With the school year winding down, the amount of school work seems to double and the pace of life seems to accelerate. It’s sort of like that last burst of sprinting at the end of a marathon. It’s not fun, it’s actually extremely hard…but is there light at the end? I’m not sure yet.
Two major projects, a final exam, and the final days of my internship. It sure makes for a whole lot of work, especially when you add to that planning for the future and trying to maintain somewhat of a social life. As a PR person, I think it’s good to have a social life, how else do you know people?
I suppose the answer is just to hang on for dear life until the projects are finally turned in for grading and the internship comes to a close. Although right now it doesn’t seem like I’ll make it, I think the truth is that it will all be ok in the end.
So, with all of this stress, I’m beginning to wonder if it gets worse in the working world. Do things relax a little bit? Maybe slightly less stress? I’m not sure how things will work out between work and stress and freetime…but I sure hope it doesn’t get worse than what it is right now. I’ll just have to wait and see.
I think it’s common sense about when it’s appropriate to use new media and when it’s not. For example, not every company needs a blog and not every company needs a podcast. It would simply be a waste of time and resources. I read recently in another blog that doing things just to do them or just because everyone else is doing it is not a valid reason to try out new media.
All of that to say I recently saw a blog that I don’t find necessary at all. I was sitting in a movie theater the other day waiting for the movie to start. I was casually glancing at the advertisements on the screen when one caught my eye. It said, “Is blogging your thing?” It was an advertisement for a Coca-Cola blog. I thought that was ridiculous. They sell sugar water, why do they need a blog? What use of this new media do they have? People are buying billions of dollars worth of Coke everyday, is a blog really boosting sales? I doubt it. As a matter of fact, I think that a small study would show that Coke is probably actually losing money by maintaining this blog. Not only does it cost money for them to maintain the blog, but it also costs money for them to run ads in movie theaters. Coke should pull their blog and stick to cute commercials with polar bears.
As a college student, often times the end of Spring semester brings warm weather and new excitement for the coming Summer. Most often, this causes students to become more lazy with their schoolwork and not put fort 100% of their effort. Usually, grades suffer and class attendance drops. During this time of year you can find students sun-bathing in grassy fields or playing outdoor sports. Another favorite hobby during the Spring semester is taking road trips. This causes students to miss Friday and Monday classes to allow them more traveling time. This deadly combination of skipping class and becoming lazy with schoolwork could be the result of two things. One, students just want to enjoy the warm weather after a cold winter. But, the second and most important reason, is that they are simply burned out on school. Students just want a break. Spring break is only a tease for what’s to come.
So, what’s the solution? I don’t know, and that’s not the point. The point is this…does this same phenomenon happen in the workforce? Do employees become bored with the day-to-day mundaneness? What’s the solution? How do you keep employees motivated with fresh material? And most importantly, when the boredom/laziness comes, how do push through that and allow breaks for employees yet still run a business?
I think these are important issues to think about. To create effecient and effective business people they must be motivated to do their best work. And if they get bored then it could mean tragedy.
Ok, so here’s the deal… I’m tuned in to what’s happening in the tech world. I read the blogs, I watch the news and my conversations generally have something to do with the latest in technology. But, what happened to me a few days ago absolutely freaks me out.
I was driving on I-85, north of Atlanta. I was on my way to the lake with a group of friends. I had a car load of people with me. There were four of us altogether. Since I was driving I had to watch what happened next from my comfortable drivers seat.
All three of the other passengers decided to get out their laptops. Which, by the way, happened to represent all three generations of Apple laptops, there was an ibook, a powerbook and a new macbook pro. Nothing too out of the ordinary yet right? Keep reading.
So Mr. Powerbook, dials the Internet through his bluetooth Verizon phone so now he is online, chatting and checking his email on his Powerbook. That is extremely weird to me. I’m cruising down the interstate at about 75 MPH and my friend is in the back seat checking is e-mail wirelessly on his laptop through a bluetooth cell phone. But it gets better.
Mr. Powerbook then sets up a wireless network, so now the ibook and the macbook are both online through the one bluetooth cell phone! That is absolutely the craziest thing i have ever heard of! Three computers on a wireless network while driving on the interstate. All three of them had a fast enough connection to view any website, download files, and chat with their friends through ichat. What is this world coming to?
Last week I attended a brief conference and learned a lot about life and gained insight to what I want to do in the future. I want to share some lessons I learned from one of the speakers that I was able to meet and hear from. His name is Jeff Henderson and was the head of sports marketing at Chik-fil-a for many years. The title of talk he gave is called, “The breakthrough principle of irresistability.” It was about looking at the irresistable qualities of successful companies and applying their principles to your own organization to make it irresistable.
He opened with different stories about which companies compete with who. For instance, Walt Disney World doesn’t compete with Six Flags, but Six Flags competes with Walt Disney World. Why is that? Because Walt Disney World is irresistable, millions of people flood their themepark each year. Walt Disney World is now competing with companies outside of their market. They compete with companies like Starbucks. Starbucks customers pay as much as $5 for a product that cost about $.01 to produce. Starbucks products have become commodities and that’s what Disney competes with.
Jeff went on to talk about marketing and PR strategies for some of these top “irresistable” companies. Some of the other companies he addressed were Chik-fil-a (the compete outside their market as well because they don’t compete with McDonalds) and also Harley Davidson motorcycles because they don’t compete with Honda or any other comparable options. People own Harley’s because that company has made themselves irresistable.
This is just a little something to think about. I only heard the talk once and all of this information is coming from memory. If you’re interested in hearing the talk for yourself drop me and email and I’ll see if I can point you in the right direction of ordering it for yourself to listen to.
I’ve been out of town for the last 10 days, and in my travels I’ve noticed something…blogs are everywhere! I was in Clearwater, Fla. last week and noticed an article about blogs in the St. Pete Times. Very interesting. They’re taking over. I’ve also been reading many blogs that I find as I search websites for different information. I found a fairly interesting blog about graphic design. I also subscribed to Fast Company magazine the other day, and while I was subscribing I found a blog on their website, so I subscribed to that too. It’s a fairly interesting phenomenon. However, the other day, I was discussing this phenom with a business savvy individual. He agreed that the blog world was exploding with popularity, but his opinion is that eventually everything will just be bogged down with blogs. It will be too much going on and there will be no way to keep up with it all. I’m not sure what I think about that, but part of me agrees. If blogs continue to become more and more popular, surely there will just be too much fresh content out there for anyone to keep up with. Even if you are just trying to keep in one specific field, there could thousands and thousands of relevant blogs about that field. What do we do then? I’m not sure, but would like to be on the cutting edge of it when it happens.
First, you must ask yourself, “who are the primary publics in the Auburn University community.” The answer to that question is definitely students, but also teachers, faculty and staff of the university. Those are the main ones. It’s certainly far from an exhaustive list, but it’s good enough for this small post.
So, here’s the reason for this post. I’m looking out the window at a large construction project going on across the way. And I’m think to myself, “What exactly are the building over there?” It sure would be nice to know. I’d like to be able to tell you, the readers, about what’s being built. But, the truth is that I have no idea. That must be bad PR on someone’s part, I believe. Would you agree?
Off the top of my head without giving much effort to the thought, I can think of four contstruction projects going on around this campus. What exactly are each of them doing? I have no idea. Bad PR on someone’s part? Probably.
What do we do about this PR problem on our campus? I’m not sure, it’s not even my problem to solve. I’m only a few months away from being off this campus forever. However, I love it here, and I would hate for years to continue on without those poor freshmen ever being informed of what’s going on around this great campus.
What are some solutions? Maybe an Auburn University construction blog. Maybe a newsletter telling students of the latest contruction milestones, possible dates for completion and maybe even tell them what it is that’s being built.
Oh, wait, just now while I was writing this post I thought of two more projects that I have idea about what their building, or tearing down, or both. Who knows, they could be slowly destroying the campus and none of us would ever know.
Just food for thought. Informing your publics is vital. And now that it’s been several years of dealing with construction without information about them, I’m a little frustrated. And I don’t think I’m the only one.
Have you seen it yet? I just found out about this little gem yesterday. igive.com is a cool little website that takes a percentage of your purchases and gives it to the cause of your choice. The website works a little like a shopping mall. There are hundreds of stores that have signed up for this site and the more you buy, the more your cause receives. When you register with the website it asks you what cause you want to support by searching through the causes that have been registered with igive.com.
Currently, I am interning with a non-profit Christian organization on Auburn’s campus. It’s called Grace Campus Ministries. Since we are not for profit, sometimes it’s rather difficult to raise money to pay for the things we need for day-to-day operation. So, we have registered our organization with igive.com in hopes of encouraging the some 1,000 students involved in our ministry to register with the site and help raise a little money. But it doesn’t stop with our little group of 1,000. Maybe we can push a little more and encourage the families all over the country that currently support us financially to help out more by making their online purchases at igive.com.
It seems like a great idea to me. What do you think?
The Dove campaign, called “Campaign for real beauty” is a campaign aimed at young girls with the intention of increasing self-esteem and self-image. This is a great campaign because finally a company isn’t flaunting tall and skinny models for the sake of selling their product. Or worse yet, using sex to sell something. The idea that sex sells is no new concept. But, Dove’s complete opposite approach creates a fresh new image for their company. It’s catchy. The commercial shows little girls who are uncomfortable with the way they look. They wish things were different about them. This is real life. Every girl at sometime or another questions things about their beauty. It’s cool to see a company capturing this truth and putting it into a format that promotes the self-esteem of young women.
This is an interesting article about the federal government helping fund community colleges if they will offer courses in teaching people about homeland security. This seems to be another tactic in the “war on terror.”
It’s interesting to note this article repeatedly addresses “people of color.” I don’t understand that. Why can’t white people learn about homeland security? Why are these community colleges only aiming their efforts to the economically challenged “people of color?”
Basically what’s going on here is that community colleges depend on their funding from the state and the state depends on much of their funding from the federal government. So, if the feds give money to the state and the state then gives the money to the community college for the sole reason of offering homeland security courses, then that will encourage more people to enroll in college because homeland is such a hot topic right now in the news. It can be used as bait to get those that typically wouldn’t go to college.
I’m just wondering why this can’t be turned into a legitimate course that’s offered at major universities? This homeland security stuff seems to be a growing problem, so why not start training people in how to deal with problems and protect our country through advanced technology. Advanced technology like wiretapping phone lines. Oh, wait, that’s a whole other controversial issue for another day. Personally, I think my friend “W” should do whatever it takes to protect us, including listening in on phone conversations.
Back to the article. It seems as though this article is making homeland security classes only appealing to those that don’t go to “real colleges” or those that normally wouldn’t go to college at all. I just think homeland security and advanced tactics in fighting the “war on terror” should be taught at major universities all over the country. Maybe even here at Auburn.
