Creating an Award-Winning Campaign - Resources

During today's chapter luncheon, Debbie, Randy & I shared some tips for creating an award-winning campaign. Here are some sample award entry summaries that we referred to.

• WONKA Arte Brings Life to Day of the Dead
• LULAC Brings Presidential Contenders Center Stage to Latino Voters
• IDRA study - sample objectives

Another great place to look is the PRSA national website where there are tons of winning case studies (It's in the section of the site that's for PRSA members only.).

Also, the National School Public Relations Association website has the summaries of award winners.

There are some webinars coming up on measurement and evaluation. Remember that these webinars are now free to PRSA members!

I mentioned that Angela Sinickas is a great resource (she happens to be leading a couple of the webinars). Another expert is Katie Delahaye Paine. Both are top experts in PR measurement and evaluation. And they both have free email newsletters with lots of great info.

PRSA's Tactics publication recently had a couple of articles on measurement (May 2011; free online for members).

• "The Strategic Approach: Writing Measurable Objectives."
• "Deliverable Objectives: Considerations for Creating Measurement Plans."

PRSA's Srategist had a great article, "Confessions of a Silver Anvil Judge," that I've referred to several times (Winter 1998).

Upcoming Award Compeitions

• PRSA San Antonio Del Oro Awards
• PRSA Bronze Anvil Awards 
• PRSA Silver Anvil Awards
• Texas School Public Relations Association Awards
• Association for Women in Communications San Antonio
• IABC San Antonio

 Finally, here is my silly look at the four parts of an objective.

Editing by Ear

The year 2011 soon slips away so it’s worth a pause during the holidays to mark a celebration that occurred this year – the 400th anniversary of the Authorized, or King James Version of the Bible.

Regardless of religious persuasion, most agree the KJV marks one of the greatest writing achievements in English. National Geographic featured the KJV in a cover story for its December issue, which opines “You don't have to be a Christian to hear the power of those words – simple in vocabulary, cosmic in scale, stately in their rhythms, deeply emotional in their impact.” The article provides insights we forget:

First, the KJV represents one time a committee got it right. It is the product of 54 scholars, not of all of whom were particularly religious, nor were all with the Church of England. They produced their masterwork in a time of political upheaval with bitter divides over religious belief, and every faction already had a translation. But the “most high and mighty Prince James,” as the preface calls its sponsor, saw a new translation as one way to bring his squabbling subjects together.

How did the committee do it? Second, the KJV was intended to be read – aloud – in church and home. The committee’s goal was “that it may bee understood even of the very vulgar,” the preface adds. Yeah, they really talked that way back then. The committee divided into teams and read their draft translations of the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek aloud to each other, knowing the ear serves as an excellent editor and tends to find the perfect written phrase.

Modern writers and editors improve their product when they lean back in the chairs and speak the words just typed on a screen, as surely as reading words written with a quill on parchment.

Sic Transit: American Airlines in Chapter XI

My dad came home from World War II and took a job with American Airlines. It was opportune for him, the airlines boomed in the late 1940s as passengers flocked aboard the new four-engine piston planes that made flight both comfortable and fast. It was an exciting and romantic business, something ABC tries to capture, unsuccessfully, with its potboiler Pan Am.

This was a carriage trade back then. Fares were steep and coach class as we know it didn’t exist. That changed with deregulation. Fares fell off a cliff and airlines had to change. I recall gasps when Braniff announced a $299 roundtrip, DFW-London fare in 1980. That price stunned people, although in today’s money it would be a ho-hum $800. You can easily beat that. Some airlines, like American, adjusted. Some, like Braniff, didn’t.

Flying today is less romantic than riding the bus, although commercials by American and its competitors try to remind passengers of the glory days. Tiny seats so close together you can’t cross your legs prove more compelling.

My experience with American goes from vacations on my dad’s pass – getting up on my knees in the window seat to look at the big propellers on the wings – to enough business travel to earn gold-level AAdvantage status. That offered first-class upgrades, where there’s a whiff of romance left. At least I could cross my legs. And reading my dad’s copies of Flagship News years ago provided my introduction to internal communications.

This sea change naturally impacted airline public relations. I interviewed for a PR job with American several years ago. Romance tugged at my heart but reality pointed to the rows of cubicles emptied by multiple layoffs. I didn’t get the job. It might be just as well. PR becomes increasingly optional to a firm fighting to make a profit.

Having been through a corporate bankruptcy, I’m numb thinking about the challenge American’s PR staff faces. But the initial result seems good. I wish them well and every success in whatever the future may be.

Trust

A new survey finds the public perceives low-level employees as more trustworthy within most organizations. I find these results interesting as they dovetail with what I’ve seen informally in my public relations work over the years.

If true, this trend has multiple implications for practitioners focused on a number of important roles – community relations, internal communications, media relations, etc. For example, it may be more effective in crisis situations to have a well-trained local employee handle the media questions or meet with the mayor than to jet the big guy out from headquarters. Or, perhaps a service project featuring a group of blue-collar employees may have a more positive impact than a vice president handing over a check while the TV cameras roll.

Deciding who delivers the message can be as important as deciding what the message is.

Why PR Practitioners Should Care About Content Marketing

Michael Pranikoff, global director of emerging media at PR Newswire was the featured speaker at the PRSA Luncheon and Professional Development seminar in October. His luncheon presentation addressed the alignment of PR and Social Media because they both focus on storytelling. His focus on content marketing came from this statistic: 27 million pieces of content are shared daily. Here’s a brief video interview with Michael. You can follow him on Twitter or see some of his many presentations on Slide Share.

Highlights of PRSA’s Recent Advocacy Work

Rosanna Fiske, APR, PRSA chair, presented the state of the society in the opening portion of the international PRSA Assembly. One of the highlights was the work PRSA has done this year in advocacy for the profession, including several actions related to U.S. regulatory affairs. Here are some examples.

Letter to U.S. Senate Subcommittee regarding GSA’s use of PR firms – The Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight was investigating the use of PR and public affairs firms by government agencies. PRSA’s formal letter discussed the substantial public interest served by PR and PA on behalf of the federal government. As a result of the letter and other work, PRSA successfully discouraged the committee from restricting the U.S. government from using approved PR and PA counsel.

Comment on FTC’s ‘Dot Com Disclosure’ guidelines, ‘Green Guides’ for environmental marketing – The Federal Trade Commission invited comments about its planned overhaul of “Dot Com Disclosure” guidelines regarding advertising, marketing and sales on the Internet. The PRSA website describes: “PRSA submitted comments noting that its 32,000 members believe strongly in online consumer protections and are seeking clear guidance from the FTC regarding how businesses can appropriately communicate and market consumers online. PRSA also noted that disclosure of relationships, motivation, compensation and other pertinent factors should be the basis of all forms of marketing and communications, including emerging practices like social media and online contests. Finally, PRSA requested the FTC host a public workshop on online advertising disclosure to obtain the full input from all stakeholders.”

Letter to FDA urging publication of social media guidelines for pharma/health care – In April took action to urge the FDA to release its long-delayed guidelines for the health care industry’s use of social media. With strict regulation in place regarding patient privacy and other policies with implications for social media use.

So what do you do?

I noticed a guy down the street had been home a lot lately so I struck up a conversation with him while walking the dog while he was in his yard. Yes, my neighbor confided, he was now unemployed and looking for work.

I asked the usual question: “So what do you do?” I received a simple answer: Auto parts. He was area manager for a firm that sells parts to car dealers’ service departments. These being hard times in the car biz, orders were way down and he was among those let go.

He asked me the same question and I gave him the wordy Cutlip/Center/Broom definition of PR, which furrowed his eyebrows. “So you’re a psychologist?” No, I replied, but that’s part of it. “You’re in advertising?” Well, I do some of that. He struggled on with my reply and finally hit on an answer: “Marketing! You’re in marketing!” I figured that was as good as it gets, nodded, wished him well and went on down the street with our dog.

This is not an unusual problem for our profession. The latest evidence might be the current discussion among LinkedIn’s APR group. An entertaining YouTube video of curbstone interviews, asking pedestrians to define PR, provoked the LinkedIn exchange.

Maybe I’ll just say “marketing” next time someone asks what I do. It’s no surprise the public doesn’t understand what public relations is when PR practitioners have a hard time explaining what we do.

PRSA Holds National Polcymaking Assembly - 2 Delegates Represent San Antonio Area Chapter

Rebecca M. Villarreal (chapter president) and I represented the PRSA San Antonio area chapter at this year’s national assembly in Orlando (big sacrifice) this weekend. The big news was two-fold. With the passage of the dues increase comes free webinars for PRSA members. I don’t mean a handful of webinars. I mean all PRSA webinars, tons of them, that you’ll have access to from your desk beginning this January!

The passage of the dues measure was not a surprise given the volume of clear information provided by the board and others leading up to the event. Our chapter supported the increase because it makes sense for the future of the society. (See my upcoming Byline story or the national PRSAY blog story for more details.)

The surprising part was the fact that there was no debate about it from the floor. There were a couple of questions about the online membership form and the quarterly payment option. But that was it. In the five assembly sessions I’ve attended, never have I seen one without someone venting about something (often those rants were akin to ranting irrelevant comments at the end of newspaper articles online).

It was so refreshing this week to be a part of a roomful of 300 PRSA leaders who are truly committed to advancing the profession. Rosanna Fiske, APR, PRSA chair and CEO, deserves tremendous credit for her leadership this year. (In fact, she received an impromptu standing ovation from the assembly.) In upcoming posts, I will share news from Rosana’s state of the society as well as info I gleaned from the international conference that followed.