Twitter Trend Analysis

By Kati Tusinski Berg

Sample tweets from students in Berg's ADPR 1800 course.

A couple of years ago I totally resisted Twitter, but over the past year I have come to enjoy it as a way to connect with colleagues, students and industry pros. Thanks to my colleague Gee Ekachai (@FvrythingPR) for encouraging me to get up-to-date with my social media skills. I have tried to develop a professional brand on Twitter than relates to my work as a professor in public relations in the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University. Not only do I use hashtags for my courses (e.g. #adpr1800 and #ccom2000) but this semester I created a semester-long project for my ADPR 1800 Principles of Public Relations classes.

Students were required to create a public, professional-oriented Twitter account for class. I spent one lecture at the beginning of the semester reviewing online professionalism and ethics to remind them about the implications of posting inappropriate content online. Then students chose at least three PR professionals (e.g. @augieray or @ginidietrich), PR agencies (e.g. @ogilvypr @BraniganComm PR-related organizations (e.g. @PRSA or @PRnews) to follow on Twitter.

Is Negative PR Bad for Business?

By Sarah Bonewits-Feldner and Tom Isaacson

For practitioners working in corporate communication and public relations, an ongoing concern is the impact of negative publicity on relevant target audiences. The old adage “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” – frequently cited by business journalists and alternately credited to either P. T. Barnum or an ambiguous “they” – deserves a closer look.

Unequal, a sport-equipment manufacturer, recently decided to use the controversial Michael Vick to promote its products. In a story described in the Wall Street Journal, company executives and consultants debated if the move would help the relatively unknown company or if it would be ‘business suicide.’ Apparently, it was the former.

According to the article’s author, Lee Hawkins, after the endorsement deal was announced the high number of hits on Unequal’s website crashed the site and sales initially went up 1,000 percent before settling “at about triple what they were a year ago.”

However, we know a single example rarely settles an argument. For every organization that benefits from negative publicity, counter examples exist as well.

E!’s new PR reality show:The Spin Crowd

By Danielle Kuhman

E! TV has a new show called ‘The Spin Crowd.’ It is a reality show dealing with Command PR, one of the largest public relations firms in the country. After it strategically premiered August 22 following the season premiere of ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” it had over 2.3 million hits (source: TV by the numbers). From what I know, this is the first show of its kind.

Take a look here at the promo for the show online.

One of the issues I have with it is how realistic it would be in a setting away from Hollywood. PR does similar things everywhere, but in a place like Los Angeles where beauty and fame are magnified more than anywhere else, it may not be very realistic for a PR associate in St. Louis, for example. The first episode alone features the owner, Jonathan Cheban, telling Ericka, a first year associate, that he has made her a pre-paid appointment for lip injections. The PR people I have talked to or those who have come into any of my classes at school seem very different from the associates Command has working for them.