One strange phenomenon in public relations where even the most ethical and transparent practitioner is caught fudging the truth on occasion come when it’s time to give a crowd or attendance count. For some reason, when it comes to estimating the size of the crowd, at say our annual fire prevention days, we tend to become world renowned optimists.
Archives for public-relations
I just read a story on Phoenix’s ABC15.com that leads me to believe that Arizona tourism might be looking to crew up a backup line if the fire starts getting too hot regarding the State’s controversial immigration bill.
The Arizona Governor’s Task Force on Tourism and Economic Vitality has hired HMA Public Relations in what the story says is an effort to “tackle any negative backlash caused by Senate Bill 1070.”
Mashable is a daily must read for anyone interested in social media and its connections to public relations and marketing. I read the blog everyday. Many of the postings do not directly relate to our type of PR, but many posts feature tips and tatics we can certainly use.
A great posting looks at the future of public relations and social media’s impact on the public relations field and our jobs as PIO’s and PAO’s.
The story contains allot of information, links to other stories and video but is well worth the time to study.
I was just cleaning up my favorites sites on Internet Explorer. I have not updated my links section on this blog in awhile. I use these favorites for both my work as a fire department PIO and as a marketing and public relations professional for a national not for profit organization. Over the weekend I will hopefully add some of these new sites to my links page.
I present to you the most often visited PR sites that I rely on for information.
The history of the public relations profession in many ways can be considered kind of bland. Don’t get me wrong; what we do is crucial in the dissemination of information. I can’t imagine a world without public relations, but from an historical perspective things sort of, in my mind, just fed off of itself to evolve. The last several years have show tremendous moves forward in the way we practice our profession, but the good old days really wern’t that old at all!
There has long been a battle over the defining line between marketing and public relations. A goal of many of us in PR for many years was to take command of all communications functions, including advertising and marketing. Well it appears that this is finally coming to fruition.
I just received some PowerPoint slides from a presentation I saw in Las Vegas a few weeks back that tackled this issue. I thank Peter Clarke of Omnex Marketing and Media Solutions for the presentation he sent.
Here are some of his salient points. Some pertain to our work as PIO’s, some are more business and agency related, but still interesting reading -
I’ll admit it, I’m getting old, but as the saying goes “the more things that change, the more they remain the same.” I was recently going through a bunch of old boxes and found some college books and papers that included an article written by Larry Litwin and Ralph Burgio back in 1971. It was on the timeless topic of the definition of public relations. Although computers and others technological tools we take for granted, and which play a big part in our work, were nowhere to be seen back then, their definition is still time tested and right on.
Here are some nuggets from their wisdom -
We have all know for some time that in many surveys firefighting rates at the top of the chart in “most stressful” jobs. This fact again proved to be true in a recent survey held by CareerCast.com. where firefighters ranked as number one.
It appears that we, as PIO’s, get the double whammy though. Hurry to the head of the line for a stress test because we also rank in the top 10! According to the same study public relations officers ranked eighth in stressful occupations.
If you have the unenviable task of being in a volunteer fire department and serve as both firefighter/PIO it appears you are heading for the five packs of Marlboro’s a day plan.
With all the snow in the northeast during this bitter winter a good old “Adopt a Hydrant” program was in order. I am happy to report that it was a big success, due in no small part to the new strength of the word “public” in public relations.
