A tutor of mine often refers to the film ‘Thank you for not smoking’ as an example of stereotypical PR. We have been shown clips in class which are hilarious, so I decided to buy the film and watch it all!
I know a friend of mine, Anni Wahl, absolutely loves the movie and now I know why.
The contagious personality of protagonist Nick Naylor, is the chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, a tobacco lobby whose stated purpose is to research the links between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer.. Unsurprisingly, the group, funded by cigarette companies, does not find any link between the two.
He is a fine example of great lobbying. He has no educational background, but he has charm, charisma and can talk his way through any awkward situation.
There is a part in the movie where Nick teaches his son how to argue. He explains that you do not have to convince the opposition that you are right, or that they are wrong, because if the people who are listening believe you are right, then you automatically win the argument.
I have always questioned the ethics of having to stand for something controversial or something that you personally don’t believe in. This film showed me how it is possible. Nick Naylor is a spin doctor at his best, and although fictional, a very inspiring character.
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Brutal PR - Al-Jazeera
I recently came across quite a disturbing video clip streamed from news channel Al-Jazeera. It was the image of two dead children at a morgue, wrapped in white sheets with all but their faces exposed. I later found out that the pictures were repeated on the channel, often and for significant periods of time, even as broadcasters gave the news of the hour or interviewed various guests.
Aljazeera has been particularly critisised for the way it has produced news on the war in Gaza. I wonder how the British public would respond to such images on the news. The BBC’s ‘no blood’ policy may have played a huge part in the ignorance of the British public.
Analysts suggested that because these images were seen all around the world, they played an important role in influencing the people to protest by the tens of thousands, burn effigies and Israeli flags and demand action from their governments. The core controversial subject of Aljazeera is broadcasting of harsh, brutal and disturbing images of war and terrorism that western audiences are shunned from. In the view of the channel itself, these images portray ‘real news’, however in some western views, it is seen as biased, brain washing and inappropriate. The channel receives constant pressures from the west to change the production style and intensity of the imagery, and there is continuous disagreement about the way news is presented on the channel.
I wonder if news channels are at war of one another to protect the reputation of their country and government?
Aljazeera has been particularly critisised for the way it has produced news on the war in Gaza. I wonder how the British public would respond to such images on the news. The BBC’s ‘no blood’ policy may have played a huge part in the ignorance of the British public.
Analysts suggested that because these images were seen all around the world, they played an important role in influencing the people to protest by the tens of thousands, burn effigies and Israeli flags and demand action from their governments. The core controversial subject of Aljazeera is broadcasting of harsh, brutal and disturbing images of war and terrorism that western audiences are shunned from. In the view of the channel itself, these images portray ‘real news’, however in some western views, it is seen as biased, brain washing and inappropriate. The channel receives constant pressures from the west to change the production style and intensity of the imagery, and there is continuous disagreement about the way news is presented on the channel.
I wonder if news channels are at war of one another to protect the reputation of their country and government?
Is Embedded Journalism PR for the Military?
The use of embedded journalism has been heavily criticised as being subjective and sympathetic towards US and UK troops that lead to the alternative term 'in-bedded' or 'in bed'. Critics argue that the relationships formed on the frontline can affect the objectivity and accuracy of news reports. Although media organisations deny their reporters are prejudiced towards the military, some embeds are open to admit to the quickness of the socializsation process and stress that 'reality changes the rules'. UPI reporter Pamela Hess said: "Reporters love troops. Put us with these 18 year old kids … we just turn into jelly".
When the US Military announced an invasion on Iraq in 2003 they introduced an embedding system which allowed journalists to report and correspond whilst working on the frontline. In previous wars, the USM received negative criticism for their lack of communication with the media and for holding information from the public. Embedding journalists was an attempt to gain support from American citizens and has become universally popular since. This new style of reporting would not only allow the Military to gain support but to maintain the morale of the troops and to use world media influence to promote compliance with the Dayton Agreement among the former warring factions. Embedded journalists are given military training, and can wear military uniform so that they do not become a target for the enemy. They become a part of the team.
This also seems to be the case when embedding with opposite forces. BBC journalist David Loyn, embedded with Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan and was criticised for speaking admiringly about those he was reporting. Loyn was questioned about the conditions that were laid down by the Taliban for him to be able to speak to their soldiers. He said, “There was a trust on both sides, I trusted them not to kill me. And they trusted me not to bring an air strike down on them. They were the only conditions laid down.” Loyn argued that the report was not a platform for the Taliban to use as propaganda, but an opportunity for him to ask ‘why are you burning down schools? Where have you come from? Why are you re recruiting?’. The report remained unbiased but was not typically anti-Taliban like most embed reports.
Embedding journalists was a very effective way of communication – the media was on their side. This emphasises how important a good relationship with a journalist is, as even in times of war, their objectivity can be affected.
When the US Military announced an invasion on Iraq in 2003 they introduced an embedding system which allowed journalists to report and correspond whilst working on the frontline. In previous wars, the USM received negative criticism for their lack of communication with the media and for holding information from the public. Embedding journalists was an attempt to gain support from American citizens and has become universally popular since. This new style of reporting would not only allow the Military to gain support but to maintain the morale of the troops and to use world media influence to promote compliance with the Dayton Agreement among the former warring factions. Embedded journalists are given military training, and can wear military uniform so that they do not become a target for the enemy. They become a part of the team.
This also seems to be the case when embedding with opposite forces. BBC journalist David Loyn, embedded with Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan and was criticised for speaking admiringly about those he was reporting. Loyn was questioned about the conditions that were laid down by the Taliban for him to be able to speak to their soldiers. He said, “There was a trust on both sides, I trusted them not to kill me. And they trusted me not to bring an air strike down on them. They were the only conditions laid down.” Loyn argued that the report was not a platform for the Taliban to use as propaganda, but an opportunity for him to ask ‘why are you burning down schools? Where have you come from? Why are you re recruiting?’. The report remained unbiased but was not typically anti-Taliban like most embed reports.
Embedding journalists was a very effective way of communication – the media was on their side. This emphasises how important a good relationship with a journalist is, as even in times of war, their objectivity can be affected.
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
Can this sausage roll get more fans than Cheryl Cole?
Since January 30th, that’s only 11 days ago, the Facebook fan group, ‘Can this sausage roll get more fans than Cheryl Cole?’ has gained 900,006 members.There is no other way than the power of online social networking, that this huge figure could have been achieved.
Within a week it was in the Daily Star and has been made into a song which can be viewed on Youtube and purchased online.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-DXROXr9L4
This could possibly be the best publicity stunt that the sausage roll has ever been involved with and the most interesting part is that it wasn’t created by Ginsters or any other pastry brand - it was created by a single Facebook prankster.
This illustrates how online social networks can speed up public relations and how organic it can be. Whether or not it is bad publicity for Cheryl Cole is debatable. Most people will see it as a genuine laugh but her reputation could be effected due to its mass coverage. There is no doubt that the fan group will succeed in exceeding the 1.5million group members of Cheryl Coles fan club, which is when the national media will most likely cover the story.
A comment made in the discussion board states: “How ironic that this group is probably going to serve to further Cheryl Cole's career by increasing the media hype around her. Hopefully a fair number of people will be encouraged to eat more sausage rolls though.”
From the time I started this blog till now, the group has reached a total of 901,003 fans. One thousand in ten minutes.
Marketing and PR – Where’s the line?
There seems to be a slight misunderstanding of the Public Relations art. The closely related Marketing Dept. are having trouble distinguishing the difference between our practices and theirs.
The key difference between the two can be established by their objectives. Marketing efforts are in place to facilitate the sales process, whereas PR focuses on building and strengthening relationships between the company and its stakeholders.
A company stakeholder can be anyone who is affected by, or interested in the activities and/or products of the company. A stakeholder can be those who happen to live in the surrounding community, employees, customers, shareholders, investors, etc.
There is a fair deal of elements of each job function that are almost identical. In Marketing and PR, we focus on communicating the messages of the company or brand to the most relevant audiences. We both conduct research to decide what those messages should be and determine who should receive them. We both plan and staff company-sponsored events and trade shows, and we both help create content for marketing collateral, assist with advertising and put together similar types of proposals, budgets and reports.
The new online element to PR determines its unique purpose. The intention of social networking is not to sell products directly or to advertise but to create a relationship and understanding between consumer and brand.
The purpose of marketing is to broadcast and sell to the masses. It has one aim in mind, and that is profit. PR however is more than just that. It is listening to and monitoring the brands identity and audiences. The role is also to respond and react to audiences to ensure the company’s reputation is protected. Public relations has come as far as building online communities for brands to monitor and allowed easy two way communication and to maintain long term relationships.
A recent definition of marketing published by the AMA (The Arts Marketing Associations) has developed the idea of traditional marketing to sound more public focused:
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large.
PR professional Bill Sledzik comments on this definition on his blog: “Now, tell me our ‘evil twins’ haven’t been reading the PR textbooks... I’m not sure a power trip is a good way to launch a relationship or to serve “society at large.” So I’m hopeful our friends in marketing will just continue to sell stuff. They’re damned good at it — especially when PR helps them!”
The key difference between the two can be established by their objectives. Marketing efforts are in place to facilitate the sales process, whereas PR focuses on building and strengthening relationships between the company and its stakeholders.
A company stakeholder can be anyone who is affected by, or interested in the activities and/or products of the company. A stakeholder can be those who happen to live in the surrounding community, employees, customers, shareholders, investors, etc.
There is a fair deal of elements of each job function that are almost identical. In Marketing and PR, we focus on communicating the messages of the company or brand to the most relevant audiences. We both conduct research to decide what those messages should be and determine who should receive them. We both plan and staff company-sponsored events and trade shows, and we both help create content for marketing collateral, assist with advertising and put together similar types of proposals, budgets and reports.
The new online element to PR determines its unique purpose. The intention of social networking is not to sell products directly or to advertise but to create a relationship and understanding between consumer and brand.
The purpose of marketing is to broadcast and sell to the masses. It has one aim in mind, and that is profit. PR however is more than just that. It is listening to and monitoring the brands identity and audiences. The role is also to respond and react to audiences to ensure the company’s reputation is protected. Public relations has come as far as building online communities for brands to monitor and allowed easy two way communication and to maintain long term relationships.
A recent definition of marketing published by the AMA (The Arts Marketing Associations) has developed the idea of traditional marketing to sound more public focused:
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large.
PR professional Bill Sledzik comments on this definition on his blog: “Now, tell me our ‘evil twins’ haven’t been reading the PR textbooks... I’m not sure a power trip is a good way to launch a relationship or to serve “society at large.” So I’m hopeful our friends in marketing will just continue to sell stuff. They’re damned good at it — especially when PR helps them!”
Public Affair Nightmare
Suspicious, manipulative, investigative and intrusive. Just some of the words used by local councilors to describe what they thought of Journalists.
This January, I worked in PR department at Leicestershire County Council, as part of work experience for my course. On the first day, Media Relations Officer, Mel Atkinson, invited me along to a press training day at Charnwood Borough Council. The aim of the training was to help council officers to be more prepared for the media.
The training addressed issues such as ‘predicting the news’, ‘being prepared for crisis’ and ‘communication is better than no communication’.
If council officers were to take a couple of hours to look at any projects, issues or trends that are occurring, they would be able to forecast potential media interest. This would allow them to be more prepared for spontaneous phone calls from their local reporter and so they would know when to bite their bottom lip if they need to.
It is also important for the councilor not to get too ‘chatty’. There have been cases where a member would fall into conversation with the journalist and accidently let slip information that would be front page news the next day.
As a journalist, it was interesting to witness the attitudes from the council officers towards their local reporters. One member questioned why a journalist would not leave him alone, even though there was no progress on the issue being questioned. He commented on their persistence and how he felt obliged to respond in case the journalist reported on him negatively. This lead to some inaccuracy in the information he provided.
The advice given was to ALWAYS COMMENT. No matter what. Even it is just council jargon, it is still communication. Having a positive relationship with the local media is the best way for a council to operate. The public want honest information, and although not always the case, the media is the most objective form of communication they can digest.
Ex-Journalists working in governmental PR departments is only a positive change. Having been the receiver of information, a media relations officer who has worked as a journalist, would be an expert on predicting stories, giving information the public actually care about and monitoring quotes which could be potentially damaging.
This January, I worked in PR department at Leicestershire County Council, as part of work experience for my course. On the first day, Media Relations Officer, Mel Atkinson, invited me along to a press training day at Charnwood Borough Council. The aim of the training was to help council officers to be more prepared for the media.
The training addressed issues such as ‘predicting the news’, ‘being prepared for crisis’ and ‘communication is better than no communication’.
If council officers were to take a couple of hours to look at any projects, issues or trends that are occurring, they would be able to forecast potential media interest. This would allow them to be more prepared for spontaneous phone calls from their local reporter and so they would know when to bite their bottom lip if they need to.
It is also important for the councilor not to get too ‘chatty’. There have been cases where a member would fall into conversation with the journalist and accidently let slip information that would be front page news the next day.
As a journalist, it was interesting to witness the attitudes from the council officers towards their local reporters. One member questioned why a journalist would not leave him alone, even though there was no progress on the issue being questioned. He commented on their persistence and how he felt obliged to respond in case the journalist reported on him negatively. This lead to some inaccuracy in the information he provided.
The advice given was to ALWAYS COMMENT. No matter what. Even it is just council jargon, it is still communication. Having a positive relationship with the local media is the best way for a council to operate. The public want honest information, and although not always the case, the media is the most objective form of communication they can digest.
Ex-Journalists working in governmental PR departments is only a positive change. Having been the receiver of information, a media relations officer who has worked as a journalist, would be an expert on predicting stories, giving information the public actually care about and monitoring quotes which could be potentially damaging.
What the *Tweet* is Social Networking?
Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, MySpace, Hi5… What’s it all about? The social network phenomenon has expanded over the past few years and has become a part of every contemporary PR practice.
Like many of my peers at university, I joined Facebook to interact with other students and to share my daily on goings with the rest of my online ‘friends’. There was no particular reason to why I joined, other than curiosity and boredom. But before I knew it, I was completely addicted to this cyber craze and like many others, I found myself checking my profile every single day.
The website was set up in the US by four Harvard University students with the intention to encourage students to get to know one another online. It was once restricted to only university members but it now has over 400million members worldwide and has become a social network phenomenon.
I was soon joining ‘Fan Groups’ and ‘Discussion boards’. I was being invited to events, clubs and being advertised products and services targeted specifically to my age, location and interests. I had no idea that I was being targeted or that I had become duped by new age online public relations.
Since starting Public Relations course, I have been looking more closely at online activity on corporate social networking pages. As well as Facebook, micro blogging site Twitter has become a huge part of PR practice.
These social sites are an organic way of monitoring the reputation of an organisation, consumer reactions, product evaluation and recognising market trends. Companies are also able to create a personality for their brand and allow their audiences to communicate directly.
I recently joined twitter but have not been able to get grips with micro blogging or better known as ‘Tweeting’. I’ve realised that is an acquired skill to be able to ‘tweet’ effectively, in order to communicate and interact with the online community.
Whether or not social networking is a trend that might soon die out is yet to be seen. It is growing more popular every day and reaching global masses.
It has become an acceptable way for both consumers and businesses to be self indulgent and creates a personal relationship between the two. It is no wonder that it has become of all major brand marketing and PR strategies.
Like many of my peers at university, I joined Facebook to interact with other students and to share my daily on goings with the rest of my online ‘friends’. There was no particular reason to why I joined, other than curiosity and boredom. But before I knew it, I was completely addicted to this cyber craze and like many others, I found myself checking my profile every single day.
The website was set up in the US by four Harvard University students with the intention to encourage students to get to know one another online. It was once restricted to only university members but it now has over 400million members worldwide and has become a social network phenomenon.
I was soon joining ‘Fan Groups’ and ‘Discussion boards’. I was being invited to events, clubs and being advertised products and services targeted specifically to my age, location and interests. I had no idea that I was being targeted or that I had become duped by new age online public relations.
Since starting Public Relations course, I have been looking more closely at online activity on corporate social networking pages. As well as Facebook, micro blogging site Twitter has become a huge part of PR practice.
These social sites are an organic way of monitoring the reputation of an organisation, consumer reactions, product evaluation and recognising market trends. Companies are also able to create a personality for their brand and allow their audiences to communicate directly.
I recently joined twitter but have not been able to get grips with micro blogging or better known as ‘Tweeting’. I’ve realised that is an acquired skill to be able to ‘tweet’ effectively, in order to communicate and interact with the online community.
Whether or not social networking is a trend that might soon die out is yet to be seen. It is growing more popular every day and reaching global masses.
It has become an acceptable way for both consumers and businesses to be self indulgent and creates a personal relationship between the two. It is no wonder that it has become of all major brand marketing and PR strategies.
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