PR vs. Marketing

Anytime I mention that I am studying public relations, the response I usually get is, "oh yeah - marketing." Yeah, I find it annoying. I want my public relations major to get the credit it deserves, not to be pushed into something else.

It's easy to become confused about these terms: advertising, marketing, promotion, public relations and publicity, and sales. The terms are often used interchangeably. However, they refer to different -- but similar activities.

Earlier today I was exploring Ad of the World, which is an online archive of the best and most interesting advertisements from across the world. I came across an advertisement on their site that uses four simple pictures to explain to you the difference between marketing, pr, advertising, and branding.






These simple images help to understand the distinction between the commonly misused terms, well and they are pretty funny.

Also check out Ads of the World's Web site. It's extremely interesting and you could waste an afternoon on it. Click here for the original images and related discussion.

Related Articles:
Public Relations vs. Marketing: PR Marvels and Miscues
Basic Definitions: Advertising, Marketing, Promotion, Public Relations, and Publicity

Vanity Fair's Oscar Party 2009

For the past ten years, I have been obsessed with Vanity Fair's annual Oscar party. I have never fantasized about attending the event, but planning it. I have always envisioned writing the guest list, organizing appearances, and picking flower arrangements. Well my dreams were placed on hold last year, but: The hottest Oscar after-party ever is back — only smaller.

Smaller?
Wait?
Huh?

Vanity Fair says its annual Academy Awards party is returning for next year's Oscar night on Feb. 22. The magazine's 2008 bash was canceled in support of the Hollywood writers' strike.

The magazine's editor Graydon Carter says on VanityFair.com that the bash "will be a much more intimate affair than in years past," with a scaled back guest list.

The A-list soiree will take place at West Hollywood's Sunset Tower Hotel instead of its traditional home, the restaurant Morten's.

Given the state of the economy, Carter says the party will also recycle decor from past years.

Now my fantasy life of planning the Vanity Fair Oscar Party next year just went up in flames.

Downsize guest list?

NO!

Re-use fake flowers?

Are you serious?

Yes, I am aware of our nation's current economic state, but really? Smaller?

I can only hope Vanity Fair's event planners will be ready to spend the big bucks in 2010.

Oh and hire me as an assistant.

Public Relations on the Small Screen

After years of watching Sex and the City, idolizing the lives of the four women, one of the characters drastically stood out to me; Samantha Jones. She owns her own Public Relations company, rubs elbows with the best of the best in New York City, throws first class parties and attends her fair share of them. She knows all the best hot spots in the city and has a Rolodex overflowing with names and numbers of the biggest, best and most elite of New York.

When I enrolled in my first public relations class, I walked in thinking that PR was more like a lifestyle than a career. Take Samantha Jones for example, she is her own boss, she is fierce and she makes a lot of money.

I thought that this was an accurate portrayal of the average Public Relations professional.

With each paper I write or with every grammar test I take, my vision of public relations professionals has changed drastically.

From:
Making a few calls, show up in a killer outfit, grab a cocktail and greet your famous guests with a kiss on the cheek.

To:
Countless of hours of work, endless to-do lists, 4 a.m. wake-up calls and 12-hour days. Coordinating the location (plan b location), theme, guest list, invitations, speakers (back up speakers), media lists, social media releases, itinerary, press releases, agenda, talking points, and promotion. Just to name a few.

PR just is not about throwing and attending parties, rubbing elbows or even raking in the money. I am now able to take what I have learned and feel confident to go out into the workplace. I will be able to rub elbows through networking, put on fabulous events that everyone will want to attend, all while making a name for myself as I begin my ascent to the top of the ladder of success.

December = Party!

Event planning is a large and exciting part of public relations, especially around the holidays. From family "get togethers" to office parties, anyone and everyone has some reason to celebrate during this month.

As I spend most of my days in the back office of Oba, I have witness our event coordinator's stress level increase by 20 percent. Everyone is calling to book their holiday events and of course everyone waits till the last minute to do so. And of course most days were booked in 2007. With most calls, I have to tell the potential client: "I am sorry. Our private dining room is booked that evening." There is some confusion, usually on their end and we try to accomadate them as much as we can.

But it always leaves me wondering:
Don't people plan ahead?

I have worked the past four holiday seasons at Oba and with my personnal expierence I have created simple guidelines for throwing a succesful event.

• When hosting or planning any holiday event, the main thing is to be organized.
• Before you start calling around town for venues and/or catering, have a strong idea of what you want for your event. Not being sure of the date or number of guests will get you no where.
• Whether having a large or small budget, be aware of your cash flow when planning each aspect of the event. If your boss is forcing you to make the office party at Pizza Hut seem like The Ritz, use your thinking cap and think of creative and cheap ways to entertain your guests.
  
• Have menu options that work for all of your guests. Not everyone loves what you do!
  
• Have your invitations/emails/phones/text messages/whichever form of communication you choose make your guests RSVP. Having an incorrect guestlist costs time and money on all sides.
• Always. ALWAYS have a plan b. The world is not perfect my friend!

Some other helpful tips/sources/ideas:
PartyPlansPlus.com's Tips for Hosting a Holiday Party
Delish's Five Ideas for Christmas Parties
Morebusiness.com's How to Organize a Holiday Office Party

Wordpress vs. Blogger

VS

I have been thinking about Wordpress vs. Blogger as blogging platforms for the last few weeks.

Which one is better?
Which one works for me?

I am now in a position where I am blogging with Blogger for my personal and public relations blog. Having run my personal blog for over a year now, I'm pretty much up to date with the capabilities and tools of Blogger. Wordpress is another story (and challenge) for me. When I started my public relations blog, I intended to use Wordpress. But after 10 minutes of playing around, I got frustrated and came back home to my beloved Blogger.

Personally, because I'm not much of a techie, I prefer Blogger, as it's easy to use, the templates are a lot easier to change and personalize. But I re-iterate that I have not had any experience with Wordpress, so perhaps my view on this could be differently!

After researching both blog platforms, I decided to make a list of the sites different features:

1. Blog Import: In Blogger - limited availability to import and export only in the same blogging platform; in WordPress - you can import from several other platforms, including from Blogger.
2. Image Storage: In Blogger - 300 MB; in WordPress - 3 GB.
   
3. Static Pages: In Blogger - not available; in WordPress - static pages can be listed in separate menus.
   
4. Post by Email: In Blogger - accepted; in WordPress - not.
   
5. Categories: In Blogger - not available; in WordPress - arranged with no problem.
   
6. File Uploading: In Blogger - not available; in WordPress - files can be uploaded.
   
7. Indexing Time: Here Blogger produces far better results, as due to the tight connections with Google, it can appear in the Search Engines very fast.
   
8. Blog Revune: WordPress has serious restrictions on the publishing ads, so if you plan to use AdSense, your preferences will probably lean more to the Blogger.

Let me know your thoughts on what platform you prefer and why?
I'm interested to know what works for others out there.

My Podcast Adventure

This week I created my first podcast! At first I thought that it would be an easy assignment, but once I finally got down to recording my material I got a little nervous.

I knew what I was going to say. I had my notes ready. I practiced more than I needed to. But when it came time to press record: I froze. Suddenly I couldn't talk for more than 15 seconds without getting my words mixed up or just forgetting what I was trying to say altogether. Luckily, after 75 takes I was able to dismiss my bashfulness and record into the mic like a pro.

Outside of the classroom, the only experience I have had with podcasts was listening to NPR's "Car Talk" while doing homework. (So to say I am an expert in clearly an understatement.)

I decided to record my podcast on social media measurement. My goal for it was to allow fellow bloggers to learn and explore how to find out who is reading your blog and why it is important.


SHOW NOTES: EPISODE 1

The World of PR According to Miss Horley
Who’s reading your blog?
(Social Media Measurement)

Introduction :0-:45

Why monitor? :45-1:18

Overview of metrics 1:18-4:56

Conclusion 4:56-5:46

Next week 5:47-6:14


LISTEN!

Agency Profile: Henry V Events

My career goal after college is to work in event planning. As the my graduation date becomes more in sight, I have been spending some time researching event planning firms on the west coast. Last week I ran into an old college friend who was raving about her new job at Henry V Events, so I thought I would look into the company and figure out why she loved her job so much.

Company: Henry V

Location: 6360 NE MLK Jr. Blvd. Portland, OR 97211

Year Founded: 1978

Event Types:
Private Party
Corporate Event
PR / Marketing Event
Meeting
Conference
Convention
Lecture / Speaker

Henry V is the largest and oldest event planning company in the Pacific Northwest. As one of the Top 50 event agencies worldwide, their clients include Intel, Adidas, RYKA, The North Face, Jansport, Dr. Martens, Disney, KEEN and many more.

The company considers themselves as "a one - stop shop," provide staging, logistics (full service), strategic planning, creative concepting, shipping, trade fixture development and maintenance and much more.

Henry V does public, employee and sales events for small and large audiences. Their task is to 'Make Things Happen' and with an approach that with every event is to plan for what the audience needs to believe, feel or know as they leave your successful event.

As I spent last night looking through Henry V's Web site,
several questions popped into my head regarding my future career:
Do I want to work for a company this large?
Do I want to work with an event planning firm?
Or be the event coordinator at a venue?
Or be the event planner at company, such as Adidas or Nike?

With the more I investigate, I am learning there are many ways I could go about this profession of event planning. I am excited to continue my research and find the answers for my questions.

Tweet Tweet in a Twitter World

When my class first started learning about social media at the beginning of this term, our professor, Tiffany Derville, mentioned Twitter.

Twitter is a social media site designed to allow members to answer the question, "What are you doing?" by posting short status updates. On the site you can subscribe to "follow" someone and watch them as update their status. Other than being "followed" and "following" people, I wasn't really sure what else you can do. At first, I thought it was completely pointless. With Facebook and MySpace both featuring a status update application, why on earth would I need a site completely devoted to announcing: "miss horley is tired!" or "miss horley has a case of the mondays!"? And realistically, if someone wants to know what I am up to can't they call me, text me or e-mail me?

Anyway, I never took the time to check it out, it seemed really silly to be constantly updating what I was doing all day for the whole world to see.

But then all of a sudden -- it hit me. The "Twitter bug". Two weeks ago I started playing around with the Web site and began to feel comfortable "tweeting" with my followers.

So now Twitter doesn't seem so silly and pointless. I realized that it's not necessarily about whether you are posting to your blog or updating Twitter, but rather it's about creating conversations and connecting with others.

My Twitter Page

I know YOU are reading my blog!

As the world of blogging grows and grows,
us bloggers are all wondering the same thing:
Who is reading my blog?

As I continue my education on social media, I am learning how important online tools are in the public relations profession. And even more important is how to measure your success online.

Measuring your blog allows you to discover what drives the consumer to buy, who are your loyal visitors and how you should tailor content to different demographics to make your blog as successful as possible.

There are general “engagement” metrics that should be apart of your monitoring:

• Unique visitors

• Time spent on site

• Total time spent per user

• Frequency of visits

• Depth of visit

• Conversions

To track most of these metrics you can use well-known web analytics tools such as Omniture and Google Analytics.

There are several other things you should look at when measuring your success or lack of for your social marketing efforts.
Some things to consider other than the ‘engagement’ metrics are:

Metric #1 Reading content
Lets say you want to look at who is reading your blog and where they are coming from. You can run a Google Analytics or Omniture analytic report to show you what’s the most popular content on your site, the time the visitor spent on your site, where they are coming from, and the bounce rate.

Metric #2 Contributing content
Comments left by readers is a quick and easy way to monitor the actual number of visitors who are interacting with your blog and you.

Metric #3 Who is booking marking your blog and your posts?
There are a couple of ways you can do this, you can use your analytic tool and run a click map report to see how many web visitors are clicking on the social bookmarking icons. Or you can create profiles in each of the bookmarking sites, such as Digg, Delicious, or Technorati and search for your blog’s URL.

Metric #4 Subscribing to a RSS feed
Your subscription measures how many visitors are subscribing to your RSS feeds.

Metric #5 Emailing Posts
If you allow your readers to email your posts, you can use your blog platform tool like Blogger or Wordpress to see how many emails are actually being sent from your site.

The main reason for social media measurement is to grasp an understanding of your visitors: Who are the loyal readers? What do they do on your site? What posts are popular among them? Learn about those people who visit your site. With a better understanding of your audience, you are able to cater directly to them.

Remember not to look at one report or one number, viewing a single metric result will not give you what you need to make the needed changes or quality decisions for your blog. Research and development each metric, each step and you will be provided with comprehensive measurement of your social media program.

"If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.”

Helpful sites and online tools for social media measurement:
KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog
Omniture
Google Analytics
Digg
Delicious
Technorati

The Internship aka "Give me the resume line!"

The Internship.
We all have had one here or there.
(If you haven't had one, well then you probably should look into that.)

My favorite internship came along during my Writing for the Media discussion held by favorite GTF, Leona. I vividly remember Leona asking the class who would like to be a PR/MySpace/Facebook intern for the nightclub, The Indigo District. Since the class consisted of all minors who were unaware of what the establishment was, I gladly raised my hand and took the position. The following week I met with my two supervisors and learned what my role and duties were as an intern.

The job was simple, update the club's popular social networking sites, post daily bulletins and friend as many people as possible. The results I was producing made my head supervisor and even the owner satisfied with my work.

Well until Facebook kicked me off.

Who knew there was a limit of friends you could add on Facebook?
I for sure didn't, hence my goal was to add all 900 of my friends in the first day of the account.
Facebook was none too happy with my actions, claiming they were "spam like" or what not. Within a couple of days of having the account, the social networking site banned The Indigo District. What was I to do? This was in fact half of my internship and I clearly ruined it.

After e-mails back and forth with the Facebook staff, it was clear - they were not going reactivate the account. Thus making me start my internship all over again, new e-mail, new page, new profile, and new friends. Luckily I didn't get in any form of trouble and continued to work there for another year, but the experience left me wanting another internship.

So this leaves me at: I need a new internship! Any ideas?

The Indigo District's Myspace

Facebook: Save? Delete? or Edit?

As I am growing older and on my way into the "real world,"
the notion of changing my Facebook account has come up.
More and more you hear about companies firing and hiring after
doing a simple Google search to find their hopefuls' MySpace and Facebook accounts.

As I look at my page, my photos, my comments, I wonder:
What do people other than my best friends think of me?

In the past months I have learned the importance of social networking and my future profession. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace can be a wonderful tool in meeting employers, friends and connections. As the years have passed these sites started as a form of entertainment and are now becoming a part of my adult life and future career. I feel as of now that it is time to redecorate my page.

I have had other PR friends who are so paranoid of a future employer finding their page, they delete their account all together. I don't know if I am ready to give up my Facebook addiction that quickly, there may have to involve a 12-step program or a city electrical blackout for that to happen.

So in the past year I have made baby steps in changing my account,
I have set it to private, I created a "limited friend list"
and I deleted random "friends" from Turkey named Cocoa and Blang.
BUT
I feel that isn't enough.
It is time to take the next step in privacy:
block my friends from seeing my photos and comments.
I know, I know, this is a huge step in my relationship with the social networking site, but the photos from my freshman Halloween are no longer important to me or my future employer.
(Well and no one needs to check out my freshmen 15.)

It will take time, but hopefully within the next term my Facebook account will be professional and an accurate representation of myself as a young adult.

Interesting articles I found:
-Degrees, jobs, careers, Facebook
-Career Development Center: Use Facebook with caution

Bravo Coca Cola

As one of the world's most popular brands, Coca Cola's company blog, Coca Cola Conversations, is an excellent example of using social media to connect with fans of the soft drink and continue to build brand recognition.

The single-authored blog concentrates on sharing information on a wide variety of topics, ranging from brand history to the value of collectibles. Author Phil Mooney has spent the last 30 years working with Coca Cola as their historian and archivist.

The site is perfect for the average consumer or memorabilia fanatic, because the posts are small clips of the company's history that can be viewed as entertaining and educational for fans worldwide.

The design of the blog gives a great first impression of the company. Simple, clean designs with each post shows Coke's strong marketing.

All in all - Coca Cola knows how to build their brand.
-Clearly we know this -
isn't "Coke" up there with "God" as the most popular words in spoken language?

Fun Vintage Coke Commercials:

Coca-Cola's Web Site

My First Blog Post

The world of blogging is on the rise, and I am proud to live in it.

Blogging is becoming more popular than ever for every industry. Companies, professionals and public relations agencies use blogs to build relationships, share interests and ideas, and spread research across the Internet.

Welcome to my blog.

My name is Katie Horley, and I am a senior at the University of Oregon. For the past four years I have studied public relations, communication studies and art history. As my college experience is close to ending, I hope to venture into the "real world" as an event coordinator. During the past five years, my love for planning events, small and big, has grown with my job at Oba Restaurant located in Portland, Oregon. Working in one of the city's top restaurants, I have watched and learned how to run a successful private dining room in the heart of the Pearl District.

This blog will explore my day-to-day experiences with public relations and event planning as I start the transition into life's next chapter.

Please feel free to leave comments, suggestions, or advice.