"...the public relations person must know human behavior and combine that knowledge with specific information about people within the institution and people outside whom the institution deals with." -- Chapter 1, Public Relations Writing
By nature I am a perceptive person. My Myers-Briggs type leans heavily in the intuitive as opposed to sensing side. I have always been very (if not overly) sensitive to the actions and emotions, concealed or expressed, of those around me. It never ceases to amaze me when I meet those in highly public positions who seem oblivious to how their speech and actions affect those listening to and watching them.
My goal in this class is to learn how to professionally apply this natural knowledge and hopefully assist the organization for whom I work to market itself better. At this point in time, our institution has a fairly disjointed method of marketing. The campus admissions office is responsible for their own marketing material including the college catalog and all brochures and material sent out to prospective students. Any other entity within the school, i.e. distance education, community education, etc., does their own thing. The webpages don't even match up. Just click online campus to see the difference. I can see a trend toward trying to unite and combine, but because this would ultimately involve rearranging departments and job descriptions, I don't think it will happen until some retire or new administration comes in that is not afraid to shake things up.
Hopefully this class will teach me how to prepare a logical and air-tight proposal for how an effective marketing and public relations department (more likely position) would look and how it could benefit the college not only in presenting a unified and effective front, but monetarily as well. (Let's face it--that's the bottom line. If you can show them how it will save them money, they'll listen.)
So for those of you who have worked at a similarly dysfunctional organization, feel free to share your experiences!
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Hey, I liked your blog, because it was very informative to me and helpful for me to really understand the reasoning of it. I would have to say that I feel that I am a sensitive person also; many times I choose not to show my emotions and feelings, because I either don't want people to see my vulnerable and weak side, or I don't feel that I need to allow people into my personal life and thoughts. I don't usually like watching public speakers, because of the simple fact that they usually don't seem to understand how their speech affects their listeners (who really knows if they even wrote their own speech?).
ReplyDeletevery interesting blog! it seems like you have a few things to say about the marketing campaign here at VCSU! go get em tiger! ha ha It is good to be passionate about something and i hope that you succeed in making a difference. i feel that public speakers make a point to target a specific speaker so it is only natural that other listeners are going to take the emssage differently. i would have to agree with Randy in that i am not a big fan of public speakers because they usually do not connect with my specific interests and feelings.
ReplyDeleteWow...why don't you tell us how you REALLY feel?!
ReplyDeleteEvery organization has it's issues and kinks but that's part of business and life. I mean, what sense of accomplishment would we feel if we didn't have anything to overcome?
Our university is making a lot of improvements these past few years and while we still have a lot to work on, we're getting there.
It was refreshing to read a post in which you could really feel the passion coming out of the reading. The topic of the post alone was enough to catch my attention immediately.
ReplyDeleteThe last organization that I worked for, before my current job, was once in a similar situation. Although it was all one tele-communications company, the business to business people wanted nothing to do with the verification people, who wanted absolutely nothing to do with the magazine sales portion of the business.
Finally a new CEO took over and decided that there was too much money being spent on having the different people doing the same job for three different departments. He combined the portions of the branches of the company that he could, streamlined efforts, and brought along record profits.