The Times They Are A Changing...

Growing up I always knew that I wanted to go into the communication field. Little did I know that I would be graduating during one of the worst economic downturns our country has ever seen! My professor posted this Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates thanks to the people at Grady College at UGA. The info and statistics in this survey are not very surprising to me, but it still scares me to think about what I am going to do once I graduate in May.

One of the ways that I am trying to combat this economic downturn is to be a well rounded PR student. I am minoring in Spanish in order to broaden my skills and hopefully make me more marketable for employers. The Mass Communication Department at my university has done a great job preparing it's students for the real world and I think this past year's graduates can attest to this. Many people who graduated in May have now found jobs despite the economy at newspapers, television stations, and ad agencies. These connections that we have will hopefully benefit us in a few months!

Community Relations

For our PR Campaigns class, we get to present a case study and discuss it with our class. My partner and I picked the chapter on Community Relations because we are both interested in non-profits and corporate social responsibility. This chapter gave a lot of insight on how to relate and impact your community. It is important to research your community so that you are able to best serve it. It is also important to know your companies strengths and find ways to use your strengths in service. There are many different ways for companies to give back. Some examples are event sponsorship and pro-bono work.

The case that we looked at involved a very small all-women college in New York, Wells College. In 2004, Wells saw a decrease in enrollment and was struggling financially as well. After looking into different options, the decision that the Board of Trustees and the President came to was to move towards co-education. The decision to allow men into this historically all female college was a shock to many, but overall Wells had a lot of support.

This case was interesting to me because when I first read it, I wondered how this fit into community relations. I realized that the college functioned as a community with it's student, faculty, large network of alumni and financial supporters. Community relations does not necessarily mean a non-profit or CSR. There are many different types of community relations and different ways to give back to your community.

Disney's Friends For Change: Project Green

So today is Blog Action Day and thanks to the help of my favorite PR Professor Ging, my PR class gets to participate! Blog Action Day is powered by change.org and seeks to spark discussion around a topic of global importance. The whole idea is not just to get big name blogs to participate, but little PR student blog's as well! This years issue is climate change and the first thing that I thought of was The Disney Channel.

Yep that is correct, The Disney Channel. This summer, Disney launched Disney's Friends For Change: Project Green in hopes of raising awareness to an audience that may be overlooked when it comes to going green. Disney viewers get to have a say in how $1 million will be spent in different charitable programs ranging from water, waste, and the blog action day topic of climate control.

Disney has enlisted all of it's tween a-listers from Miley Cyrus to the Jonas Brothers to help be the face for this campaign and to help raise awareness. They have done several PSA's and even recorded a very catchy song encouraging kids to "send it on".

One key factor in Disney's campaign is to get kids to take action on their own and not enlist the help of their parents. Simple things like turning off the lights when you leave a room and unplugging your cell phone charger when you are not using it are things that kids can do on their own. Getting kids thinking about ways they can make a difference in their world may be able to instill in them a more greener attitude that will stick with them for the rest of their lives. The many different causes, such as helping end deforestation in Central Mexico’s Oyamel forest and helping protect arctic wildlife such as polar bears from the effects of climate change makes kids more aware of what is going on in the world around them. Disney also encourages kids to enlist their friends in these causes also by letting kids know that there is power in numbers. One friend is powerful, but a million friends are unstoppable as one PSA put it.

So on this Blog Action Day 2009, I applause you Disney Channel for helping raise awareness in our youth and hopefully instilling in them values and determination to make the world that they live in a better place. This generation has the power to make a large impact and to conserve this precious planet we are a part of.

TV To Talk About...

This semester my PR Campaigns class is participating in a competition with PRSSA and The CW to promote two of their new shows, 90210 and Melrose Place. My class was split into three teams and we each had to plan and execute a campaign to help promote these shows on the college campus.

This past Thursday my group, Team 31061, had our event "TV to Talk About, Music to Jam About". Our group wanted to do something fun and laid back and something that students would enjoy. We had two music groups, Blake Whitworth and the Whales, come down and put on a concert on Front Campus. While people were enjoying the live music, they were able to enter a raffle with prizes from many different Milledgeville businesses. We also had fun interactive games like corn hole and ladder golf and gave out CW prizes to anyone who wanted to play. While doing this we got to talk to people about The CW and why we were doing this event.

Overall the event went really well, despite most of the student body leaving for our first ever Fall Break and some other events on Front Campus, but we made it work. We hope that after our event more people heard about these new shows and wanted to learn more about them!