Obay explained, part 2

Colleges Ontario will start rolling out its reveal ads to explain the Obay teaser that began in mid-February. The campaign was launched at Centennial’s Centre for Creative Communications, Monday morning, February 25 at 10 a.m. Corporate Communications & PR postgrad students helped with the event. 

Obay teaser ads explained

Looking for an example of a viral ad campaign that has created some buzz on the web? You don’t have go any further than our campus!

Colleges Ontario announced this morning that it is the organization behind a series of provocative ads around the province about Obay: a pill that seems designed to thwart independent, creative thinking in young people.

It’s tied into Colleges Ontario’s new branding campaign and it’s all going to be explained and launched at a news conference at Centennial’s Centre for Creative Communications next Monday morning.

We’ll be able to see first-hand what kind of media turn-out (both traditional and social media?) the campaign attracts.

Check out the Colleges Ontario media alert, and some of the blog sleuthing carried out by Torontoist on February 15 and February 21.

Photo from Torontoist blog, taken at the northeast corner of College and Queen’s Park by Jonathan Goldsbie.

Thinking about being Podcast ready

Just a reminder to the class that those who have digital audio recorders or iPods (30 GB or more with video capability) to bring them to the Monday, February 11 class. We’re getting ready to go audio!

A ‘comments’ alert

If you start finding comments to your posts coming from further afield, you can probably thank long-time PR bloggers like Joe Thornley and Bob DeDrew. In the last 24 hours, both practitioners have referred to your student blogs that are coming to life.

Check out Thornley’s Pro PR post at: http://www.propr.ca/index.php/2008/advice-to-the-class-of-08-blogging-is-an-essential-for-new-pr-practitioners/

and Bob Ledrew’s FlackLife post at http://flacklife.blogspot.com/2008/01/students-in-public-relations.html

Classroom twitter

Now that we’ve looked at micro-blogging, do any of you in the class have Twitter accounts? If so, what is your typical tweet content?

Yet another grad profile on the program blog

Natasha Carr’s profile of Paul Keable, Vice President of the Consumers Wellness Division at the Manning Selvage & Lee PR firm, is up on the program blog.

A new definition for marketing

The American Marketing Association has a new definition for the term marketing. It says:

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”  

The old definition stated:

“Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”  

As a PR practitioner to be, what are your thoughts about the changes?See the BtoB magazine article, and thanks to Mitch Joel for pointing this one out.

Another profile on the program blog

Rhonda’s profile of Nadia Radovini — one of our grads working at Sunnybrook Health Sciences — can now be found at http://centpr.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/health-communications-a-grads-perspective/

What is your online reputation?

We didn’t get to online reputation management in the last class, but we will be addressing it soon. It’s time to start thinking about it. You can do that by reading some of these posts:

• Auburn PR student Christi Eubanks asks for the Dos and Don’ts of Online Reputation Management.
• Auburn instructor Robert French responds with his own posting.
• as does Heather Yaxley, who lectures at Bournemouth University.
• and Paull Young of Converseon in New York.
• and Michael Allison, a PR student at Royal Roads University.
• and Australian PR consultant Lee Hopkins.

• check out the resources provided by Distilled, a British web consultancy with a focus on reputation management.

 

Classmates’ blog posts

Although your individual blogs won’t start cropping up for a week or two, some students in the class will have postings on the program’s blog, starting today with Karin Archer’s profile about graduate Catherine Patterson. Check it out on The Word. On deck are profiles by Rhonda and Natasha.