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.

week 8

Before I start off my post, I have to say that I am VERY VERY confused over the difference between strategies and tactics. And because I swear my life by Google, I did a whole lot of research on it only to be more confused than ever before. I called my friend, she explained her guts out to me and I think she got equally confused at the end of it too.
As if rubbing salt to my wound, this week's reading is on Strategies. Thanks alot.
I guess I will probably be right back once I get these two terms straightened out. Meanwhile, I am gonna read up on Week 10's reading and see if it is out to get me as well.

Okay now I guess I understand what strategy and tactic is.
A good organization example of having one of the best marketing stategy and tactic has to be, again, Coca Cola.

"Enjoyed more than 685 million times a day around the world Coca-Cola stands as a simple, yet powerful symbol of quality and enjoyment" (Allen, 1995).

Coca Cola's strategy is guided by six main key beliefs. Two of them:
Consumers demands drives everything we do.
We will be the best marketers in the world.

With that, Coca Cola came up with not one but a few strategies such as accelerating carbonated soft-drink growth led by Coca Cola and selectively broadens the family of beverage brands. Coca Cola had promotional activities such as Coca Cola Concert, Coca Cola Go-RED, Coca Cola Party-in-a-Park and alot more. This strategic move resulted Coca Cola to be the world's leading company in 2002.

week 7

Hello everyone. We are having our one week break now and truthfully a week is not enough at all given our sky high assignments and all.

This week's reading is on Public Relations Practice.
If life is not always fair, how can a PR practitioner always take a win-win approach? Doesn't that means fair? Is that possible at all times? But if that is what makes an effective PR, then life is indeed unfair because it is quite unlikely, in my opinion, to ever have a win-win approach because at any one point of time, there is sure a party to not benefit something if not entirely out of a plan.
I know my words are very confusing sometimes... Hope you get my drift.

Now that I know the not-for-profit (NFP) sector is a good start for a PR noob, I kind of want to open up my eyes right now and look around for an NFP organization so that once I graduate, I more or less know the various NFP organization in Singapore and hopefully, MAYBE apply for work. But I guess no job is ever easy, even for this case. There are a few challenges too namely the budget that NFP sectors normally face as it is absolutely small and the organization normally expects big returns... Also, for a fact, I am not a very patient person and it seems like it requires tremendous patient when working in an NFP sector (page 166 of textbook).

However, I personally feel that working in NFP environments should be less stressful than that of corporate environments. The issues of ethics would be lesser too if I could say so because what PR people do in NFP sectors, are, afterall, for a good cause.

week 6

Organizing.
Who would have thought that such a basic idea like that could have landed Jolyn Chua a really cool job? Organising Chaos Daily (OCD) is such an inspiration to me. Not to clean up my bedroom but to have a very own company of my own. Not in organizing too. Well, the thought of starting my own business suddenly seem so... achievable? Okay, maybe still not so.

This week's reading - Engaging with the Media - I find it so related to what I study in CMNS1280- Introduction to Journalism and so I find it rather easy to grasp the chapter. The world today no longer rely on just the traditional form of media (newspaper or radio or television). Today we look into new media such as the internet and the internet especially plays a huge role on almost everyone's life if not all and of course not forgetting lifes that of PR practitioners.

Coca Cola currently has the second most popular page on Facebook (click here). That is second from Barack Obama! Wait, the best part?.


Coca Cola have absolutely nothing to do with its creation!
And they have benefitted from the buckets of awesomeness it brings!
Coca Cola invested $15 million on public relations but thanks to social media, those PR people can slack already.

week 5

The Loft, Indiesin, Bonitochico (hope i spelled this right), Mod Parade and Theblogshop are some of the few examples of successful local fashion brands.
Today, a rising number of youths are into local street fashion brands carrying clothing lines that are normally self-designed by its founder or at times inspired by higher-end fashion labels such as Topshop and even Chanel! - a cause of mass production.

So anyway in today's lecture, we went through Experiential Marketing.
So what is that? Putting it in my own words, Experiential Marketing is basically, advertising a product to a certain targeted audience (consumers). To do so, the company would have to invest in alot of research to gather as much information as possible on what these group of consumers want and look for in a product. Experiential Marketing comes up with advertising schemes that are personal to this group of individuals.

This week's reading is on research - Public Relations Research (Chapter 6).
Okay.. Research?!! The mother of all research! I have to admit I hate doing research. Each time I do one, my brain just shuts down and I can do no more than one intelligent research.
So the last sentence isn't true. I have to say I swear my life today by Google. I would estimate that about 80% of my time is spent on research. It isn't necessarily on important stuffs like for academic assignments, but also from music to gadgets to celebrities.
Basically research is a very fundamental element to everyones' everyday lives.

Not to mention for those in the PR field of work.
It'd be a million times more research to know and understand the clients, to know who the audiences are, to understand the public, to set objectives and targets.
I wouldn't be surprise if I met a PR practitioner with 'dig' as his middle name.
Get it?

WEEK 4

Journalists and PR practitioners generally need each other. Journalists normally make use of PR people for story suggestions and sources. I believe that journalists actually need PR more than a PR practitioner needs a journalist. Provided that the PR person can provide something newsworthy or related to the coverage area.

As mentioned in a portion of today's lecture on tips for new relationship with journalists (as it is known that some journalists could be really nasty),

• Respond to media inquiries ASAP
• Never promise anything you can't deliver
• Always 'over-deliver'
• Always deliver on time

As you can see from the above four points, it all boils down to one thing - responsibility.
Therefore, to sum these four tips up:
To have a good relationship with journalists, first, be a responsible PR practitioner.
I guess the rest would probably follow on from there.

This week's reading - PR Ethics - is very insightful.
To be an ethically competent PR practitioner, one has to be willing to see ethics as important and also never deny the fact that ethics is a challenging area.
If ethic is all about doing the 'right' thing, should one be caught in a situation like:


Between employer's directives and public's interest, that is, then what should he/she do? So where does this employee's duty lie? I have to admit that if I were caught in that situation, I wouldn't know what to do. But then again, that is probably not a big issue for me right now because I believe that to behave ethically 'correct' in such a position should probably come with experience.

Have anyone heard of the term 'spin'?
It is a PR language and is widely used in the UK. It means spinning or twisting a bad event that has happened to an organization into a media-favorable position. This is considered unethical but it is quite impossible for a PR practitioner to not spin a story or event in favor of the client. Afterall, isn't that the role of a PR practitioner? To put its client in a good light?

Ethics oh ethics. You are one confusing thing.

WEEK 3

What is a PR strategy? And so i asked.

PR strategy, as I have understood in today's lecture, is a plan which creates and identifies new, innovative approaches to place an organisation in a good light so as to boost their image.
Well actually, apart from just boosting an organisation's image, a PR strategy can also be used to raise public awareness such as an anti-smoking campaign or perhaps an online petition against the slaughter of dolphins.

However, what makes a good (and of course, successful) PR strategy?

I personally feel that to ensure the success of a strategy, one would have to know just exactly what reporters want or need to know. Of course it would be much better if the strategy includes fitting in news of the moment, not just splashing pictures of the products and covering a whole media release about what one think is right.

(class over, ill be back to finish this up)
(now i'm back)

It is funny how the media could wrap its audiences from all walks of life around its fingers. Manipulative, evil, propagandist, dominant and so on. It is even funnier that most of these audiences, if not all, are actually aware of it but instead of steering themselves away from believing the media, they themselves fall victims.

Therefore I believe that PR is a very crucial tool to help amend these people's perceptions in more than one ways.

WEEK 2

Frankly speaking, I have never known what Public Relation was until today's lecture when we were given an introduction to what exactly a PR is and does. And because previously I haven't had the slightest idea what a PR was, I used to assume what people in this industry do - work with people. Only.
However, today, I learnt that it is actually more than just that. It is not just working with people but also working with an organisation, the public, the media, the press, the products.

From this week's reading - Understanding Twenty-first Century PR - I learn that the definition of PR varies from country to country due to cultural differences.
For example, in the States, PR is defined as the management that entails planning, research, publicity, promotion and collaborative decision making between and organisation and the public or stakeholders. However, in Asia, such as in Malaysia, PR is understood and practiced in an entirely different way due to the the governments' power and control over the media. Thus deciding what is permissible communication to the public.

Restrictions in different countries vary and therefore, creates numerous definitions of PR.