I admit I’ve struggled to find a topic to write about this week. It’s not due to a lack of topics or subject matter—I could pick any number of recent events or trends for you to comment on—rather, it’s due to the fact that I’m seeking something with deeper meaning. Something to challenge our perspectives and help us further break down this thing we call public relations.
I’ll get back to you on that.
In the meantime, I keep returning to these questions: What happens when your campaign isn’t succeeding? What happens when your audience doesn’t engage or respond and you feel like you’re missing the mark? Even with strategic planning, research, and creative ideas, sometimes things don’t go the way we hope. So what do we do? You may not have a direct response to those questions for this post, but think about them and let’s talk about this in class.
Today, I want to hear from you. Here we are, more than halfway through the semester. What do you want to learn about campaigns or writing for public relations that we have not yet covered? What questions do you have for me? What should we discuss next?
PR 330 
I think a question I have is how to build a PR campaign. Specifically, I am thinking about how to raise awareness for a new musical artist. Let’s say I want to start an independent label – and I find an artist that I feel has so much potential to make it big. Upon signing, the artist does not have a following. How do I garner attention on social media? If nobody knows the artist, there is no incentive to like the social pages…so how does someone get the word out about a new artist? Gain interest?
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I think I’m curious to know where do you start when building a campaign. What are some of the first steps? Is there a concrete list of things that one must do in order to be successful in this? I ask because I’ve always associated having a successful campaign to also having a notable title or being well-known already. For example, all of the successful campaigns that I’ve either heard or read about dealt with people I had heard of before or companies that have been doing well for themselves for decades. I rarely hear of a successful campaign dealing with someone who isn’t already in the lime light or a company that hasn’t racked up millions. I think we should discuss how we can begin to build our own campaigns. What does that look like for those interested in actually branding themselves? So often we learn what it takes to build or create something successful, but we lack the understanding of the ways in which we can make it a reality. We should talk about this as if there are people in our class looking to further develop themselves in their businesses, careers, etc. It’s one thing to learn, but it’s another to actually apply what you’re learning to life. I would like for us to begin applying.
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I agree with both Annie and Erika. I am interested in the fashion industry and had an internship with a small fashion label last summer. Since they were small, they mainly promoted on social media and through bloggers/YouTube stars/people with a large following on Instagram, but how would we have created a campaign? What could we have done, being a small company?
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I feel like if my campaign isn’t succeeding and when my audience isn’t being engaged, I feel like we should still keep hope. I think we should still pray at least and trust in God that it’ll work. I think we just need to look good as much as possible and basically trust that God will do what he does.
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This week, my boss decided to let me in charge the international students Facebook page to advocate school events to all international students. It is a lot of pressure for me. I am a good writer( I think) but not using English! I feel a lot of time my job relates to PR. My question here is when I am writing a facebook page, how to get people’s attention and make them engaged?
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I want to learn how to go deep. I think I have the same sense that I hear in a lot of previous comments. I don’t think that spraying out social media posts and web content is the best way. Even interesting gimmicks seem to be white noise. How do I think deeply about how to connect with people? How do I find out what my audience values? What my generation values? I love Stanley thermoses. I will always buy a Stanley instead of a Hydroflask because I feel like they’ve been making a better product for longer, and that their products last longer. I also think they are just cool (along with Carhartt and Timberland). Why do I feel this loyalty? Psychologically? Culturally? Generationally? Why is Ken Bone so popular, yet no one can commoditize him?
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I agree with Erika about learning about how to make a splash in the industry when you don’t already have a large following. It’s hard because most everything is about who you know and the connections you have, but every once in a while you hear about a grassroots marketing campaign that came out of nowhere and went viral. I’d love to study the common elements of that.
I’d also be interested in doing case study projects where we create the digital strategy for a brand. And I’d love for part of the project to be creating a campaign for a launch/big event and the other part to be to come up with monthly, weekly or daily campaigns to provide content for a brand’s social platforms. Neither are easy, but I’ve found that some people are better at one over the other, but both are super important to know how to do. Maybe we could use class time as a workshop period where we put together proposals in groups? I love any kind of hands-on experience!
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I know that I want to go into the entertainment industry whether that be music, tv or working with artist. I guess my question is how to create a successful campaign for that kind of industry. I know our campaign book has already touched on that, such as the rolling stones and the David Beckham campaign but I just would love to learn more and talk about more campaigns like theirs.
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I think I would like to learn how to learn from our failure. You ask what we do if our campaign is failing, I think we should take that as a learning experience and better prepare for next time. The only way to grow is to fail and keep trying. Only by failure can we fine tune our craft and get better and better.
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I think I would really like to cover things within the entertainment world, and see what it’s like for PR pros when they’re working to keep the image of an individual, not a corporation. I often think of Tom Cruise’s character Staee Jaxx, in Rock of Ages, and I wonder what that would be like for his PR person to have to constantly do damage contro to try and maintain the image they’re going for.
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