I have noticed a new and up-and-coming market for public relations specialists recently. Lately, I have noticed more product placement in video games. Obviously, video have been used for years as celebrity publicity, but more and more companies are paying to have their products appear in the video game graphics. For example, I am a huge Guitar Hero fan, and I own all four titles that have been released so far. I just bought Guitar Hero III and noticed a cartoon-like can of Red Bull sitting on the Guitar Hero stage. It’s very discreet—positioned off to the side of the stage so as not to distract the player—but it’s still a great example of product placement in video games. I think (and have thought for some time) that video games aren’t given the credit they deserve as public relations and advertising markets. There are brilliant graphic specialists creating the games that can easily incorporate product depictions in the graphics. Also, tons of people are playing video games, and when they play them they stare at the screen for hours at a time. Therefore, the image of a product would be emblazoned in their minds after playing! I definitely think that more companies should utilize the growing market of video games.
http://www.redbullusa.com/en/ArticlePage.1191436083852-1159677853/htmlArticlePage.action
What many people don’t understand is that a college is a business. That’s why every college has to have public relations specialists. In a perfect world, a college’s only duty would be to provide quality education to the students. But in the real world, public relations play a huge role in higher education. A college has a lot of people to please: students, the families of students, alumni, staff, faculty, community, benefactors, government, etc. If these publics aren’t happy, then the college gets a bad reputation. A bad reputation for a college can lead to fewer applicants, less donated money, less alumni support, etc. When you think about all these factors, it becomes clear that there is much more to running a university than providing an education. For example, Virginia Tech recently experienced a terrible tragedy on its campus. Imagine all the statements that had to be released and all the security improvements that had to be made in order to keep that school in business. Of course, perspective students would be reluctant to apply to Virginia Tech unless they and their families knew that the proper measures had been taken to ensure their safety. To communicate that message, public relations teams must be present. Not only did the event affect Virginia Tech and its publics, but it also affected every other university and college in the country. The same goes for the Texas A&M tragedy that we talked about in class. Their reputation affects all the other colleges so they had to implement a stringent PR campaign to recover. For example, College of Charleston implemented a new emergency notification system in response to this crisis. Clearly, public relations are very important in educational institutions.
http://acct.tamu.edu/smith/bonfire.htm
The way that celebrities are portrayed today seems to me to be very different from the way it used to be. My parents portray their favorite celebrities from their generation as extraordinary and special, even legendary. They admire them. Today, the media would rather make fun of and belittle celebrities than put them on a pedestal. In the past, if a celebrity had a drug problem, that celebrity’s fans would be rooting for them to heal. Today, if a celebrity has a drug problem, we exploit them in the media and offer no condolences. The way I see it, people used to think of celebrities as royalty, something to aspire to. Now, regular people think they are better than celebrities. Becoming a celebrity nowadays is asking to be hated and derided. The question is, is it the celebrities who have changed, or is it the public? Are celebrities really worse people than they used to be? Possibly. But I think it is more likely that the media have realized that there is more money to be made by exploiting them rather than helping and protecting them. This is because people would rather hear about a celebrity suffering and misbehaving than read about a celebrity doing just fine. So it makes sense that the media would rather cover the bad than the good in regards to celebrities.
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/12-10-2004-62755.asp
I joined Facebook approximately three years ago when I was a freshman in college. Then, it was new and simple, and there were very few members compared to now. I hardly even use it anymore due to its complexity and sheer size. I do, however, take an interest in the recently created Facebook group called “1,000,000 strong for Stephen T Colbert.” While I understand that Colbert’s run for president isn’t exactly legitimate, I still find it significant that his “campaign” has entered the realm of Facebook. It causes me to speculate that perhaps one day, real presidential candidates will focus part of their campaigns on Facebook or Facebook-like networks. It’s an easy and affordable way to reach mass audiences. Also the members of Facebook probably include a lot of innovators and early-adopters who are likely to take the campaign initiative and run with it, serving as unpaid campaign managers for the candidates. You might think that this tactic would be below the radar of candidates, but I wager that over the coming years, Facebook will become more than just a social network. I think it’s quite possible that, due to the mass audience Facebook attracts, it could very well become a political network as well.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/colberts-facebook-flock/
I read the book A Million Little Pieces and I loved it. Then Oprah did a show exposing that certain parts of the book weren’t exactly true and everyone shunned the book as trash. I personally do not care that the book is not completely true. In fact, as I was reading it, I kind of assumed that it wasn’t. For one thing, human memory is far from perfect and when people recall things they often change it in many ways. They may not be necessarily lying—they just don’t remember it exactly as it happened. Also, the book is for entertainment purposes. If it were a dictionary or a documentary, it wouldn’t be fair to make things up. But it’s not. If people think that every novel they read that claims to autobiographical is completely factual, then maybe they shouldn’t read autobiographies. Another possibility is that the whole ordeal was just James Frey’s idea of publicity. After all, a lot of people probably would have never heard of him if not for this controversy. I think he’s a great writer, and if he wants to make things up for whatever reason, that’s okay with me, because he’s really good at it.
Check out the link for the background story:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0104061jamesfrey1.html
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