Public Relations

Mashable.com is an interesting website that is geared to the tech-savvy reader who is also keen on business and advertising, promoting, and marketing of a wide range of innovative products that the everyday consumer is bombarded with.  In regards to its background on social media marketing mix, mashable.com definitely offers a varied and objective opinion.  I also found that they cover stories that would not necessarily be classified as headline news, but promote them in the same position that a headline articled would be place on their website.  For instance the first article that popped out to me was an article titled “Anonymous now fighting child pornography.”   The article was about the same group of hackers that had targeted major corporations like Bank of America, however this time they were focusing their cause on a battle that is being fought in the virtual world of the internet.  They vowed to attack any site, and stated that “Our demands are simple. Remove all child pornography content from your servers,” Anonymous wrote in a statement. “Refuse to provide hosting services to any website dealing with child pornography. This statement is not just aimed at Freedom Hosting, but everyone on the internet. It does not matter who you are, if we find you to be hosting, promoting, or supporting child pornography, you will become a target.” (http://mashable.com/2011/10/24/anonymous-child-pornography)

Public relations are the organized activities intended to favorable influence the public.  Public relations effects all areas of public life from individual persons, to entities and corporations.  Public relations efforts have been used since ancient times and incorporated in to different tools including propaganda.  Public relations practitioners advise and counsel an organization’s management on communication questions affecting its publics, the serve as an early warning system on emerging issues related to its success, and they respond to crisis.  PR firms also place an emphasis on media relations which focuses on establishing positive relations with the media. Some of the other functions of public relations are promotion or selling, community relations, government relations, public information, special events, employee relations, and lobbying.  In order for public relations to succeed there must be a promotion of mutual understanding between the organization that sponsors the campaigns and on or more of the public on which the organization depends to achieve its goals.  Public relations rely on advertising and marketing for its campaigns to succeed.  Firms must also maintain ethical standards.

If I were to develop a brand the first thing I would want to figure out is what exactly is the target market that I aiming to advertise to.  I would do this buy utilizing a variety of marketing research techniques, or by hiring a top company like Ogilvy to conduct the research.  This way as a company we know who we are talking to and who we are trying to draw in as our potential consumers. Once that is done I believe you can accomplish relationship marketing when consumer develop a strong preference for brand through one to one communication.  We want to feel like we have a relationship with our consumers, that they can rely on us for a quality product, and that our brand represents a part of who they are as an individual.  This can be done through the Internet, direct mail, telephone, and through television.  This allows us to start our marketing scale on a direct marketing level by customizing to individual consumers, using personal forms of address and bits of personal information gleaned from computer databases.  This also allows their effectiveness to be measured so that the final product can be finely tuned.  By establishing a niche market as a consumer base, we can build our relationship with them which leads to brand loyalty.  The most loyal consumers are the best advertisers because they constantly rave to their friends, family, and even strangers about a product they love.  By doing this we can build on our foundation of loyal customers.