PR Vision

Courtney Dempsey received a cancer diagnosis and was told she had only one year to live. That was four years ago.

Courtney, a patient at Moffitt Cancer Center, beat the odds and is still here. She’s still fighting, but she’s here and now she’s getting married. She and her fiancé Gary are finalists in Us Weekly and WeddingChannel.com’s Win Your Dream Wedding contest and they need your votes!!

Courtney Dempsey and Gary Courtney, Jr. have an amazing love story and are extremely deserving of this fantasy wedding. Not only have they been through so much together, but after the wedding, Courtney’s name will be Courtney Courtney!

Who wouldn’t want to see the Courtney’s win the wedding of their dreams?

Read more about Courtney and Gary’s love story here and don’t forget to vote!

We all know going green is the top trend right now. I definitely wouldn’t call it a bad trend but it is a trend. Well, as most fashion conscious young women know, Forever 21 is always up on the latest trends. So up, that they’ve often been accused of ripping off others’ designs. 

Copying designs is something that never really bothered me enough to stop me from shopping at the store. I mean, you really can’t beat the prices. I can’t exactly afford or justify spending hundreds on designer clothes so I’m a pretty big fan of stores that help you look good for less.

But I’m starting to find myself quite disappointed with Forever 21. Recently, the company was called out by Fashionista for selling t-shirts saying, “What’s your carbon footprint?”  and “Everyday is Earth Day” that were made in factories with synthetic, chemically processed materials. Not to mention, the stores give customers huge, yellow plastic bags. It’s not cool to tell others to go green if you’re not green yourself Forever 21. 

Looking at their web site, I see that Forever 21 has since added some organic tees to their line but I wouldn’t consider that a big step towards becoming an eco-friendly company. They have a long way to go but I’m sure Forever 21 isn’t the only company guilty of not practicing what they preach.

I know that even a little bit can count in improving the environment but companies could do so much more. In PR, we know the importance of raising awareness, and yes, Forever 21’s t-shirts do this, but how about leading by example? Show your customers how you’re making all green clothing and get rid of those giant plastic bags. Make a real commitment to going green. 

I’m not suggesting that we all go out and boycott Forever 21 and all green hypocrites, (I don’t proclaim myself to be very green so it wouldn’t be right for me to do so). However, I hope in the near future we will see a bigger green commitment from companies. If they introduce more than just one or two green products, they’ll make it easier for consumers like me to go green as well. 

I came across an interesting site created as experiment in brand perception. Noah Brier’s Brand Tags shows visitors a logo and asks them to submit a word or phrase that they immediately associate with this brand. 

“The basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people’s heads. Therefore, whatever it is they say a brand is, is what it is,” says the site description. 

This is an interesting market research tool, and an experiment that is actually pretty fun to participate in. You can even do things backwards by guessing the brand from what others have tagged it. 

Do your views of the biggest brands match up with the brand tags?

Twitter. Some are calling it the new standard in public relations, others are calling it a waste of time fad that won’t last long.

Before I divulge my thoughts on Twitter, let’s go over the basics of the online service. Check out this video, “Twitter in Plain English”  for a simple visual explanation.

After reading a number of blog posts on the social media tool and its benefits to PR professionals, I created my account a few nights ago and set out to see if Twitter is worth all the buzz.

I must say that so far it seems to be. 

One of the first things I did after joining Twitter was look up PR bloggers, practitioners and professors to follow. This is one of the best things PR students can do on Twitter. Why?

1. Knowledge: Find out what the PR community is talking about. Get in the know. 

2. Networking: If you follow someone on Twitter, they will likely follow you back. I’m following influential PR  bloggers, professionals and professors that I’ve never met before and most are following me too. This allows you to interact with people working in the industry and make contacts all across the world. 

If these reasons aren’t enough to convince you to sign up, there’s always personal branding. Use Twitter to market yourself and stand out in the competitive PR field. Just remember to keep your “tweets” professional. Want to learn more ways to brand yourself? Check out recent USF PR grad Meg Roberts’s post on the topic.

Twitter will be a useful tool when you start working in the PR industry. So why not get familiar with it now?

Once you decide to set up your Twitter account, you’re welcome to follow me here.

As PR students, we hear it all the time. If you want to find a job after you graduate, you have to have an internship - one at the very least.

So much seems to be riding our ability to land an internship… and then we get one.

Now what? Suddenly, our worry shifts from what if I don’t get the internship?  to - what do I do now that I have it? Am I really prepared for this?

When I began my first internship, I was extremely nervous. I had no idea what to expect; what would I be asked to do? Would I know how to do it? I didn’t feel like I was ready to do real world public relations work.

Now that my internship has come to an end, I realize that even if I was not ready to work in public relations when I started, the pay off in the end was worth the initial apprehension.

I found that those I worked with were incredibly friendly, helpful and more than happy to share their knowledge with an eager public relations student. It didn’t matter that I had never even used a fax machine before.

Surprisingly, I found that while the government relations team I interned with at Moffitt Cancer Center taught me so much, I was able to teach them a few things as well. I helped open them up to social media and showed them how to get students more involved in their advocacy group.

After completing this internship, I realize that I had much more to offer to the workforce than I ever imagined. I’m comfortable with social media and I know more about younger audiences and how to best communicate with them than most older professionals do — and this is something most all Gen Yer’s can offer to employers.

Not only did I enhance my resume and learn so much in my internship, but also I built confidence in my abilities. I’m so thankful that I got over my initial nervousness and devoted myself to making the most of my internship experience.  It helped me develop pride in myself and my accomplishments and I know all of the skills I developed will be extremely beneficial to my future public relations career.

So, I whole-heartedly encourage any student to jump head first into that internship you don’t feel ready for. It doesn’t matter where you are in your PR training; in fact, the earlier you start the better. As long as you have an eagerness to learn, you can be great intern.

And believe me, you may just surprise yourself with what you achieve.

It’s been a hectic semester and I feel guilty for abandoning my blog for the last two months, but the semester is finally over and I’m back and ready share something personal.

One of my PR professors,  Bob Batchelor, encouraged us to blog on our class web site quite a bit during the semester and one of our first assignments was to blog about our world view - what we believe; what makes us who we are.

Well, much of my world view can be summed up in my favorite poem, “Time Tested Beauty Tips”  by Sam Levenson:

Time Tested Beauty Tips

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.

For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.

For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.

For beautiful hair, let a child run his or her fingers through it once a day.

For poise, walk with the knowledge you’ll never walk alone.

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; Never throw out anybody.

Remember, If you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm.

As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.

– Sam Levenson

These are truly words to live by for me. My world view has made me a person who is very concerned with helping others and therefore, I have always been doing some sort of volunteer work. My world view has made me a person of faith, and someone who is grateful for all the ways she has been blessed. There is no such thing as luck, only God. I am also someone who works hard because, in my opinion, you should strive to be deserving of what you are blessed with.

My world view has caused me to take jobs working with children because I believe that being around children is good for you emotional health. My world view has also made my relationship with my fiancé the most important thing in my life because I believe in the power of love. Love is what makes life worth living. My world view has also made me recognize the value of money, but it has also made me believe that money should never become our main focus in our career or in our life. 

I believe that my world view will help me to be happy and content in the future, no matter what life throws my way. I think it will most likely lead me to a career in non-profit public relations, devoting myself to improving the community and using communication to touch lives. 

Did anyone see this commercial Apple put out a few months back? I see the humor, but I’m not a fan. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got no problems with Apple (I’m typing on my Mac iBook right now) but as a soon to be PR professional, the image this commercial portrays irks me.

It’s perpetuating a stereotype that plagues the PR industry. Many PR pros feel the need to defend the profession because generally, people still perceive PR people like the woman in this commercial - as spin doctors, people who twist words, bend the truth or even lie to make a company look better in times of crisis.

Yes, crisis communications is an important part of PR because it’s critical during a crisis to be sure that the company is communicating with its key stakeholders. However, PR professionals know that lying is never a good strategy and PR associations, like PRSA, have codes of ethics. The only place lying is going to get you in PR is the unemployment office.

What the spin doctor stereotype shows me is that the PR industry needs to do a better job managing its own PR and educating the public on what the profession is all about. Many PR professionals struggle to describe what they do for a living to people on the outside. PR involves so many different things that its hard to explain our roles in a way that others will understand.

As my peers and I graduate and take jobs in the PR industry, it is our responsibility to change the image of PR. We must take pride in our profession and show people that PR is not just something desperate companies turn to in times of crisis. We must demonstrate that we are here at all times, promoting positive images in an honest way.

I’m taking telecommunications as a mass comm elective this semester and in a recent online discussion, my professor posed the question - What’s the future of electronic news?

Well, I’d say the future of electronic news lies in the blogosphere. It has become apparent in society that blogs are here to stay. When blogs first arrived on the scene, bloggers were not taken seriously at all, but as blogs have taken off in popularity in recent years, the opinions of bloggers are becoming more and more valued.

Many people are starting to get the majority of their news from blogs because often, news hits the blogs before its put out by any media outlet. In a country where media monopolies are a threat, causing skepticism of traditional news sources, blogs are becoming the new trusted news suppliers.

Blogs truly have the potential to become the dominant news sources of the future. If news organizations want to survive, they need to engage their communities, especially young adults. To do so, they will need to embrace blogging and allow for more interactive news.

Like many, I was hesitant to jump on the blogging bandwagon. I’ve started at least five different blogs over the past three years, wrote about 3 posts in each and then quickly abandoned them.

As I get further along in my PR studies, I’m starting the accept that blogs and social media are the future of PR. So if I’m going to be successful in this field and stand out from other talented PR graduates, I’m going to need to blog. So why not start now?