Year in Review

Over the past semester, I have found this class to be very beneficial. Having public relations major I expect to use many of the skills that I have learned in this class. Many of the assignments in this class will help me in my future line of work. Learning to use publisher to complete the newsletter will be a good skill to have in the business world. I also really enjoyed making the Facebook fan page. As prevalent as social media is becoming in our society and the business world, knowing your way around the social media site is another great skill to have. My Facebook fan page is for the Kettle Moraine Figure Skating Club and has so far been a great success among its members. The prevalence of social media was also apparent through the social media case studies. I looked over the success of the Harry Potter Tweets campaign. I also had a great time at the BMA event. It was really refreshing to do some learning outside of the classroom, meet new people, and get some good feedback on my resume and interviewing skills. Blogging was also an interesting experience. I had never blogged before, but I surprisingly found it to be a lot of fun. I don’t think that I had a favorite blog over the semester. I just enjoyed reading other classmates points of view on topics that were being discussed in class. Overall I really enjoyed this class.

Comet Branding

When listening to Sarah Meaney’s presentation, I found out that she had a lot of great public relations information to offer. She spoke a lot about how get your company out there and how to properly use social media to do that. The main focus of her presentation was how to format your online writing to effectively reach your audience.

One of the points that she stressed was to be concise in your writing, and to get to the point FAST. It amazed me to see how what areas people look at on a website, and how much time they actually spent looking at it. This time is very minimal so some tips she gave us were:

• Write in inverted pyramid style, in which the main idea and most important information come first, and the details follow.
• Highlight the keywords
• Use digits rather than spelling out the numbers
• And, Use bulleted lists :)

Another important thing to think about, not only when writing online, but for all writing in general, is to clearly define your audience. With a specific audience in mind, it is easier to keep them interested because you can use specific language to target them. When writing for your audience, keep in mind tone, format, voice, flow, content, and length.

Finally, looking over Sarah’s website for Comet Branding, I really enjoyed it. It has a fun layout, and has many tabs relative to the objective. However I think working links to all of their clients sites would be a great addition!

When Environmentalists attack!

The Nestle candy company has recently been receiving some heat from a global environmentalist group known as Greenpeace. While it is the organizations directive to stand up for environmental issues around the world, Greenpeace is taking their objective to the next level staging a full out attack on Nestle. The organization has created several parody videos criticizing Nestle for its use of palm oil in their Kit Kat candy bar product. They have also taken over the wall of Nestle’s Facebook fanpage, posting this outrageous statements concerning Nestle’s use of the palm oil and how this act is leading not only to the destruction of Indonesian rainforest, but to the endangerment of the orangutans. However, it’s not the use of the oil that is enraging Greenpeace, it’s the source of its purchase. It seems no matter where else Nestle goes to purchase this product; they can’t hide from the heat of Greenpeace.


While enduring Greenpeace’s attacks, Nestle has made an attempt to recover. However, the attempts have so far been unsuccessful and only further provoke Greenpeace to produce more video parodies and attacks. Any recovery has also been prohibited by some of Nestle’s responses to unwanted comments that come off in a tone that is, “at times sarcastic or antagonistic,” as quoted in an article on the BNET website.

Personally I don’t think that this is a proper use of the Facebook fanpage application. The objective of Facebook fanpages is to support the pages namesake. Therefore, I believe that the Nestle Company has every right to be upset about the negative comments that are littering their wall. If Greenpeace wanted to properly voice their outrage on Nestle’s actions they should create their own properly titled page where all people with similar views could come together. However, with the lightening speed of social media and the internet, good and BAD PR spreads like wildfire.

"What happens in Vegas, stays on Facebook"

I was very excited to attend the event, “What happens in Vegas, stays on Facebook.” Being an avid Facebook user myself I was interested to learn what people in the professional world had to say about Facebook, and how my Facebook decisions will affect me in the future. The first presentation, by Emily Lenard of WiredWI, was basically a tutorial on how to manage the privacy settings on Facebook. Learning about the option of creating lists that can control what specific people on your face book see was the most helpful part for me in the first section. Now knowing this, I know I still have the option to put up whatever materials I want, and customize what each of my friends is able to see. This will definitely help protect my future reputation with perspective employers who often base character judgments on materials posted on online social media profiles.

The second part of the presentation was even more beneficial for myself. This section of the presentation focused mainly on the networking, social media website Linkedin. Linkedin is just recently coming into popularity among many people in the business world. Presenter Katie Felten of MKElive gave us a very informative tour of the site, showing everything from how to present yourself professionally on your profile to how to make connections with other users and use that to your benefit. Overall this was the most helpful for me because I am not particularly familiar with Linkedin and it will be a great business networking tool to have in my belt in the future.

Overall this was THE most interesting presentation I have attended yet at this university, and better yet, I actually learned some things!

Opions taken with a grain of salt...

As a business owner, your main objective is to earn a profit. Hopefully, most customers taking advantage of your business or service will be pleased with the outcome. However, you will have the occasional customer who is displeased. Thus being so, it is your job, as a business owner to make sure that customer’s displeasure goes away and they continue to return to, and leave your business a satisfied, happy customer. I can guarantee you, Sarah, a customer at a Minnesota movie theater will not soon be returning after receiving a vulgar email in response to her complaint of a poor experience. Granted, Sarah’s email wasn’t the most polite, however it is not her job to keep the business owner happy, it’s the other way around. To read the full email exchange, visit the website for the local Twin Cities newspaper.

In response to this, two Facebook fan pages have come about; one, with over 5,000 fans, supporting Sarah and her movement to boycott the theater, and another supporting theater president Steve Payne, with only 200 fans. I do think this is an appropriate use of the Facebook fan page application, especially for Sarah and her cause. She is able to inform people on a large scale what had happened to her and allows her to get support from them very quickly. Although this is not the intended use of the Facebook fan page it is very fast and effective.

Recently, I have come across a similar fan page on Facebook in which disgruntled customers can ban together and make their point heard. This is the fan page titled “I HATE Bronze Body & Brew and I Want My Money Back!” This fan page is in response to the local Whitewater tanning salon going out of business without informing any of their customers and leaving them with numerous tans lost. In such a small town, the page has reached almost 1,000 members and still continues to grow. Many fans, of which I am one have used this page to vent and talk about plans of action to get our money back.

Harry Potter Tweets

Twitter is a social media giant, which goes without saying. It allows users to create simple status updates of 140 characters consisting of anything from a simple statement to a link to an interesting video or quote. It has become very popular since its conception in 2006, and is used by not only your average joe, but now by celebrities, businesses, campaigns, and has even been influential in recent elections. Because of the great influence that twitter has had, Warner Brothers chose to use it as one of the major promoters for its latest Harry Potter movie Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

In their twitter campaign they created an application page called “Harry Potter Tweets” that allows you to send magic spells to other twitter users. The Harry Potter Tweets website allows you to send four different spells to any twitter user you are following. The first spell is named Amortentia, a type of love potion that casts a heart shaped animation on the receivers Twitter page once it is opened. The second spell is the Unbreakable Vow, which casts an animation resembling a binding light which symbolizes an unbreakable promise to the Twitter user you send it too. Another available spell is the Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder. This spells animation clouds up the receiver Twitter homepage with “instant darkness. The final available spell is the Oppugno spell which casts an animation of birds who appear to fly at you from the screen and then burst into an explosion of feathers. All of these available spells are spells that were used in the latest Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. All in all the campaign was very successful.

Budweiser's Facebook Takeover

With the biggest sporting event in America looming over our head there is one question on everyone’s mind, “What will be the funniest Super Bowl commercial!?” The super bowl has attracted sports fans everywhere since its conception, but in recent years, has attracted a new crowd with its humorous commercials. In an effort to come out on top this year, Budweiser has launch a campaign where viewers can vote for their favorite ad to choose which one airs during the big game via the social media monster know as Facebook. According to the Advertising Age website, Budweiser is the year’s biggest advertiser with a total of 5 minutes of total air time.

How exactly do they plan on this total Facebook takeover? The advertisement to vote will first show up in your news stream, tempting you with the chance to vote for your favorite commercial. But to do so you must first become a fan of the Budweiser Facebook page as well. Once you have voted, you have the option of posting your pick on your wall. This allows all of your friends to see your pick and may lure them in to do the same. Also, now that you are a fan of Budweiser they can send you constant updates on things such as new ads and promotions.

Personally I think using social media as a vehicle of advertising is a great idea. It allows one person to see an item and gives them the possibility to share it with all of their friends. It can be updated frequently and available to millions of people. Now those of you who are the biggest fans of Budweiser, don’t worry. There are many other companies using social media such as Doritos, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola.

“It’s official: Super Bowl ads are getting more buzz that ever before — and the game has yet to begin — and it’s all because of the power of the web and social media.”

check out the article, http://mashable.com/2010/02/02/budweiser-facebook-super-bowl/

Writing for Multimedia: Blog 1, "Who am I?"

Hello again, My name is Samantha Archer and I am currently enrolled in a journalism class titled, Writing for Multimedia. I am a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater majoring in PR, with aspirations to become either a PR practitioner or an ad worker. I have just recently began my studies in the field of Public Relations and i am finding that it is a good fit for both my lifestyle and personality.

I am very interested in fashion, and styling and would like to somehow merge that into my studies. I would be very interested in represeting various designers or lablles, or in helping to plan and market large scale fashion events. The largest public event in the fashion industry is fashion week, and it would be a dream to someday be a part of that.

In this class I hope to learn how to not only present myself professionally on the web but in person as well. I also hope to increase my currently minimal netwroking skills and make connections with others to expand my horizons and my overall knowledge of the PR and marketing world.