Public Relations Night at the University of Illinois

This year, I organized the first ever Public Relations Night at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Two of my former pr students who now work in public relations (Liz Sablich at GolinHarris and Stephanie Florence of JSH&A) gave interesting presentations to a packed room.

Public relations is fast growing in the College of Media at the Univ of Illinois (and you thought the Univ. of Illinois was just about Advertising). Yes we do have an excellent advertising program. But the pr side is getting stronger each year. In Spring 2011, students can take:

Advanced Public Relations
PR Writing
Introduction to New Media (my course that will examine social media and pr)

Below are pics from the public relations night. Thanks to Ray and Ms. Bullow for the excellent pics.   All the originals are here














Yours truly giving the opening remarks.




















Students from the PR Club.  Always professional. I am always amazed  and impressed.

Liz and Stephanie giving their keynote address.

It was a packed house.

Ruth

Ruth. In case you are wonder what is Ruth, it is the name of Edelman's new branch. They do "integrated marketing." It will be interesting where this goes and how other firms respond.

In Ad Age, an Edelman representative had the following to say:

"People have talked about integration for the 30 years I have been in the business, and some have said that it's just not possible, but I don't agree with that," Mr. McGuire said. "It's not easy, and you need a resonant idea that can be interpreted across the media mix while moving people to action. But it also has to be cost efficient, and that's part of what's driving marketers to consolidate resources.

This is a must watch because it can help answer a lot of questions about integration that many have asked but few have had a chance to observe.

Advertising Standards Authority gets online power

This is an interesting bit of news. In the UK, advertising regulators have now extended their power so they are now monitoring social media/online advertisements. This means that online campaigns that are problematic can expect scrutiny and censure. This quote from the story pretty much sums it up:

"This is a massive step. Consumers don't differentiate between adverts on TV or online and this ensures that claims online will be subject to the same strict scrutiny of those in traditional media," said an ASA spokesman."

Barcelona Principles

The Barcelona Principles. A new action movie? A new controversial Dan Brown novel? Well not really. They are the recently agreed upon ideas on how to carry out public relations research more effectively. They are at the top of my summer reading (a long list that waits to be finished):

http://www.cipr.co.uk/content/news-opinion/presidents-blog/4912/barcelona-principles-the-end-of-ave-

20PR Grants Available for Not-for-Profit Organizations

I like this idea. This organization (CyberAlert) is giving monitoring services to non-profits.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100909005970/en

What a unique way to promote public relations research.

Amazing Insight on the "Antennagate" Apple PR scandal

This video offers funny insight on the Apple faulty antenna crisis. It is done by the same group that did the Tiger Woods crash animation. Funny.

I just won the National Science Foundation's|Public Entity Risk Institute| Swiss Re Dissertation Fellowship (a long title)

My friends & collegues

I hope you are having a good summer.

Today, I found out I was awarded the National Science Foundation's|Public Entity Risk
Institute| Swiss Re Dissertation Fellowship (a long title).

In summary, its a top award in the field of disaster studies.

More details can be found here:
http://clas.ucdenver.edu/periship/Program.html
http://clas.ucdenver.edu/periship/Fellows.html

A formal press release will be issued in the coming days.

Thank you for your help and support everyone.