Archive for Public Relations

How important is Maths in PR?

27 March 2012 Rachel Education, Public Relations 2 comments

Image via Matt Banks

My Public Relations course contains a lot of great modules, but one thing that I feel it has lacked so far is the development of maths skills. This may sound like a slightly bizarre desire considering my course does not inspire images of studying numbers. Perhaps it is explained by understanding that I am the daughter of not one, but two maths teachers. I never took maths past GCSE level, preferring to concentrate humanity and media subjects but I have always had a soft spot for maths.

In my previous job my maths skills came in handy almost constantly, from checking payroll to designing spreadsheets. Undeniably maths is a useful skill in life, ensure that you are getting the best value for money at the supermarket and not being ripped off by dubious offers, cooking the required quantity of food, even in planning your day a good understanding of numbers can be beneficial. But I ask myself, where does the value of maths lie in the world of PR?

Budgeting

It would be lovely to imagine there is a pool of endless resources out there, but there are not. Budgeting plays a vital role in any PR professional’s life. Being able to offer cost-effective strategies to create a good return on investment, or even the dreaded AVE. I have been picked up on my tendency to bring budgeting and finance into my university projects, from our first PR campaign assignment the finance was at the forefront of my mind.

Measurement

Back to ROI and AVE (you may not like it, but it is still used), being able to measure the success of a campaign is essential. Having a good understanding of numbers can only help in this case.

Research

You will not always have the opportunity to pay for your research to be analysed and therefore having a good grasp of mathematics is required to understand and rationalise research required.

Administration

We may not like it, but administration involves itself in many roles. My previous experience of admin has involved me needing a great understanding of maths. While it is not always necessary, it is endlessly beneficial.

I would be interested to hear other examples where maths skills have benefited you during your PR career.

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How can the Police communicate with us?

1 March 2012 Rachel Communications, Public Relations, Social Media No comments
A PCSO on duty with two police constables. Not...

Friend or Foe (Image via Wikipedia)

Earlier this week we were lucky enough to receive a guest lecture from Laura Miller, the Communications, Marketing and Engagement Officer for Barnsley Police and Inspector Mark Spooner of the Barnsley Police force. The lecture looked over a number of issues that face those working in communications for any Police force and ways that they try and overcome these.

Channel 4′s Coppers demonstrates life for the police officers who protect our streets, and the hatred and disrespect for the police often shown on the programme is shocking and yet not surprising. Embarrassingly some of the worst shown is from my home city, but I will leave the damaged reputation of Nottingham for another blog post.

Working in police communications it is important to understand why people have certain perceptions of the police. Is it a result of personal experience, an opinion they have inherited from their peers and family, maybe an impression they have got from the media. There is a reason for every opinion and the only way to tackle them is to understand them. As a result it appears that a lot of the communications within this area is reactive and often under crisis situations.

A big hurdle for police PR (and undeniably for many other industries) is the technological shift to digital and social media. The police service follows an old-fashioned and traditional structure and as a result have been somewhat reluctant to embrace social media techniques, however these can be used very effectively. They allow the police to understand the general opinions of the police as well as engaging with people. For example, on Twitter there are a number of PCSO accounts, including that of PCSO Anthony Sams of Notts Police, these accounts offer an insight into what the PCSO roles include and general information about the area. There are also a number of active police force accounts, such as Birmingham Police which provide local information to the public.

For many police forces the importance of social media was highlighted last year during the riots. People took to Twitter to learn about what was happening and as such a presence from the police ensured reliable and useful information was provided to those seeking it. While many forces had previously had accounts, they were suddenly needed by the public who have continued to benefit from them ever since.

My impression of communications within the police force was that of a very challenging role, but one with a lot of interesting components and could be very rewarding for the right individual. It certainly is not a career path to overlook for budding PR professionals, and no day will ever be boring.

I would like to thank Laura Miller and Inspector Spooner for coming in and sharing their interesting presentation with us.

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Tesco abandon scheme following slave labour claims

21 February 2012 Rachel News, Public Relations 3 comments
Tesco

Image via Wikipedia

Stores including Tesco and Argos have expressed concerns over a government work experience scheme which has been derided by critics as “slave labour”. BBC News

After criticism from rights activists Tesco has turned its back on unpaid placements for job seekers and is now offering a paid placement scheme.

Activists claim this is a victory for fair pay and young people, whereas the Government has declared that the victimism of organisations offering this scheme is reducing targets for young people gaining life changing opportunities and routes into employment.

I wrote about the Tesco placement scandal yesterday and wanted to bring attention to a comment left on my post from Heather Yaxley:

From a PR perspective, it shows that such decisions need to go through a “what if?” filter that allows expert public relations insight into the possible consquences of such schemes should a brand wish to get involved. In particular, there are issues around cohesion with values and responsibility claims as well as the potential for stakeholder backlash, media negative interest and emeging crisis situations. In the latter case, these can be the result of direct action or as collateral damage – either way, something that environmental scanning and PR due diligence should anticipate.

There is very little I can add to this comment, it does reinforce the need for understanding social values and opinions. I would also say that this case is potentially an interesting case-study for current PR students and practitioners.

Do you think Tesco did the right thing? Or is it too little too late? How would you react to this situation?

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Cross cultural PR

21 February 2012 Rachel Communications, Internal Communications, Public Relations, Social Media One comment
English: Blank globe, focus on Africa. Deutsch...

Image via Wikipedia

 A common theme over my blog is the importance of gaining experience while studying a degree. As important as this is, our degree would count for nothing is we were not receiving world-class education from intelligent and informed tutors. I would like to say we are quite lucky in this respect, but what is particularly great is when our university invites guest lecturers in to teach us. This semester one of our modules includes a series of brilliant guest lectures, which so far has included crisis communications and digital communications. Today it was the turn of Aakriti Kaushik, PR Manager for Global and European PR at Premier Farnell. With an impressive CV Aakriti came to lecture us on cross cultural PR, something which seemed coincidentally relevant to me after my recent article on understanding cultural sensitivities.

Key things that I brought away from this lecture included the importance of understanding what works in one region may not work in others. Aakriti brought up the example of the Ben Heck show, something which had been a huge success in the USA but did not manage to translate to other cultures.

It is important to research local cultures before designing communications schemes, she highlighted this with the examples of the Ford Pinto, meaning penis in Brazilian slang. In reference to Premier Farnell she explained how their new brand name, Element 14, did not translate into Chinese and as a result they had to find an alternative.

Finally, an interesting point was raised about social media. This platform has changed the way we communicate, and allows messages to flow instantly around the world. It is important that while using social media that we ensure our messages are suitable for all of our audiences across all cultures.

Recently I have been taking a huge interest in global communications and how we respect cultural differences, so this lecture was perfectly timed and has upped my interest in the subject.

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Education through placement hunting

7 February 2012 Rachel Career, Education, Placements, Public Relations One comment
Comfortable Seating, Learning Resource Centre,...

(Photo credit: jisc_infonet)

My second new year’s resolution involved obtaining some great placements. Much of the emphasis of my course is based upon being able to demonstrate practical ability within a PR/Communications environment and the best way to do this is through placements. I have written numerous times about the importance of experience and placements, I have even written about ways of applying. What I have not yet written about is the educational benefits acquired from the search and application process.

Job hunting is a very exciting yet daunting activity. It takes physical and emotional energy, requires skills such as being able to sell yourself as well as a dose of good fortune. There can be heartbreak, you may lose out on the placement you wanted the most and there can be celebration when you grab the role that suits you the best. Overall it is a period of time when you learn an awful lot.

I was once in conversation with apprentice candidates, fresh out of school, full of energy and optimism. Asking them about their greatest learning experience a surprising number of them mentioned the during job-seeking they had learnt the most. At a young age we often have a naive impression of the job market, assuming that there will be the job that we desire waiting for us, but as we grow older and more experienced this vision is shattered as we come to face the reality of the world. It is tough to get the job you want. Perhaps I should not have been surprised by the number who identified job-seeking as educational, from my own experience it was a time in my life where I learnt a lot about business, about my ambitions and my personality.

I am continuing to learn, and through the last few months hunting for various placements have been particularly educational. I have been able to develop my skills in being recruited, learning about selling myself, my experience, personality and knowledge to an employer. Allowing the employer to see where I would fit into their organisation and how I would solve their problems and requirements. I have faced rejections and difficult questions but overall I have learnt so much and this has increased my confidence and ability.

Placement hunting has also taught me about what career I want to pursue. When I undertook a degree in PR I opened up the door to a huge industry encompassing many areas of business. Looking at the roles available to a candidate on my course I was able to identify what areas of PR I enjoy and at which I excel. While this has been a long term process, placement hunting made it easier to identify.

One of the greatest things about life is the lessons we can learn when we do not expect them. I have no doubt that my experience placement hunting will be beneficial to me when I graduate and need to pursue that precious graduate job. Looking at life as an education is also beneficial for the less successful endeavors, sometimes the best method can be to learn from your failures.

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Should placements be compulsory?

2 February 2012 Rachel Career, Education, Placements, Public Relations 16 comments
Work Experience

It is not a secret that experience is key to boosting employability. In a society where degrees are increasingly common, relevant experience now is not a bonus but rather a necessity for job seeking graduates.

Having met with PR students studying at rival institutions I became interested in the idea of compulsory placements. My degree course encourages us to seek placements from our first year, however other courses take it a step further and require students to complete a designated minimum time of industrial experience to pass the each level. Some courses require a 42 week placement year to be able to gain the degree. Fail to get a year placement, fail to get a degree!

When graduate jobs are competitive and many low level jobs require a years previous experience, by ensuring graduates have a good number of placements on their CV means they increase their likelihood of finding a great job.

Compulsory placements also support the movement of PR towards becoming a profession, a popular movement in some PR circles. Many professions, such as teaching and nursing, involve placements during training. Even dismissing the PR profession debate, can a graduate really be ready for an industry if they have never experienced it first hand?

On the other hand it would be hard to find a PR academic who does not encourage gaining work experience. Even while it may not be deemed compulsory most institutions will direct students towards gaining placements while studying. University is not about spoonfeeding students, it is a place for independent learning and research, supported by classroom theory. Motivated students will actively seek placements without being forced into doing so, these are the students who will graduate with the strongest degrees.

Another issue that could arise from compulsory work experience is the issue of unpaid placements. While I have previously supported such schemes, they do have a time and place. I do not feel easy with the idea of a PR student undertaking a year’s unpaid internship because otherwise they will fail their course.

I would be interested to hear your opinion on compulsory work experience. Good or bad?

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Continuing the PR definition debate

25 January 2012 Rachel Communications, Public Relations No comments

Continuing the PR definition debate

I’ve written about it here. The PRSA have tried to solve it here. And multiple bloggers have it discussed it all over the place.

Now my friend and fellow PR student Abigail Johnson has written a great article discussing different views and definitions of PR from the perspective of the students studying PR. Have a read of it here.

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Twitter gets its nuts

23 January 2012 Rachel Communications, Public Relations, Social Media 3 comments

Image via @MissKatiePrice

Perhaps as a follower of Katie Price you were somewhat confused by a selection of Tweets about the economy. Or maybe you were bemused by Amir Khan’s sudden interest in stamp collecting and Sir Ian Botham’s passion for the cello. These bizarre Tweets were all revealed to be part of a stunt for Snickers with the three personalities posing for photographs with the chocolate bar as an explanation for the change of topic in their Tweets.

Was this an example of a successful social media stunt? It encouraged conversation, gained media coverage and promoted the brand recognition, so in that respects it seems to have been a success.

On the other hand Sean Walsh on the Freestyle Interactive blog raises an interesting point about the ethics of this stunt. The Office for Fair Trading previously released the following statement about companies using celebrities to promote their products online:

“Online advertising and marketing practices that do not disclose they include paid for promotions are deceptive under trading laws.”

As noted by Freestyle Interactive it is unclear whether the celebrities were paid for their Tweets, however I agree with Sean Walsh that the stunt does make me feel uneasy, it feels cheap and generally I would not be happy to see many campaigns like this on Twitter.

It raises an interesting question about what celebrities and significant personalities on Twitter should be able to promote. Are they able to promote charities, small companies and other organisations which benefit from their backing but are unable to talk about brands that pay them money without making it clear that they are being paid to say this. This seems the best solution, however I am sure that Twitter includes many violations of these guidelines.

What are your opinions on this stunt? What do you think about promotion on Twitter?

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What is PR?

13 January 2012 Rachel Communications, Interests, News, Public Relations 2 comments
P question

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) have recently been working on a project to produce a conclusive, up-to-date definition for PR.

As a PR student this is certainly a very interesting project, from day one of our course we were introduced to just some of the hundreds of current definitions. This can certainly be extremely confusing and for the first few weeks many of us were a little bit lost about exactly what we were supposed to be studying. A year and a half later we are a lot clearer however if you asked me to give you a definition for PR I would probably struggle to produce a definitive answer.

Is it possible to define PR? Thousands of people work in PR  roles, are we to understand that all their jobs can be contained under on umbrella definition? Highly unlikely. One person’s idea of PR is going to differ from other peoples.

This does not mean this project is a waste of time, it has encouraged practitioners into thinking about how the PR industry is defined and also how it is understood by the public. And a clear definition would certainly clear up questions my family have about just what it is that I study!

The PRSA have now narrowed their definitions to three candidates:

  1. Public relations is the management function of researching, engaging, communicating, and collaborating with stakeholders in an ethical manner to build mutually beneficial relationships and achieve results.
  2. Public relations is a strategic communication process that develops and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their key publics.
  3. Public relations is the engagement between organizations and individuals to achieve mutual understanding and realize strategic goals.
What do you think about these definitions? Which one would you choose? Or would you choose to define PR in a completely different way?
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Aim High Target for 2012

3 January 2012 Rachel Communications, Interests, Public Relations, Social Media No comments
WordPress

Image by Adriano Gasparri via Flickr

I have been writing this blog for almost two years in which time it has grown very slowly but steadily. I have used it to share my love for language and communications. As I began studying for my degree I began to write more about topics relating to the Public Relations world, and hopefully as I have progressed through my education you can begin to see a theme of my PR interests.

My target for this year is to improve my blog. That, however, is a very general statement and so I have broken it down. Firstly I want to beat the page views from last year. This target is simply for my personal satisfaction as in reality page views mean very little, the important part of a blog is engagement and interaction of your audience. This can be best measured through comments on the blog and conversation through social networks such as Twitter. So secondly, I want to increase this interaction.

How can I increase interaction? Well I believe the only solution is to write good, interesting blog posts which promote conversation. So finally I plan to continue writing about the topics that interest me, hoping that these will also interest my readers. Having gained work experience and through learning about the industry, this year I am a lot more confident in the areas I would like to develop my career and as such I would expect that my posts will take on a stronger theme this year.

A lot of my ambitions rely on my audience, so if you are reading this and my blog is interesting to you I would love for you subscribe, comment and share your advice and opinions on my writing.

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