The Creative Career Podcast Recap

Image Cred: mike828 – Miguel Duran (Compfight)

During the Creative Career Podcast with Allie Osmar and Roger Weller, who both have experience within public relations, social media and/or advertising, explained the differences between both as well as the skills that need to be established to keep a brand afloat.

Weller had been interviewed by Osmar in order to get a better understanding of both fields along with his journey of becoming an exceptional business man as brand and sustainability strategist and writer.

In his earlier years of life, Weller had been involved in political science; however, he soon changed his passion to journalism where he found an interest in writing, in which he enjoyed.

During his time as a journalist, he grasped the concept of the inverted pyramid, where the most important information goes within the first few sentences and the rest would be filled with details from greatest to least, which is the most important role as a journalist that ultimately helped Weller later in his career.

After spending the first 15 years of his life in traditional work, he soon built a portfolio and moved onto better opportunities within Chicago for his career. During this time he had been involved in radio, doing some television spotting, print campaigns, and researching ways to get ideas out to the public. He began explaining what brand planning meant and the importance of the idea.

Within public relations and advertisement he stated that you learn new things along the way, it’s never the same thing each day you come into work, and to make sure you brand is remains consistent.

“Regardless of what the medium is, there has to be continuity, the brand has to be consistent. “ Weller said.

After listening to his advice and journey, I realized that it’s okay to be interested in many different fields of communication. Though we may not end with a job we dreamt of, we can make sure we learn and progress along the way. I also learned that the only difference between PR and advertising are their titles, they both involve human interface, networking, communicating, and building a credible brand.

A PR Class worth taking! [Comm 269 Recap]

Image Cred: Poems of a Selfish Record Player (Compfight)

During the course of COMM 269, I believe I learned various important terms, ideas, and cases when going into my career as a Public Relations Specialist.

Networking with Social Media: At the beginning of the course, I immediately knew I couldn’t afford to procrastinate due to multiple social media assignments due by next class period. Three social media sites that were assigned to us, Twitter, which I had already known of, and two I had never heard of until Professor Mullen introduced them. The two sites were LinkedIn and WordPress, that ultimately helped me gain insight on how professionals in different fields stay in contact with coworkers, build relationships with others within similar career paths, and remain relevant with upcoming trends, news, and technology.

Networking with Public(s): As classmates and I were learning how to network with social media sites, we were also learning there’s more to building relationships with others, but also maintaining the relationship in a credible and trustworthy manner. When working in the field of PR, you have think like the public(s) to know what is great for the public(s), with this being said Two-Way Communication goes into full affect. We not only respond to issues that each are having, but we listen and understand so that we could solve the problem.

Preparing for PR Specialist: After establishing an understanding of networking through social media and the public(s) classmates and I were introduced to Press Releases, Code of Ethics, and Fact Sheets. The three terms are what many PR professionals have abided by within their company as well as starting new projects. We had an assignment where we had to come up with rules we would follow if we worked within a company: Being Honest, Credible, hard-working and then adding definitions to what each meant to us. Press Releases and Fact sheets are similar but different; they both have specific goals of getting the most important information in the first sentence but outline the rest of the information in a different way.

Things to remember: During this course there are lots of things to remember, but the most important is to do a job you will love and not dread each morning, work hard as an individual and team member, and remain relevant! Thanks for everything Professor Mullen!

#RIMjobs. . . A Blackberry Hashtag Crisis!

Photo Cred: Auzigog (Compfight)

Twitter, a social network that is well known to promote publicity for organizations, businesses, and of course celebrities with a major fan base, is also known for its trending hashtags that has its fails and successes when seen by the billions of people actively involved on Twitter.

Unfortunately, Blackberry became the new victim of a hashtag fail in 2012 when tweeting their need for employees with an added hashtag of #RIMjobs.

Now, if many of you don’t know what this particular word, phrase, or better yet activity means urban dictionary has the perfect elaboration for you.

Blackberry added this hashtag in reference to their project “Research in Motion” that pertained to the company’s 6,000 available job slots of those who were possibly interested in branding Blackberry products.

However, #RIMjobs backfired having derogatory tweets and jokes attached to the company’s name.

I’m not sure how or when Blackberry recovered from this misunderstanding of promoting new job opportunities, that isn’t linked with sexual behavior for the record, but I’m sure they learned the meaning of poor wording when dealing with social networks.

Though this incident has happened many times before, Twitter is ultimately a great look for organizations and celebrities to promote their brand or themselves, it’s how it’s presented that will potentially demise their image. The perfect example has happened to Blackberry, who had only been looking to hire new employees, but adding a hashtag with a sexual reference behind their search painted the wrong picture.

As many of us should know, people, especially those on social networks, take things and run with it and when things like this happen, the internet is the wrong place for it to be seen first.

After reading this hashtag fail about blackberry, I would immediately send out an apology for the misunderstanding and inform those that it was not the company’s intent to send any sexual message when referring to the new job openings. I’m not sure if I would add another hashtag after my statement just to stay away from further fails.

Y-ME and ABDC, breast cancer organizations that are making a dfference!

Photo Cred: Ghida albarazi (ompfight)

For 34 years, Y-ME, a breast cancer organization that promotes and supports women dealing with the life threatening disease, changed many lives for the better before their abrupt closing.

Once located in Chicago, IL, before their shut down in 2012, Debbie Hayes, volunteer coordinator, Sandhya Krishnan, event information specialist, and Cindy Geoghegan, executive director, made sure those who were battling breast cancer weren’t alone. They provided women with mentors and health care providers who have been trained for 12 hours several days a week by professionals and learning within classroom settings that have also dealt with breast cancer personally and serve as caregivers.

Y-ME believed in providing women with breast cancer and/or recovering from having breast cancer one-to-one support, reliable information, building trust, and most importantly raising confidence within each woman at no cost regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, etc. but due to their closing ABDC, an organization that came about in 1999, when Melodie Wilson, founder of ABDC, brought together a group of women affected by breast cancer and created ABCD: After Breast Cancer Diagnosis after creating her beliefs on “the Power of One-to-One” and since then the organization has grown and created a positive change for many women.

Because many women invested time into Y-ME, ABDC linked closely with the organization and expanded their help for women with a 24/7 hotline that started during a time breast cancer wasn’t spoken into existence. Women were given the opportunity to voice their feelings, thoughts, and other concerns when dealing with breast cancer.

Now located in Glendale, Wisconsin, with only eight women making sure all requirements are met and no woman is left behind, the ABDC organization has made great progress with offering news and exciting events for women with who are on a path to a great recovery.

Spilled Beans, Starbucks PR Crisis!

Image Cred: Rigib (Compfight)

Known best to make mornings and afternoons of business incorporated individuals and overworked college students, Starbucks soon took on a different title during the summer of 2012 after apologizing (in Spanish) on Twitter and Facebook to committed customers due to them using localized paper cups instead of their usual embedded green designed cups.

After being translated, the tweet read: “We apologize, as due to a temporary supply shortage, some shops are using national cups and sleeves. Salutations.”

The Argentina Starbucks company soon drowned themselves into a deep hole of coffee beans once customers read the offensive tweet, creating a hashtag of #Weapologize directed towards the company, who they felt didn’t need to apologize for using cups they were provided by local stores.

It couldn’t have been a worse time to have this PR crisis on their hands, especially since there had been a huge expansion plan for Latin America where Reuters reported to open 300 new stores in Argentina and Mexico by 2015. Luckily, Starbucks recovered with another apology after realizing what they’ve said to the customers located in that area.

Apology to public: We apologize for the post this morning – we understand your comments and clarify that the intention was to tell you that we are using different to the usual vessels temporarily in some stores. This is due to a breakdown of stock by an internal planning error.

We are working to continue providing the best for our fans.

We like to be transparent with our community and share each of our updates – whether permanent or temporary.

After reading the PR crisis that involved Starbucks or any other company of that matter, I believe Twitter has its pros and cons in dealing with businesses. It could give great exposure on deals, new ideas, and more, however, in the end Twitter can be the reason for a downfall. If thousands follow a certain organization or business take offense to what has been tweeted, such as one unintended wrong comment or picture, it could spread like wildfire and this result in a company/organization having to hurry and respond to the misunderstanding.

Starbucks did a great recovery with clearing up their statement from earlier, it lets their customers know they didn’t mean any harm in what they had tweeted and posted on Facebook. I probably would’ve thrown in a percentage off on coffee for the following day, just to show customers that they are really appreciated.

Three great tips for creating a Press Release

Photo Cred: J.G. Park (Compfight)

Now, I know many have had a moment of confusion when told we had to create our first Press Release to another company in order to promote  and raise awareness on a specific item that we needed to launch out into the world. Well, a press release doesn’t sound as complicated as it sounds, it is actually quite quick, informative, and catchy (if you do it right). Below are three tips that will help you promote not only a product but your company to the world outside of your cluttered desk of paper work.

1. No grammatical errors: One of many things that is considered important when writing your press release is making sure there are no grammatical errors what so ever! It is seen as unprofessional to others who have to read through an email or letter of errors. It is very frustrating and in order to prevent this from happening: PROOF READ MORE THAN ONCE!

2. Follow Format of Press Release, Always!: At the beginning of your press release you will put the most important information along with a facts that will capture your readers attention. you don’t want to ramble on for two paragraphs before getting to the point of your press release’s objective, you will lose many clients that way. make it quick, eye catching, and important!

3. Put yourself in the your audience’s shoes: This is very self explanatory, in order to connect with those around you, you have to understand them on a deeper level and know that now a days, we as people need something interesting and straight to the point to capture our attention. Keep that in mind when writing a press structured press release!

Jose Galvez: A Photographer’s Journey

ISU students gathered together in Holmstedt Hall on Oct. 8 to be taken away by Jose

Image Credibility: Jose Galvez

Galvez, who spoke of his journey of finding a love for photography regardless of his hardships and poverty as a child.”I was quite the entrepreneur, I always had money in my pocket,” said Galvez. “But, what I did the most was shine shoes, I had seen other boys with their shoe shine boxes downtown, and my new friend, Mike Tatum, made about a dollar a day doing so and that was a lot of money back then, especially for a poor kid like me.”

Galvez expressed that he had various jobs of selling newspapers, collecting boxes, selling tamale’s out of a bucket, and of course shining shoes that soon lead to him entering a newsroom for the first time and from then on his life had changed for the better. After several years of doing maintenance for those within the newsroom, he finally got hired at age 16 as a copy boy and eventually gained a passion for journalism along with black and white photography.

Taking photography in high school and majoring in journalism in college, Galvez was given a choice after graduating to do either… and photography was his top pick.

“There was a lot of things’ going on back when I was graduating college,” said Galvez. “You had the war in Vietnam, you had Richard Nixon and the Watergate, you had hippies running around with peace and love, sit-ins, you had the women’s movement, you had the black power movement…”

After deciding to do photography, Galvez realized the irony in choosing this because of him having to grow up in poverty where his family couldn’t afford to buy a camera to capture moments they could all look back and remember, but because Galvez worked his way up, with help from those close to him, he now has the opportunity to capture all of the things not only him, but others will remember for a lifetime.

“It’s almost like I’m photographing a new series of faces that I didn’t have before…” said Galvez.

“Bad Blood” turned worse.

Image Credibility: Compfight

Lasting for forty years, the Public health Service conducted a case study, known today as The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, targeted 399 African Americans within Alabama, who were considered poor sharecroppers, uneducated, and carried “bad blood” throughout their bodies.

Unfortunately, these men developed Syphilis due to doctors wanting to know how the disease affected blacks as opposed to whites and purposefully seeing how long the disease would take to kill off the naïve patients.

The men involved in the experiment, however, received little to no treatment when coming to the hospital for what they believed was an opportunity for their “Last Chance for Special Free Treatment” because they were told they had “bad blood” and though penicillin, which was the first real cure for syphilis during that time was finally discovered, the Tuskegee patients were intentionally denied the medication.

By July 25, 1972, the experiment had come to everyone’s attention of how doctors treated patients of the experiment unfairly resulting in “28 of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis.”

Overall the PHS doctors knowingly treated African Americans unfairly where many people, media, etc. began to assume they were killing off the black population within Macon. “used human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone.” said news anchor Harry Reasoner in 1972.

•What should the company have done differently?

I believe a lot should have been done differently, especially when it comes to having another life in your hands. These men knew nothing of what PHS doctors had planned, but at the least bit, they could’ve informed them on what the experiment consisted of, how they came about with wanting to conduct such experiment, included white and blacks since they did mention they wanted to know how Syphilis would affect each race differently, and most importantly remained honest and prescribed the patients doses of treatment instead of leaving them there to die and untreated.

•Do you think that this behavior hurt the organization’s long-term existence or was it something forgivable?

I believe the actions of the PHS really hurt their existence, It was stated that “Fred Gray, a lawyer who had previously defended Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, filed a class action suit that provided a $10 million out-of-court settlement for the men and their families”, but because the doctors did provide the patients with some sort of treatment, nothing harmful was done to their organization… but unfortunately these men and their families suffered.

Interview Recap with Lisa Moore, Public Relations Specalist for Indiana State University!

Image Credibility: Lisa Moore

Having a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology with a Masters in Educational organizational leadership, Lisa Moore stuck to her three tips that involved networking with others, having her mind set on new opportunities, and most importantly staying relevant which  landed her a Public Relations career within Indiana State University.

“I didn’t start my career in PR,” said Moore, “I have a Bachelor’s in psychology, I think that’s a good basis of learning about people and how they work and I also have a Masters in Educational organizational leadership, which is a higher education administration Master’s Program that I received at the University of Illinois in Urbana, Champaign.”

And in the Field of Public relations the best thing to learn besides proper speaking terms and building connections with those around you, but also learning to please everyone, which wasn’t a surprise to Moore.

After meeting with Lisa Moore I learned there was more to a Public Relations Specialist than just communicating with others, but remembering what you represent and who you are in the process of remaining relevant in a career path so active.

“Prior to being in the Communications and Marketing department, I worked in ISU alumni association, said Moore, “I have the opportunity to travel and see alum’s and help, so it’s always great to see the events come together.”

But that’s not all that comes with Moore.

“I have just joined CASE, which stands for Council for advancement and support of education, said Moore, “It’s professionals who work in alumni communications.”

Within this organization of 70,000 members and 3,600 universities, Moore gives more details on how it does fundraising, marketing, and many other hands on events for those involved.

Overall, the interview held with Moore was a success and one of the most important things that stuck with me when being in the Public Relations field, is of course… remain relevant while networking with those that will lead you down the right path of a great career.

More Information on Lisa Moore:

Lisa Moore LinkedIn Account

Restoring Penn State Football Scholarships

One of many trending topics today, check out why  #NCAA !