored how external news factors influenced media framing of public relations by analyzing daily newspapers’ news content dedicated to depictions of public relations. The gender of reporters, news topics, and circulation size of newspapers significantly predicted how the newspapers framed public relations.

In their research, a neutral frame was dominant. When negative and positive frames were compared, male reporters took more negative approaches than female reporters, and female reporters took favorable stances toward public relations. Both negative and positive frames of public relations were more frequently present in hard news than in soft news. Large newspapers emphasized a negative frame toward public relations, and small newspapers highlighted a positive frame.

Especially in PR crisis management, it is critical that practitioners heed these frames and apply them to handling media relations.

As a whole, this concept is relative to all Public Relations practitioners; PR departments, PR firms and small businesses. This knowledge is particularly an important informational tool that applies to small business managers in order to relate to their employees on how do deal with the media in situations where there maybe little or no PR department within the business.

Ultimately, how the media views your company of business is typically how the public will see you. Remember: "Perception is Reality!"

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Citation:
Lim, Jeongsub and Bae, Jiyang, "Influence of the Gender of Reporters, News Topics, and Circulation Size on Framing of Public Relations," PR Journal Vol. 3, number 1, winter 2008

Capture the Moment: Find the Moment

Beginning April 22, "Capture the Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs," the largest and most comprehensive display of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs ever shown in the United States, formally opened at the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics (my place of work) at the University of Mississippi.

The exhibit features 138 images drawn from each year's winning entries from 1941 up to and including the award-winning 2009 photographs. Without a doubt, compelling images in the exhibit touch the heart strings in a very profound way.

The FREEDOM FORUM's Newseum developed the traveling exhibit and its sister exhibit at the Newseum with the help of Business of Entertainment, Inc., New York, with Cyma Rubin as curator. The exhibition at the Overby Center will be on display through July 3 and I highly encourage individuals to see this amazing tribute to the human condition.

To raise awareness for the exhibit, we decided to do a Society of Professional Journalists sponsored scavenger hunt for students viewing the exhibit. To complement the exhibit we titled the event "Capture the Moment: Find the Moment."

Participants in the hunt were given a list of 10 Pulitzer photographers who's pictures were on display in the exhibit. After accurately finding the matching titles for all 10 photographers, participants would have to return the list, signed by the Farley Hall receptionist. To help from participant miss-use of the list we developed four different lists: one by Grafton Pritchartt (Vice President), Janna Jones (Webmaster), Dr. Wickham (faculty advisor), and myself.

In the end, SPJ had a great participant response with more than 30 entries. We gave winners either a Big Bad Breakfast $25 gift certificate, free McAlister's cookies or other local prizes from the Oxford area.

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Above Photo: The flyer I designed for the Pulitzer exhibit's promotion.

The World Will Have Its Skeptics

The following is a list of quotes from my Marketing Principles text book. It comes from chapter 11, "Product Concepts."

The chapter covered five adopter categories in acceptance of new innovations in order of adoption. The first were the Innovators (2.5%), followed by Early Adopters (13.5%), Early Majority (34%), Late Majority (34%), and finally the Laggards (16%). Some of the greatest ideas have always had their skeptics. This list covers just a few of the quotes by closed minded reasoning later trumped by success. Enjoy!

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
- Western Union internal memo, 1876

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."
- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corporation)

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
-H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make."
- Banker's response to Debbie Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
- Decca Recording Company rejecting the Beatles, 1962