Coffee and Communications

Well, we have come to the end of another term of grad school at TROY, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that these posts will stop. I plan on taking a short break to focus on work, but then I will be back! I have learned so much from this blog over the past few weeks, I have always enjoyed writing but this was a little different than what I am used to. Instead of having to be incredibly formal in every post, I am allowed to write conversationally. It makes talking about what I have learned so much more fun! Speaking of what I have learned, this class has taught me a lot about media strategies! I have learned about the importance of companies and organizations communicating directly with consumers; transparency is very important today! It is also vital that companies have a solid plan in place in case of crises. Even if there is a one-in-a-million chance that this will happen, it still can and it is important for everyone to be prepared! With crisis communication is it importa...

My reading this week talked a lot about tracking ROI, or Return on Investment. Was this campaign worth the money? This can sometimes be hard to track, how can you really tell if something is worth the money unless you make a profit from it? I think it is much more plausible to base success on ROO, or Return on Objectives. These can be a little easier to track the successes, as most will have very specific objectives, For example, a company will not say they want to “increase sales.” Instead, they will say they want to “increase online sales by 15% by December 1, 2019.” These objectives can be incredibly specific, that way an organization always knows when goals have been met and when they have not. Being able to measure the success of PR campaign is extremely important, but it is also difficult. While studying for my undergraduate degree, I had to implement a campaign for a Tuscaloosa thrift store and the hardest part was figuring out how to measure the results. While most compan...

John F. Kennedy once famously said , “When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.” They say natural disasters and other national crises are good for the government. Even though wildfires and hurricanes can cause so much devastation, they boost the economy and, some think, cause people to put more trust in the government. When public officials have strong, prompt responses to crises, the public notices and ratings go up . For example, the former Governor of Missouri, Jay Nixon increased his approval significantly after a tornado struck in 2011, and President George W. Bush’s approval shot up after the attacks on 9/11. But, when the public sees the response as lacking, public approval can drop. In 2006 after Hurricane Katrina, President Bush dropped a significant amount of points because many in the public blamed him for response not being fast enough. Can companies and organizations use c...

I have always disliked negative campaign ads. I personally believe that a campaign should be centered on promoting oneself, not running a smear campaign against the opponent. Before I came into my current position, I was the campaign manager for a candidate in east Alabama. The candidate and I had the same views on running negative ads, and we ran a clean campaign. Unfortunately, negative political advertisements work. Thankfully, I got out of the political world because today it is not easy to have a clean campaign and win an election. According to Science Daily , negative ads are successful, but they work better if they are paid for by the candidate, not a Political Action Committee, or PAC. In fact, negative messages from the candidate are twice as effective as PACs. On the other hand, according to the study, positive ads have no effect on an election. During the 2016 Presidential election, there were so many negative ads, you couldn’t watch TV or listen to the radio without ...

One of my first events when I started my job was a training session for the Troy University Trojan Ambassadors. We brought in a representative to teach our new ambassadors about how to grab attention and give a memorable tour. To start off his presentation, we watched a TED Talk by Simon Sinek named “How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” A big portion of the talk is about how successful leaders and organizations start with why. Sinek said, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Most organizations or people do not follow this line of thinking. Most start with a product and are forced to work backwards and figure out why people should follow them or buy the product. From what I can tell, starting with the why shows passion. It shows that this product wasn’t just created to make money, but because the person who created it really believes that it was needed. It is their passion project . In class this week, we read about the importance of leaders having vision. Leader...

I am going to preface this post by saying that I am not writing about my opinion on President Trump and the current administration’s politics, I am discussing their communication problems. This is in no way a political post. Do you trust our current administration? According to the Pew Research Center , public trust in the government is at an all-time low. Only 17% of Americans say that they trust our Federal Government to do what is right, compare that to 55% in 2001. After that peak in the fall of 2001, the public trust in government has been a fairly steady decline. One of my readings for class this week mentioned that, historically, seniors and activists distrust the government the most. This paper, which was written in 2010, is still probably accurate on this, but according to the Pew study, most generations do not trust the current administration: 19% of millennials, 17% of Gen-X, and 16% of boomers trust the government. Here’s a thought provoking question: could better...

I get woken up every morning by an alarm on my Echo Dot going off. I scroll through social media and read some emails before I read my morning news, which is delivered directly to my inbox by a few different news conglomerates. I watch TV while I’m getting ready and listen to a podcast on my drive to work. My entire morning routine revolves around technology. It is almost crazy how much I use it every morning just while I am getting ready for work, and I am not the only one that is like this. We live in a world that is very dependent upon technology, and that can be a great thing! I love being able to keep up with my family and friends who don’t live near me! Without technology and social media, I would never be able to talk to my best friend during her deployment, but this reliance on technology, and our constant need to be updated on events as they are happening, can be a hindrance to us all. I studied public relations for my undergraduate degree. One class I took was Public Rel...