PR Studies

Baked by Maddy Grey

In my Creative Arts faculty, students are preparing for their degree show exhibitions.

Public relations, as so often, is a misfit. What do we make? What do we have to show for all the talk and all the work?

Advertisers have their creative visuals. Journalists have their published articles.

There was a time when we made press releases, and had media coverage to show for it. Then we made blogs and gained comments.

These artefacts are not a good way to describe public relations as they only give a glimpse of an output, never an outcome. To explain the purpose of public relations, we resort to abstract concepts such as ‘reputation’ and talk about ‘intangible assets’.

Yet most students need to start with tangibles – things they make. Only then can they explore the extent to which the things they make, make a difference.

So, in an attempt to show a product of public relations, we created a social media event (#SOSM2015, summarised by Storify), We generated scores of tweets and shared photos on Facebook and Instagram. The virtual event went well, but there was one benefit to attending in person: only then could you enjoy the beer and the cake.

So, what did we learn? Public relations makes things happen in order to make a difference. (It’s like cake, but slightly longer lasting).

Here's a paradox. Just when some social media early adopters are starting to leave Facebook, the mainstream majority (approaching 500 million of them) seem to be more hooked on the world's favourite social network than ever.

I've discovered a problem with Facebook dependency amongst first year students. They were tasked with creating, publicising and evaluating a charity event – with varied results. Facebook groups were universally created – and were relied on to disastrous effect.

One group were confident of their event's success because scores of people had indicated their commitment on Facebook. Did they show up on the day? Did they heck. The team resorted to old-fashioned word of mouth to salvage their scheme. While Facebook's success is based on its recreation of the real world of friendship online, the process doesn't work so well in the other direction.

It's easy to get people to click but where's the commitment in this? Where's the engagement? Barring a few posters, the old-fashioned means of publicising an event were missing: personal invitations, stunts, media publicity, even celebrity endorsement.

It appears the real world is an increasingly confusing place for Generation F students.