By: Tyler Madsen Arizona Wildcats head coach Sean Miller being caught by FBI wiretaps is one of the latest scandals rocking the college basketball world. Wiretap evidence show’s Miller discussed a payment of $100,000 to secure top recruit, and current player, DeAndre Ayton. The money offer was accepted by Ayton and his family, he then signed with the Wildcats. As we all know college athletes are not to be paid on top of their scholarships, so Sean Miller and the whole Arizona athletic department are facing major sanctions from the NCAA and potential criminal charges from the FBI. Arizona has already lost a key commitment in Shareef O’Neal, son of Shaquille O’Neal, his de-commitment was announced on February 25th. With Miller’s departure ahead within the next few days or weeks, the school has to deal with the assumed death penalty to the program that will be handed to them by the NCAA. The death penalty is when the team is not allowed to compete in the sport for the year and is the harshest penalty a school can receive. Now Arizona’s athletic department must put their crisis management procedures in order to help repair their image. Source: https://www.si.com/college-basketball/2018/02/25/sean-miller-deandre-ayton-arizona-ncaa-fbi-investigation
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By: Hannah Banas Since the school shooting in Florida, there has been a strong movement to change the gun laws in the United States. In the aftermath of this tragedy, companies and their public relations departments have had to make decisions about the businesses’ reactions to it. Major companies such as Delta Airlines, United Airlines, MetLife, and First National Bank of Omaha have cut ties with the National Rifle Association (NRA). These companies have decided that it is better for their business to lose the support of the NRA than to have the bad publicity of being associated with the organization. At a time in which people are demanding a shift in gun control laws, public relations departments and companies have to weigh the options of whether an affiliation with the NRA is going to have a positive or negative effect companies. This is the job of a public relations employee. They have to be the lines of communication between a company and its customers and supporters. They have to listen to what their supporters want and then decide how the company should react. By creating a dialogue between companies and the people they serve, public relations specialists are responsible for the ways their specific companies are associated with the NRA. By: Isabel Mayoras Everyone is still reeling over the newest Snapchat update. For those of you lucky people out there who haven’t yet been forced into this new format I’ll explain the frustration. Instead of keeping your Snapchat stories on one side of the camera and your sent and received Snapchats on the other, they’re intermixed. This has caused an uproar amongst Snapchat users and studies show that 80% of all Tweets about Snapchat are negative. The main complaint amongst Snapchatters is that it has caused people to send a Snapchat to someone they didn’t intend to because people who have just added to their story go to the top of your feed along with those who have sent you a photo. This frustration has not gone unnoticed by Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel although he has made it perfectly clear that he is not going to change back to the old format. Plenty of Tweets have been posted about how many retweets it would take to get Snapchat to change but they have all been debunked. Sadly, things aren’t looking up for the app and its users unless a change is implemented. Source: https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/920239/Snapchat-update-redesign-Instagram-Stories-2018-new-design-old-version-revert By: Allison Haworth Entering week two of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the PR experts are striking gold as sporting events are aired almost every time one turns on the T.V. Consisting of 15 sports ranging from Alpine Skiing to Bobsled to Figure Skating, there is no shortage of exciting news to report back to the citizens of each competing country. Because the Winter Olympics take place every four years, there is a lot of excitement occurring in the media to cover as much content as they can. Before PR and marketing professionals publicize their stories or commercials, it might be worth taking a look at the rules and guidelines the Olympic Committee have put in place in order to protect their rights. As for sponsors, there are many regulations for media coverage with the athletes. Because brands are paying the athletes a majority of their paycheck to do the sport they love, it is expected that they advertise the sponsor’s logos on all sportswear at almost all times throughout The Games. One downside of this is non-sponsored athletes could gain exposure due to association in the Winter Olympics. According to Glean.info, Ambush marketing is “a planned attempt by a third party to associate itself directly or indirectly with the Olympic Games to gain the recognition and benefits associated with being an Olympic Marketing Partner.” While this is one of the many rules from the United States Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee, it is a sticky situation for PR and marketing professionals of the sponsoring brands. There are many rights that the Olympic Committee has when it comes to media coverage, but we all can agree that The Games unite the world as one as we all compete for the gold! Image Source: https://www.total-croatia-news.com/sport/24356-one-month-away-from-2018-winter-olympics-who-will-lead-croatia By: Sydney Nelson One of the largest trends in social media today is the creation of “Stories”, which is a feature that compiles a slideshow of the things you have done throughout any given day. This trend began with Snapchat and brought huge success. Instagram quickly hopped on the bandwagon and made a feature on their app also called “Stories”. YouTube wasn’t so quick to act, however last week on November 29th, they announced that they will now be launching “Reels”. YouTube’s senior product manager, Roy Livne, claimed that “Reels” will essentially be the same thing as “Stories”, however they will be designed specifically for YouTube creators. Reels are unique to YouTube because they will be available to view beyond the 24 hour time limit, unlike the Snapchat and Instagram feature. Reels will also link YouTube videos and “YouTube-y” stickers to “Stories.” After Snapchat and Instagram had huge successes, YouTube is also expecting Reels to become a huge hit. By: Allison Haworth In weeks past, there have been many occurrences of crisis communications at play. Debatably one of the most demanding sectors of PR, crisis communications is “the effort taken by a company to communicate with the public and stockholders when an unexpected event occurs that could have a negative impact on the company's reputation” (PR News Online). Most large companies outsource a PR agency to take care of all their PR needs. In one incident lately, NBC was in dire need of crisis communications for the host of The Today Show, Matt Lauer. After sexual assault allegations unwrapping this past week, the crisis communications team for NBC was hard at work considering Lauer was fired only 24 hours after the discovery of sexual assault accusations. One may think, how does crisis communications have time to alleviate the situation in 24 hours? A major part of crisis communications entails the reconfiguration of a company's image after a traumatic event has happened. In order to deviate this negative spotlight, crisis communications plans are implemented as soon as possible to recover from the impact. As for NBC, the termination of Lauer was most likely the first step in getting this out of the news. While there are many hidden steps to recover The Today Show’s reputation, one of the steps was to issue a public apology from Matt Lauer himself; To take responsibility for his actions and show that NBC doesn’t tolerate or value those actions. In just about any major negative news story, crisis communications departments are quick to react to recover and repair the reputation of the company at risk. Crisis communications is hard work but necessary to keep the negative news stories out of the media. Sources: http://www.prnewsonline.com/lauer-rose-and-the-new-face-of-crisis-pr/ http://www.preparedex.com/six-guidelines-for-ethical-crisis-communications/ = By: Mary Claire Reagan Relevant in today’s society, companies view their product as a direct reflection of who they are as an institution and organization. Twitter, is just one of the many companies that embodies this theory and is now changing its product to match their own company’s character. In the past, Twitter would often verify, or put a blue check mark, next to well known, individual accounts to signify that that was a main account rather than a spoof account. This served as a way to decipher between a LeBron James fan page and LeBron James’ own personal twitter account. However, Twitter has now shifted its guidelines in that only accounts that comply to company rules will be verified. This is one way the company is taking steps to protect the companies own values and reflect who they are on the internet, rather than “verifying” accounts that are not consistent with their own mantras. In order to make this change, Twitter is now “reviewing” twitter accounts and debating whether they accounts verifiable. By: Sydney Nelson On October 24th, Twitter announced that they will be launching a new “Advertising Transparency Center” in the coming weeks. This Transparency Center will display all ads that are currently running on Twitter, how long ads having been running, creative content associated with the ads, and which ads are targeted to you and why. Additionally, users will be able to report inappropriate ads or give negative feedback if they feel a certain ad doesn’t pertain to them. In conjunction with the new technologies for general ads, Twitter’s Transparency Center places a huge emphasis on political ads. In this section of the center, users will be able to see all currently running political ads and ads that have run in the past, transparency about the identity of the organization funding the campaign, targeting demographics (age, gender, geography), and historical data about the ad. This need for a transparency center in regards to political ads was likely established in response to the 2016 election in which Russians bought advertisements that interfered with the U.S. election. By: Lindsey Nelson
As an extremely swamped college student, it can be hard to stay in the loop with news outside of your busy schedule or the tiny college town of Oxford. But as students interested in the Public Relations world, it could not be more important, and is a good habit to get into while you’re young. Here are 3 quick ways for busy students to stay in-the-know: The Skimm The Daily Skimm is a daily newsletter that Miami University students can sign-up to receive an emails breaking down recent events in government, sports, Hollywood, etc. Their main goal is to give their readers short blurbs that get to the point, so the subscribers are not bombarded with unnecessary information. It will only inform you of the most relevant news, with a wide variety of topics so readers can impress their friends with new facts daily. Most people think Twitter is just a platform for celebrities and following friends, but it is a perfect place to receive news and companies. Every major network is always updating their account with breaking news updates, before it can hit actual TV-news. Even if you do not follow news accounts, you are bound find current events updates from your friends liking or retweeting them. Or if you want to find news on something specific, the search feature is an awesome device to type in key words and instantly say what the world is saying about it. Snapchat Who would have thought that Snapchat would turn into a news outlet? With being one of the biggest social media apps out there, it is one of the easiest ways for college kids to quickly access different news sites of their choice. Daily Mail, People BuzzFeed, and ESPN are just a few of the channels that are provided. By: Kendall Cree With the new season of Stranger Things just coming out, Netflix decided to implement various marketing strategies in order to promote media attention. These strategies were able to make the buzz of the already popular show, even more hype. One of the best forms of marketing the show’s producers implemented was using interactive advertising. Netflix, the creators of Stranger Things, partnered with the company Lyft to provide an interactive experience for its viewers to promote the new season coming out. On October 26th and 27th nationwide Lyft users were able to change its map in which the cars would show up as common Stranger Things items in the show such as waffles, Christmas lights, trucker hats, and the show logo. In select locations, there was also an interactive car ride with pulsating ceilings, flickering lights, and many other show themed features. In addition, to partnering with Lyft, Netflix decided to use their social media to release trailers and other teasers. They released trailers about the upcoming season along with posters and a game for fans to download and play. This helped create brand loyalty and add more attention to the upcoming show. If this wasn’t enough advertising, along with the listed above strategies, Netflix also worked with Eggo brand waffles. Eggo claimed they were unaware of the iconic Eggo waffles being used in the show so frequently and were more than happy to help promote the season. Eggo used their waffles as an ad space for the show and even made recipes “to enjoy while watching the show”. By implementing all of these strategies, Netflix was able to advertise to many different demographics. Lyft is mainly used for 16-30 year-olds, social media and a video game is for the younger demographic, and recipes can advertise to moms who cook and could tell their children and family about the show. All in all, I believe Netflix made excellent strides towards advertising for their already successful show to help make it even more popular. Source- https://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/23469.as By: Allison Haworth Miami University and the Miami Indian Tribe have a special partnership valuing the importance of education. With an ongoing relationship of over 45 years, their many interactions and relationship with one another is greatly valued with shared interests of a common geographic, historic, educational and cultural interests. Whether it be having relationships with another business, person or an Indian tribe, it is highly professional to stay on common grounds with mutual beliefs, compromises and upholding joint responsibilities to maintain valuable relationships. Unlike other universities’, Miami has created, developed and maintained a relationship with a diverse group of people. In PR, this is extremely relevant and crucial to have relationships with a plethora of people, companies and colleagues. You never know when your company will be in hot water for a recent incident, but having a valuable partnership and relationship with a variety of people can help yourself and others in the long run. “The Miami Tribe is proud and honored that these lands, the rivers, and this great institution continue to bear our name,” said Chief Lankford of the Miami Tribe. This type of mutual respectful relationship with one another not only makes for civil interactions with one another, but also creates good publicity for Miami University as they strive for a diverse, unmatched education, setting students up for success in their future careers. Sources: http://miamioh.edu/miami-tribe-relations/index.html By: Tyler Madsen The recent revamp and move of Miami Career Services from Western Campus to Armstrong came with a useful tool not known to many, called “handshake.” Handshake is a database similar to LinkedIn, however, it is more tailored to the internship hunt. The site is fairly easy to use, and is divided into four different tabs:
By: Claire Bowman Have you ever crafted the perfect tweet, but then you’re suddenly forced to delete an apostrophe or abbreviate a word to fit Twitter’s 140-count limit? Well, those painful days are over, as long as you can contain yourself to 280 characters from now on. Recently, social media giant Twitter has upped its character limits for tweets, making some excited and leaving others wondering why. Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, tweeted about the change as a problem solver and said it would still maintain the social platform’s “brevity, speed, and essence.” There has been some speculation that this change will also attract older users. Because these users are usually more active on Facebook where they have no limit on what they can post, this increase in limitations may make Twitter more appealing to them. If this is the case, companies who heavily use Twitter to advertise may need to think about changing up their game plans. For a platform that has seen most of its popularity with a younger crowd, marketing has been largely targeted for them. So if the audience starts to change, public relations teams will likely need to alter their strategies if they want to appeal to multiple groups. Lastly, it will be interesting to see if companies start to take advantage of more characters. When it comes to advertising, shorter typically means sweeter, so it may be beneficial to focus on changing up content instead of length. By: Claire Bowman This weekend, the popular soap brand, Dove, received backlash for a racially insensitive advertisement. It featured a black woman who removed her brown shirt and transformed into a white woman wearing a light shirt. The company has since deleted the post from their Facebook page, but not before online users began to criticize them. People have been offended because the post insinuates that black skin is less clean than white skin. Though Dove has publicly apologized on their various social media accounts, we must wonder where this company’s public relations and advertising teams were trying to go when developing and approving the advertisement. Dove is a company that has been a large proponent of showing off diversity in the past, so this has left some dumbfounded. Their quick response to the post’s negative reception shows they care about how their brand is received, but what does it say about the brand and people of color? If Dove really wants to be seen as having inclusive products, then they need to keep a much closer eye on what they post in the future. Otherwise, their reputation with the public is going to deteriorate, as we’re living in too divisive of times for brands to be making mistakes like these. Photo Source: www.thewrap.com |
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