Dealing with rape

There are numerous nightmares that can occur working in public relations at a university. One of these events just occurred at Washington University in St. Louis.

Early Monday morning, a 20 year old student was robbed and raped in the streets of the campus.

Immediately, the universities public relations office was inevitably bombarded with phone calls from reporters. Students began to worry about their own personal safety. Issues like this affect everyone.

“According to police, the undergraduate student was walking home south on Skinker Boulevard, a few blocks north of Clayton Road, when the man approached her from behind, authorities said. The suspect  indicated he had a knife and forced her behind a building where he sexually assaulted the woman then took her money.
The man was described as a black male about 20-30 years of age, 5’4”-5’5” in height, medium build, dark complexion, wearing a dark hoodie, dark pants and tennis shoes.”

What kind of public response does this create? How does a university respond to this sort of incident?

First, think about the neighborhood and the campus. Washington University is a residential campus in a diverse neighborhood located in a large city. St. Louis has a negative image nationally when it comes to crime to begin with. Stinker is not your everyday college street. It is a part of St. Louis city. These are the risks you take going to college in this sort of neighborhood. Just a few blocks away is Delmar Blvd, a street littered with homeless people asking for money.  Washington University, although a high quality academic institution isn’t really in the greatest part of town.

The public relations officials have to go through the traditional approach. Yeah, this is unfortunate. It is an “isolated incident,” police routinely patrol this area, and we are a safe campus. Police are working to find the culprit.

This is actually exactly what they did.

How predicatable.

“The University expresses its deepest concern for this student and is committed to the safety of all who study and work here, ”Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs Steve Givens said. “The crime is being investigated by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. The University is offering support to the student, her roommates and her family.”

“As a reminder, the “Campus to Home” shuttle service operates daily between 7 p.m. and 2:30 a.m., departing approximately every 30 minutes from the south side of Mallinckrodt and from the bottom of the Brookings steps. The shuttles provide service from campus to individual residences in neighborhoods surrounding the Danforth Campus.”

That is a nice touch, reminding students of this service. Hopefully they catch the scumbag.

More Tiger Woods…

I am sick about Tiger Woods, but when it comes to public relations, its a fun little thing to talk about.

It is all over Sportscenter and it is probably the guy’s best chance at clearing his name.

Tiger is coming back to compete in the Masters.

Personally, I am already over the situation and am ready for the guy to go out, play golf and destroy everyone else like he is accustomed to doing. Getting back into the game is really the only way to get back into America’s hearts and out of the dog house.

PGA tour commissioner Tim Finchem said in a statement “We are pleased to learn Tiger will be playing the Masters,” “He has invested a lot of time taking steps both in his personal and professional life in order to prepare for his return.”

There ya go.

What is done is done. Tiger cheated on his wife, the whole world found out about it and now it’s over. Tiger isn’t the biggest idiot here, it is his wife for sticking around. He “learned” from his mistake, but there really won’t be any of the consequences you would expect to see in a normal relationship, because well, Tiger’s wife likes money. The guy was humiliated in front of the world, and for that, I believe he is truly sorry and maybe the sex therapy did him good.

Now it is time for Tiger Woods to be Tiger Woods and do what Tiger Woods does.

Golf.

The PR situation has been handled the best way it could have, and now it is finally coming to an end. There are bigger issues in the world than concerning ourselves with Tiger. He is an “entertainer” if you find golf on television to be entertaining. The man is ready to go back to work, and after he wins a green jacket next month this should all come to an end.

There is no point in harassing the man anymore, let him golf.

Function Drinks

The other day following an intensive night of drinking I was looking for a way out of my hangover. At Edwardsville’s Quik Trip store I noticed a drink I had never seen before right next to the Red Bull I was about to purchase. This drink was called Urban Detox. I pulled out the bottle and looked at it’s label. Somehow, god sent this drink down from the heavens to cure my ailment. The marketing people at Function Drinks, the producer of Urban Detox sure know how to sell a product. Check out this claim:

So, apparently this drink not only gets rid of your pulsating headache and various morning-after alcohol consumption symptoms, it cleans your lungs of cigarette smoke? Intriquing.

Since this purchase, I have done a little bit of forum paroozing, trying to figure out how the hell this stuff works. I was not immidiately cured, as it takes time for the B-Vitamins, electrolytes and “prickly pear extract” to process and make their way to your brain. After a good long nap, I felt great. The stuff actually worked to an extent. I am still not sold on the “lung scrubbing” ability of the stuff, and this is where I could see a potential PR nightmare down the road. The bottle states the “statements are not certified by the FDA,” but is that enough to stop someone with lung cancer trying to detoxify their body using the stuff to sue Function Drinks and try and get away with it?

These are the types of things I think about, weird.

Tiger Woods.

You probably already ignored reading this blog post because you are sick of hearing about the world’s number one golfer.

That’s okay.

I am too.

But I regress a little bit, because the media sandstorm has for the most part stayed out of my life. I have had better things to worry about and a strategic ability to ignore SportsCenter when i know it’s going to turn into TigerCenter, or something of that nature. I am only going off of what I have read under the precedent of choice rather than the force feeding mechanism the media has implemented throughout the soap opera ordeal.

Here is what we know:

Tiger Woods cheated on his wife a million times.

Tiger Woods apologized on national television for cheating on said wife.

Tiger Woods is a bad person.

Tiger Woods has not golfed in a long time and probably won’t for awhile, because sex therapy takes up a lot of free time which could be spent golfing.

Tiger Woods has a video game named after him.

Tiger Woods thinks he is invincible.

That is really just about it in a nutshell.

The apology Woods issued was one we have heard more times than he has cheated on his wife. Indeed, it was a very common public relations strategy he used, basically growing the golf balls to tell everyone who shouldn’t be involved in his life in the first place (but they are in his life because he is frickin’ Tiger Woods) he is sorry, and that he is going through corrective measures to fix his problem and get back out there and do what men with marriage problems do best, play golf.

Public relations expert Lori Booker noted in this article, this type of reactionary measure being used by Woods is something we see a lot in similar situations. She says Tiger did give a sincere enough apology, and his gut-spilling moment could be placed in the same category with Bill Clinton’s following his White House sex scandal. The two even use similar phrasing.

Was Woods apology too “formulaic” or is this a situation where we get what we expect? What else is a man to say besides “yeah, I cheated on my wife. I thought I was Jesus. I am not. Tiger Woods is mortal. For this I am sorry.”

I really do not know. Do you? comment, you need 30 of them.

Dealing with death at the Olympics

The city of Vancouver was buzzing, after all the Olympic Games were hours away from infecting their city, but tragedy quickly clouded the games, with the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili.

Nodar died after flying off his sled and into a metal pole at 88 mph on the Whistler course during a trial run the day of the opening ceremony, putting the public relations staff at the games in a bind.

Immediately questions rose regarding safety of the course and just as immediately Olympic officials went into action trying to find answers, and defend the luge course as a safe playing field.

President of the International Olympic Committee Jacques Rogge released a statement, saying “the whole Olympic family is struck by this tragedy, which clearly casts a shadow over these games.”

The whole incident opened eyes to how dangerous many of these winter Olympic sports can be. It created a public relations struggle, trying to find answers and relay to the public “everything is fine.”

Of course, the first action would be to honor Nodar at the opening ceremonies and implement a moment of silence. The second was to make sure this doesn’t happen again, because this public relations nightmare could become even worse under those situations.

What did the IOC do? They completed their investigation rather quickly, and deemed the course safe, and Nodar’s misfortune as an isolated incident. Despite taking that action, they went against their words and modified the track, making it a little slower, putting up a safety wall where the spill took place and shortened the distance lugers will have to cover.

The IOC had a bullet to dodge, and they did what any PR agency would do in a situation involving death. They tried to put it past them and move on. They should have however, acknowledged their mistake instead of fixing up the track while ignoring the fact that the course, ultimately killed Nodar.

This was a shame, and any PR agency in that situation would probably do the same thing, especially when there are two weeks of Olympics ahead to bring the world together.

Super Bowl Ad-MANIA!

This year’s Super Bowl went down in history as the most watched television program ever, surpassing the finale of M*A*S*H, as well along with previous editions of the big game. In other words, it was an arena for advertisers to get their point across to a vast audience.

Each year, the commercials are almost as big as the game itself. This year’s offering did not receive as much critical acclaim as encountered years past, and to tell you the truth I was too busy drinking my beer to really care about the commercials during the game, but that’s what youtube is for, as I try and break down my favorite ads and what companies were thinking from a public relations standpoint when rolling out their spots.

PR departments want consumers to recognize their products through the advertisements. In reality, it is not fun and games marking a great commercial, although that is what viewers are looking for. They want something memorable, with their name slapped all over it. I cannot say how many times an ad has aired and we have no idea who it was for, which renders a laugh meaningless with over $3 million going down the drain in 30 seconds.

The biggest winner besides the Saints was Google. The online search giant’s ad was simple, meaningful and memorable. It told a story we can all relate to. Okay, not all of us fall in love while studying abroad in Paris, but we all google everything, at least I do, and it’s sheer simplicity combined with its undeniable charm scores a touchdown.

One of the ads I enjoyed, although it wasn’t critically embraced as much, was the Simpson’s Coca Cola spot. It was a minute long, and did not mention the client until about half-way through it’s story of Mr. Burns losing his fortune, but it was beautiful, in how it combined the majority of the show’s diverse cast and carried along the message Coke has been using in advertisements forever. Coke brings people together. The same was the case with the memorable polar bear ad’s they ran forever ago. Apu gives Mr. Burns a Coke, Lenny and Carl throw him up in the air, and everyone is happy. Then Milhouse floats upwards in a balloon and runs into a Coke bottle and apologizes. Epic win for Coke.

A third favorite was Volkswagon’s “punchdub” spot. Car commercials usually ruin the Super Bowl. They are boring, show the standard “professional driver on a closed course,” showing off the vehicles in action. Well, Volkswagon went a different direction, and eluded to the ever-popular pop-culture aspect of the Beatle, and the road-trip game we all know and love, but taking it to another level by including all 13 of their new models into the concept. It was simple, brilliant, and involved enough different vehicles and social situations to set it apart from the typical auto-show offering regurgitated year after year.

Those are ads leaving consumers with a product in mind. Other commercials flopped on this, such as the Motorola spot featuring Megan Fox. First of all, this commercial was hilarious. It was awesome. It was sexy. It had Megan Fox. The only problem is I had no idea who it was for. Sprint? Tmobile? Boost? Verizon? AT&T? nope. Motorola.

Now the real test comes for advertisers after rolling out their products to the masses. Will sales increase? Will they generate buzz? Soon, we will know the results and whether these campaigns resulted in success for the companies involved.

PR Blog session one

By Allan Lewis

It seems like we have talked a great deal about blogs in this class, and for good reason. This is what the industry of public relations have come to, as new media continues to take over the communication field.

I personally, have a great deal of experience blogging because of my job as the sports editor at the Alestle. I actually published a work-related blog today, and public relations and journalism share numerous similarities, as both fields evolve to include up-to-the-minute details on everything going on in the world.

Look at how important Twitter has become to the field of public relations. If something happens, we know about it almost immediately.

Public relations plays a huge role in the world of politics, sports and the corporate landscape. New media puts so much information out there, and further emphasizes the importance of public relations.

Tomorrow, Illinois holds its primary election. Although this election really has no significance to me, or the majority of Illinois’ residents, every candidate is busy at work trying to get as much positive press through public relations outlets as possible at the last minute. I don’t know how many e mails with attached press releases I have gotten at work talking about candidates or junk-mail propaganda sent to my residence trying to put a name and agenda to a face.

PR can even take a turn for the ugly against another individual, as Gov. Pat Quinn and his team attempt to trace a scandal back to State Comptroller Dan Hynes.

This blog post talks about how politics can teach us lessons about public relations.

Politicians use public relations as a means to connect to their voters, maintain alliances and work in a business-like fashion, with themselves as the product.

Heck, even Twitter has entered the political arena across the country, as well as local. More and more politicians are busy working to advertise themselves rather than leave that responsibility to firms.

Here is 18th district congressman John Shimkus’ twitter page. Notice how he is using it as a means of advertising himself from a public relations standpoint. He is advocating his own personal interests, and showing voters he is out there doing his job, interviewing with numerous media outlets to outdo his primary opponent. Some of his “tweets” quote bible verses, appealing to the religious demographic of voters.

Personally, I was anti-twitter for a long time. It was just recently I started to use it at a consistent clip, just because that is the future of the industry, whether I end up in public relations or journalism. Neither is for certain, but one thing remains. Twitter will have a definite impact on the future of both professional fields.