Another Save the Whales video!

I found this "Save the Whales" web video on YouTube today when I searched: "Save the Whales". It is so much like the one that I made just three days ago. I thought that it was so weird that people can have almost the same exact idea for a web video. I think that it is cool to see that people have the same idea that I do about the same cause. Take a look at both of them and notice the similarities!

Save the Whales

This is a web video that I made for my social media and public relations class. I made this video based on the number of whales that are being killed all around the world and therefore are becoming extinct. This video was made to make people aware of the danger that whales are in right now and how people can help with the cause. I used sproutbuilder.com to make this video because I found that it was the easiest way to make a video without having any previous knowledge of how to do so in the past. I really enjoyed making this video and I think that it was a good learning experience on how to use new technology. I did not know that it was that easy to make a video on your own and I am glad that I have that knowledge now. I hope that you enjoy my video!

Sprout Builder

For our social media and pr class that we are taking, we were asked to make a web video discussing an issue. I decided to do some research on how to make a video because I had never made one before. I had a feeling that I would struggle with this because I have never been that good at making technology work in my favor. With that being said, my friend told me that SproutBuilder.com was a easy website to use for the beginner. I got onto their website and easily learned how to make my web video which will be up on my blog on Tuesday. I learned that making a web video was not as hard as it sounds and I actually had a really good time making mine. It allowed for me to broaden my horizons in the technology world. I definitely recommend using SproutBuilder.com. It allows for you to create a screenname and password and then allows for you to paste pictures onto slides. You can also add music and edit the whole presentation in any order that you prefer. The website also has a blog that allows for people to post the different techniques that they used in their media content which is very helpful. So if you plan on making a video of any type, I recommend using SproutBuilder.com.

"Tweeting Your Way to the Top"

This is an article that I had found about the social networking tool, Twitter. This article in PR Week's website gives an inside as to why Twitter is important for companies to use and for companies to utilize.

The article states, "Twitter can be thought of as a short form subscription tool. One of the major benefits of creating a corporate presence on Twitter is that it is spam free, which makes it more inviting to subscribers. The 140 character limit requires tweets to be clear and concise, which forces users to make each interaction meaningful. Once a regular conversation is established through frequent tweets, your profile has the potential to attract a strong following."

In my mind, I think that Twitter is a tool that companies should really begin to use on a daily basis. Technology these days is so important to keep up with if you own a company. It allows for people to connect and build relationships in so many different ways. I think that the use of Twitter for a small or large company will escalate the number of followers and consumers that the companies may not have had in the past. This article talks about the relationship between PR and headline news, customer service and CRM, engagement, interaction, and viral marketing, and immediate gratification and distribution.

Save the Whales

Whaling has become a sport for many people, and it is now putting the whales in severe danger. I am interested in this campaign that the organization Greenpeace has put together, because we are doing an interesting class project for our media, internet, and public relations class. We have to make a 30-60 second web video, and I think that I am going to make my web video on how whales are becoming extinct in some species. I think that Greenpeace is a great organization, because they have had some pretty powerful campaigns that have worked in the past. I would feel confident giving them my money for the Save the Whales campaign.

According to the Greenpeace website, "The statistics say it all. The blue whales of the Antarctic are at less than 1 percent of their original abundance, despite 40 years of complete protection. Some populations of whales are recovering but some are not. Only one population, the East Pacific grey whale, is thought to have recovered to its original abundance, but the closely related West Pacific grey whale population is the most endangered in the world. It hovers on the edge of extinction with just over 100 remaining."

Greenpeace organization has taken action by doing protests such as going to places where they want whaling to stop, and spelling out "Help End Whaling" out with their bodies. I think that making a web video will be fun for this campaign, and I hope that people become more involved in this issue.

University of Dreams

I found this website when I was looking up public relations' internship sites. I had seen groups on Facebook that talked about the University of Dreams program, but I had never actually looked at the site. This program guarentees that if you are a college student, and are looking for an internship, then you can be given an internship at a number of their locations. They have campus locations at the following places: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington D.C., San Diego, London, Barcelona, Hong Kong, Costa Rica, and Sydney. While visiting the website, you can look at the different internships that you can apply for, and the location of where they are. There are requirements for grades and such, but they have different levels of difficulty. I think that this is a great website, and a great program. I think if you are looking for a public relations internship, then this is the website for you.

"Teen Vogue" brings teens to the mall...

I was looking on the website PR Week, and I noticed that Teen Vogue had an interesting public relations campaign. Teen Vogue came up with this campaign, because their sales are down. They are opening a shop location in Short HIlls, New Jersey. This will be a place in the mall where teen girls can go and hang out. There will not be anything for sale in this "hang out spot", but it is a way for Teen Vogue to adverise for themselves without shoving products in people's faces. This store will only be open for about a month between November 28- December 26 this winter. This "haute spot" will have food, drinks, paces to try on make-up and clothes. This place will also have a spot where you can charge you iPod and cell phone. I think that this is a good pr plan, because it allows for girls to be able to hang out with girls their own age in a safe place in the mall. The whole campaign is to raise sales for Teen Vogue, and for the amount of money spent in the mall as well. I think that it will be very successful and I wish them the best of luck!

Podcast

listen to podcast

This podcast was dedicated to showing people that children are starting to blog, just like their parents! In this day and age, children are learning more and more about technology. They are already on Facebook and Myspace. They are learning how to do things on the internet at such a young age now, and are learning the tricks of the trade long before we did. This podcast also gives an insight into the thoughts of political parents who have to make sure that their children are behaving on the internet.

Show Notes to the Podcast:

{Music Intro}

→Introduction to Podcast “Topic: Adolescent Blogging” .5seconds

{Music}

→Sherry: Article by Bob Sullivan from MSNBC.com 1min 3seconds

{Music}

→Cori: Concerns & Benefits 3min 3seconds

→Bradley: Controversy with Justice Samuel 4min 25seconds
Marie Osmond/Adolf Hitler 5min 26seconds

{Music}

→Analee: Raising Entrepreneurs, “Carl”/“Yuga”

{Music}

→Closing Discussion 7min 40seconds

→Resource Mention: Blogsafety.com 9min 46seconds

→Closing 10min 2seconds

{Closing Music}

Second Life?

When we watched the Second Life video in class on Tuesday, I thought that it was somewhat bizzare to be completely honest. I understand the concept of Second Life and I think it is a very good concept. I like how one can conduct a class through Second Life and learn virtually. I think that it is creepy though that random people can actually create a "virtual world". In this virtual world, Professor was saying that someone can actually get raped and that studies show that the victim can actually feel the same emotional pain that one would feel if the were physically raped. I think that this concept is extremely weird! I think that the idea of Second Life is a good one, but I also think that maybe their should be more restrictions on the actions that one can perform on this "virtual world."

Cell Phones and Celebrity Gossip

It is crazy nowdays how much people are obsessed with celebrity gossip. I have previously blogged about this, but it never ceases to amaze me with the technology that is involved in it now. First, it was popular blogs such as Perezhilton.com, TMZ.com, and TheSuperficial.com. Now, it is TMZ.com sending their most dedicated customers celebrity gossip via text messaging. In the last few months, cell phones have become the quickest way to recieve this gossip(even before computers now)! This is because of the quickness of internet service that new cell phone technology offers. Websites such as People.com and TMZ.com have been looked at more frequently because of this celebrity obession that people cannot wait to look at when they get home to their computers. I personally think that celebrity gossip is interesting to look at, because of the fashion etc., but I also think that checking your cell phone every 10 minutes is a bit crazy!

Dove Evolution

I think that everyone should see this commerical. This commerical is all over YouTube and is used as part of the Dove Evolution campaign. This commerical is used to show women, men, and children what people can do to change their images after using photoshop. I do not think that their is anything wrong with using photoshop, but I do think that people should be aware of the fact that photoshop is being used. This is a commercial that shows a young lady sitting down and having her hair and makeup done. After that, it shows how they change the size of her eyes, the length of her chin, and the wrinkles on her face etc. They change all of these characteristics of her using photoshop. I think that the Dove Evolution campaign should be able to reach out to children that are in elementary and junior high school. I think that is when people tend to have low self esteem in those years and I think that it would be healthy for young girls to be able to see what photoshop can do to one's image.

GarageBand!

GarageBand is an application on Mac computers that we discussed in class last period. I think that GarageBand is really neat because it provides the necessary tools for people to use to make music and videos! Since I am in Professor Weisgerber's Public Relations for Non-profits as well as this class, I learned a little bit about GarageBand in that class as well through our client that my group is working for. Tina Williamson, our client who is in the process of starting the website Women Worldwide, told us a neat thing that people have been doing with GarageBand. She has a friend that works at the children's terminal cancer center for a local hospital. She encountered children everyday that thought it would be neat to be able to write and record their own music. She told the children one day to write a poem about themselves. After they had done this, Mac donated computers for the day at the hospital and the children got to use the GarageBand application to make their poem into a song. Through the application GarageBand, they were able to record and edit their songs and burn them onto a CD. I thought that this story was really touching, and I think that it is really special that Garageband can make such a difference in someone's life.

"Silence the Vote"

I saw a commercial campaign for Voting 2008. I thought that it was an interesting, because there were about 20 celebrities using reverse psychology to make age groups 18-24 more susceptible to voting. People such as Halle Berry,Leonardo DeCaprio, Jennifer Anniston, Jessica Alba, Seth Rogen, and Sarah Silverman. The celebrities used their fame to get to young adults to go out and cast their ballot on November 4. The whole campaign was using reverse psychology by telling people to "not vote". Since people seem to think that young adults ages 18-24 do exactly the opposite of what you want them to do, this campaign was targeting that exactly. All of the celebrities were filmed saying "do not vote". They were saying phrases such as "don't worry about your economy, because your children will suffer", and "do not vote because your age needs to be silenced". I thought that this was a great campaign, and they had so many big name celebrities to back it up. They make voting seem "cool" even though all of those celebrities probably will not even vote themselves! Either way I think that everyone should take a look at this website because if nothing else, it is funny to watch.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vtHwWReGU0

Dipity

I am in the intro to PR class, and as Professor Weisgerber blogged about yesterday, I did the Dipity project. Although I had said in class that the Dipity project was a hassle, I do think that the Dipity project was very interesting once people starting to explain their findings. Dipity was not the hassle, my computer was! It was taking a very long time to upload but I think that is because my computer has a virus of some sort! Anyways, Dipity was interesting, because it tracked the history of public relations all the way back to the Declaration of Independence. The years that I covered were 1990-1995. I thought that the years I had were very important because the 1990's were the decade of technology. Instead of looking for people that were influential in that time period, I looked for technology that was influential on PR. I found that the invention of Microsoft Works was important because it was a way for people to be able to write press releases and edit them in a way that is easy. I also found that the invention of the World Wide Web was important because it allowed for people to be able to get on the internet and have websites. People could then put there news, images, articles, etc. on the internet for the public to see. These days, having the oppurtunity to have PR on the internet is one of the most important places to have PR. Everyone uses the internet now a days starting back in elementary school. Advertisements are all over the internet, so I think that covering the WWW in my Dipity project was very important.

Craigslist!

Craigslist is one of the most helpful tools on the internet for finding anything that you could possibly be looking for. For example, Craigslist is a classifieds website with listings for housing, pets, furniture, cars, jobs, classes, events, etc. People can post whatever they want on this website and have people look at it for about 30 days for free. You can post as much as you would like . People can look at the posts and respond if they want to or maybe even call if the person lists a phone number. Not only are there places for people to post items for sale, but they can also write and post on the Craigslist blog. Writing on the blog allows for people to not only make PR and advertise for themselves, but they can also open up the floor for discussion. People on Craigslist can write about many different topics such as dating, hobbies, or something that they want to sell. No matter what/who you are trying to sell, I recommend using Craigslist as a way of PR and blogging.

The "Anonymous" Internship

Since last Thursday we were talking about how we should not write about a bad internship, because the company can get upset, I decided to write about my internship, but leave the name of the company anonymous. Leaving the name of the company that I worked for to the imagination, allows for me to freely write about how awful my summer internship was, and also the PR skills that they lacked. I find it interesting that a European day spa could be one of the most hostile places that I have ever worked. Day spas are supposed to be relaxing, but the spa that I worked for proved my assumptions wrong. I was the assistant to the marketing director. She obviously had some kind of personal problem with me, because she was rude from day one although I was doing her job for her and not being payed a dime (or even receiving a "thank you").

Why is this relevant to a public relations class? For example, I had to create an event that would promote the spa. To do so, I created an event that shall remain nameless, in which I brought all of my friends to. If my 15 friends had not showed up, there would not have been many people there. Since my boss was so rude/evil to me the whole three months that I worked for her, that event is no longer taking place because the boss cannot find anyone else to work for her. She also has made my friends and I no longer want to give the spa any buisness, and lastly, the PR that they are getting from me is not exactly positive. To prove my point, when you have someone working under you and having them do your job for free (because it is an internship) for three months over the summer, you may want to consider being nice to him/her because you never know what kind of PR you are getting from your employees.

Google search engine?

What happens if you want to start a buisness website but you cannot get the website to be on the first page of Google? This is a problem that I ran into during my Public Relations for Nonprofits class. When I was typing in the name of the company, it would not come up at all and other companies with the same name would. The difference was that the company that I was trying to google was a .com, and the company with the same name was a .org. It is interesting how much two of the same name websites can be confused with each other.

When starting a website I found that it is necessary to get on the internet and make sure that those confusions are not going to be made with your company. To put all of that work into a name and then realizing that it is the same name of another company would be a disappointment. Although you can use the same name and change it to a .com or a .org, Professor Weisgerber said that you can make sure it coming up on the first page of Google by creating a page. By creating a page and sending it to google, they can look at it and see if it is "first page" worthy. If it is then you are all set but I would make sure you take those precautions before your website ends up on page 15 of Google search.

Facebook-ing

I would like to go ahead and say that I am so jealous of the guy that invented Facebook. He is now a millionaire AND got to drop out of college. He created something that will be around probably for a very very long time. Facebook connects people together in the easiest way possible. People that I have not seen since pre-school are on Facebook and can find me through simply searching my name or looking at another friends profile. I stay connected with people I grew up with, went to camp with, and people who I still see everyday. I think that we are lucky to have such a system. I think that it is stereotyped as being a college student program but in all actuality, people of all ages can utilize it. People can post what they are doing at that minute through a status application. People can now write under other people's status's making it somewhat of a blog. People can write and comment under pictured and that is also like an on going blog. I think/ hope that Facebook is around for a very long time, keeping people connected like they should.

www.facebook.com

Mac v. PC

Since the recent commercials that both Mac and PC are airing, I think that PC's really need to think of something more interesting than putting Jerry Seinfeld in theirs. The new Mac iPod Nano color commercial is fun to watch, and it made me want to go buy one even though I already have an iPod. Their commercials are made for people of all ages and would make even little kids want to go get a Nano. PC on the other hand make their commercials for a more mature audience. The commercial with Sienfeld made absolutely no sense to me what so ever and was not a good advertisement. It definitly did not make me want to buy a PC. I think that it was a good try at being "creative" but I think that they could have better PR with a different stratedgy. Maybe they could add more color or perhaps a fun song to reach some people that are younger and more "hip", which Mac reaches out to everyday. I know that i am just partial to Mac in general, because I am an avid Mac user but I think that PC could have better commercials for their own sake.

Celebrity Blogs

When Professor Weisgerber asked our class if anyone looked at blogs, I did not realize it at the time but I look at a couple everyday. I am not proud of the fact that I look at celebrity gossip almost everyday on the internet, but unfortunately it is a guilty pleasure that I have. There are two celebrity blogs that I look at all the time: The Superficial and Perez Hilton. I chose to write about these two blogs because I do not think that people normally would look at them as being blogs.

People have become obsessed with looking at Perez Hilton's blog everyday. He is practically a PR blog for celebrities, bringing them into the spotlight and showing pictures of their everyday life on his website. He usually makes an obscene remark about the celebrities and their lives but he is famous for that exactly.

I always wonder though if the celebrities get mad about what he is saying about them or if they do not care because he is giving them another oppurtunity to be in the news. Whether it is good PR or not, they are in the spotlight none the less.

http://www.thesuperficial.com/

http://www.perezhilton.com/

It is interesting how many blogs The Superficial has to itself. They pretty much have blogs about everything including the stars make-up, clothing, gossip, couples, sightings and all kinds of other stuff. I think what Perez HIlton does is very hilarious because he is not afraid to say things that other people would be scared to say. So I guess after all this time, my pre-judgements about blogging are now over.