Hello everyone! This is my very first post. Currently I am a sophomore at Hofstra University. I am majoring in Public Relations and minoring in English. I was involved in The Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) for awhile but this semester my schedule has not permitted it. This semester I am finally taking my first Public Relations class. I love it. One of the things we have discussed is tools in which we can educate the public about our clients. I think blogs are the next big tool in Public Relations. So this blog is a way for me to improve my skill and knowledge of blogging.
My teacher, Professor Frisina, is amazing. Basically, everything we learned at the beginning we are going to apply to our final project, which is to create a PR campaign with an unlimited budget for a person or company that we have direct access to. I chose my Dad's company Advantage Video Productions. He is an event videographer who films and edits everything from weddings, to plays, to graduations. For the past couple of weeks I have working with him to complete each part of the project. I will be including links to all of the things I create for this project.
First, we had to do a "Backgrounder" for a client. This is basically every little bit of information we can find on our client. Because our only audience is our teacher, it is written in a slightly different manner. I basically interviewed my dad for a long time. I broke down my backgrounder into Company History, Personal History, Current Company, Equipment, and Future of Company. Double-spaced, it ended up being 12 pages long. However, having all of the information that I could ever need for my campaign organized is well worth it. One of the reasons I chose PR for a major was because I love to write, so it was not a big deal for me. Because I was so thorough I ended up getting an A+ on it.
The next step was stating my Objectives for Advantage Video Productions. This was a lot shorter. Most of my Dad's clients are people that are getting married. My Dad in his early 50's now and all of the physical work required at weddings is a lot harder for him now. So, one of his goals is to do less weddings and more plays. One of my biggest objectives is to develop and organize a relationship between the local high schools and Advantage Video so that he can get more plays and fewer weddings. He can also do graduations, music and dance recitals, and athletic events. He still wants to do 5-10 weddings per year. So, I also had to include educating engaged couples about his company as an objective. He also does plays and recitals for churches, so I included maintaining a relationship with them as well. Finally, my Dad doesn't advertise at all. He only has business cards; no website, no yellowbook ad, nothing. People know about him through their friends and family who he filmed things for. That is great that his work is that amazing for people to talk about it and recommend him. I put as one of my goals to educate the community about my Dad and his company more. He is interested in doing even more pro bono work than he has already done, so I included that as an objective as well. One of the things I messed up on was including tools in my objectives. I said that I want to redo his business cards and create stationary for him. Despite this I still received a check plus, so I guess it wasn't that big of a deal.
On Friday March 31st, our Audiences and Messages were due. I first made a list of all of my audiences. The idea was to niche everything down into the smallest possible group. So local high schools became administration/staff, students, and parents. Administration/staff became principal, board, avf teachers, directors, producers, conductors, coaches ect. My four major un-niched groups were local schools, bridal parties, churches, and community. This ended up being so many audiences when niched that I completely forgot the media, which is the center of PR. Opps... I only plan on involving the media when my Dad has events though, which I explained to my teacher. I'll know Monday what she thinks.
That same Friday we had a guest speaker. One of the reasons my teacher is so great is her connections. (Previously to this we met a 23-year-old Hofstra Graduate who did PR for 3 clients at the Tornio Olympics) The two women we met Friday work for Quinn & Company. One of the women was Carla Caccavale, the partner in charge of travel. They were very interesting and informative. Currently I am interested in doing PR for movies, books either through a PR firm that specializes in those fields or directly for a company like New Line Cinema or Penguin Books. I know I want to travel as part of my job, but previous to this I never thought of doing PR travel. I am interested in looking at them for an internship next summer.
So nothing is due this Monday, but I am still working on little things, like redesigning my Dad's business card. I hope that the tools and tactics part of the project will not be due until after spring break. That way I can go home and talk to my day directly about them. A lot of the stuff I want to do for real, not just as part of the project so I want his input. I also am stuck on what to do for the schools. He already has some relationships with producers and directors, but I need to think of an event that he could actually do to get more of them as clients. I might focus on the board and the directors/ producers/ conductors instead of the students. But if the students don't buy the copies there is no point. The two things that I came up with so far is to send out letters or brochures about what he can do for them. The other which I am not sure he would actually do is to have an information seminar about his services for schools and basically bring all of them in groups out to dinner. It's something I need to work on a lot because it’s the main part of my campaign. The wedding event and charity events are going to be a lot more fun and creative. I doubt I have any audience yet but if anyone has a suggestion or thought about what I've done so far leave it as a comment.
Hofstra University, PR, Public Relations, Quinn and Company, PRSSA |
