week 11

I swear I could just scream and then drop dead from joy right now because this is the last post for the course!! But then again... We still have to work on our final assignment for this course and that would be the PR plan, essay and media release.

So anyway, reading this week is Writing a Media Release.

I think media releases are really powerful. It provides a number of journalists with the much-needed information (that is, if it fits the news at the moment) at a single time. Media releases are normally used to sell a product or service, from my point of view. I think it is normally used as a starter for a news story so journalists might probably need a PR more than a PR need a journalist just so they can get news from reliable sources.

So what else can I possibly add about media releases?
Hmm, well, the standard 5W and 1H (Who What Where Why When How) must not be missed out if you want to write a proper and (maybe) successful one. Journalists spend a whole lot of their time in the office chucking releases after releases into the waste bins so to avoid yours from ending up in that sad place, you have to ensure that the headline is catchy. Like very catchy infact. And so, the two keypoints to take note when writing a headline are:

1) Tells what your article is about.
2) Makes the reader want to read the article.

Maybe include keywords so Google can categorize it during searches. And of course the most important thing next is to not make silly grammar mistakes. I understand that like everyone else, I am used to typing and shooting off emails quickly. So I realized that doing so will only cause me silly mistakes like a not capitalized 'I', 'It's' without the ' , spelling errors or worse of all... Something that doesn't even make sense...




LOL. I know these pictures above have totally nothing to do with media releases but I am just trying to show what could happen if there are insufficient research, effort and time put into doing an assigned task. Silly mistakes. Very very very silly as you can see.

week 10

Traditional public relations techniques are no longer appropriate in much a public relations practice as they fail to connect with an internet-savvy public.

New Media and Public Relations
Old media is broken. The world today rely on new media to get going. The new media, to me, has provided public relation practitioners with many new opportunities. Journalists, for example, also rely on new media such as social media sites like Facebook and Youtube as a source of information.
According to research from TEKgroup International, Inc, journalists use new media more than PR pros think. An estimated of 87% of journalists visit corporate websites at least once a month.

Twitter (micro-blogging) is now used as a PR tool to monitor an organization's reputation. It is used to monitor and respond to what is being said about the organization. Twitter offers live updates which enables the public to know what the organization is up to. It provides a very overwhelming respond in the case of Comcast.

Such is the impact Twitter has.
The new media provides instant updates on crisis, instant donations and of course, instant publicity. In the past, with old media, it was hard to get in the news but with the new media, PR people can just bypass it and create new channels and start a conversation with the public.

week 9

An Issues-CrisisPerspectives

Three major electronic companies - LG, Samsung and Coocoo (???) - suffered a huge crisis in a period of 22 months between 2004 and 2005 when their electric cookers exploded more than 10 times in the southern part of Korea.
Exploding electric cookers. Now how is THAT for a crisis?

Lets make things clear here.
They suffered the same crisis. They are of different companies. It resulted in the same outcome:
People stopped buying rice cookers altogether.

These three manufacturers handled the crisis differently. LG withdrew their rice cooker business, Samsung tried to promote their rice cookers more but eventually gave up too. However Coocoo braved on, increasing their promotional activities and never even once withdrew from the business. As a result, Coocoo firmed up its marketing position and led the market.

It was the same crisis these three manufacturers were facing which totally caused a decrease in the sales of rice cookers. But at the end of the day, only one managed to see light at the end of the tunnel. Things could have been different it LG and Samsung were to hang on and handled the crisis differently.

But then again, I think those quitters were one of the reasons why Coocoo made it.