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This is an original film by Michael C. Rogers, Daniel Taroy, and Alison Pang. Copyright 2011
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXi6EgoTFDE[/youtube]
This is a documentary on the store in Carousel Mall, Play the Game Read the Story by Michael C. Rogers, Daniel Taroy, Jerry Lange, and Jess Weingast.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMZZaX5xYUY[/youtube]
A few weeks ago, on April 5th, I attended an advertising series’ speaker, Joanne Zaiac. Honestly the only reason I went was to get extra credit for an advertising class, but I am so glad I learned about this phenomenal ad agency. Zaiac is the President of the New York Region of Digitas, and is a very impressive public speaker. She opened with a short video compiled of clips and photos from some of their most successful ads, and they were extremely impressive. Digitas is an advertising agency that thrives on creating integrated strategy plans for their clients. These plans offer a traditional media platform, such as television or radio, and pair it with another platform, frequently on the Internet, via YouTube or Facebook. These ads offer constant reminders to the consumer and frequently result in a jump in sales for their client.
The most interesting part of her speech revolved around how great of a company Digitas strives to be. Once a year, Digitas shuts down all of its offices and employees work on a community service project. Last year, the New York offices closed down and completely re-furbished an urban community. It was so nice to see an agency as large as Digitas taking time out to try and make a positive change in their city. Zaiac continued on to describe all of the employee benefits Digitas offers and the different organizations and teams employees form outside of work.
Although I do believe Zaiac was partially trying to recruit new minds from Newhouse, I must say I was thoroughly impressed with both Zaiac as President and Digitas as an agency all together. I even did some research into interning for them, but found out that they only accept rising seniors. This is definitely a speaker I will remember though, and plan on applying for that internship!
Jon Greene graduated from Syracuse a broadcast journalism major. According to what I jotted down during his visit, Greene worked for about 10 years in the broadcast field before going to grad school and pursuing a career as a screenwriter.
Currently undeclared, I change my about my future career path each day. Each time I tell my family and friends about the latest major I am considering, they remind me I still have a year to decide.
Hearing the successful Jon Greene did not figure out his passion in life until 10 years after graduating college oddly gave me hope. The pressure to fall in love with a career in four years was lifted.
Screenwriting, for some reason, never made it on my list of possible careers. Yet I still found it interesting to hear how this form of communication works for a TV series I regularly watch.
Greene began writing for Law and Order SVU in its second season. The co- executive producer mentioned that working with established character comes with the benefit of not having to “think people up.” Instead, the screenwriter seeks out aspects that are true to the character but have yet to be revealed. Making the character’s words and actions consistent with his or her personality is key.
In the case of Law and Order SVU, Olivia Benson is established as the compassion while Elliot Stabler resonates as the outrage in crimes. Viewers tune in not for these characters, but rather the horrific crime stories that consume each episode.
Greene’s first aired story, an episode entitled “Honor,” revolved around honor killings by members of a Middle Eastern diplomat’s family. Greene, I believe, said the idea for the episode came from the news, as where many of his story ideas come from for the show.
He emphasized that along with researching crimes in various news media, the co- executive producer utilizes technical advisers the show has on hand. These advisers consist of two retired NYPD officers and a district attorney. The crimes such individuals have either witnessed or been apart of, as noted by a professor in the audience, are often ones most people would not conceive to be possible. In the end, real events either directly or indirectly inspire each episode.
Based off statements Jon Greene and the two professors made about screenwriting and my exposure to it in this course, I can somewhat safely say screenwriting will remain off my list of possible careers. But who knows, maybe I’ll be the next Jon Greene on a show that has yet to be created.
As it is not right to post the link to a website that illegally streams the “Honor” episode of Law and Order SVU, I encourage you all sign up for a free 1 week trial of Hulu and watch the episode there.
Here is the link to get you started, trust me Law and Order fans this is an episode worth seeing!
A couple of weeks ago, I attended a talk by Matt Seiler, the CEO of MediaBrands. I had no idea what MediaBrands was, and really wasn’t that interested. I was just going because I got extra credit for my advertising class to attend. However, this man was one of the most interesting and funny people I have ever seen give a talk, so i am really glad I went.
MediaBrands is a global advertising and social media company that gets hired by clients to manage their media. They manage brands’ twitters, facebooks, youtube accounts, and more so that they can connect with their customers and hear feedback about the brand. He said that this was a hard branch to work in because there is a lot of risk involved; social media is always changing and you always have to be aware of what’s coming next.
Although Matt Seiler is can’t really work a computer (he had to have the tech guy do the slideshow for him because he kept pressing the wrong buttons), he is a media genius. He created the new Voltswagon Beetle campaign with the interactive youtube page and twitter account. He is really good at his job and you can tell he loves what he does.
“I figure out who I am by figuring out who I’m not.”
Though publicist Kelly Cutrone had a bunch of memorable quotes during her talk on Monday, April 11th, the first one really resonated with me. There usually isn’t a clear-cut path to life, Cutrone said.
When she first began speaking, Cutrone, born in Syracuse, started from the beginning of her career. Cutrone first began her public relations career in New York City, was successful in creating a name for herself over the years and is now the founder of the PR and marketing firm People’s Revolution.
Cutrone wasn’t the person I assumed she was. When I first saw the flyers and email announcing her visit, I expected her to be a supermodel-like, serious businesswoman. I was mistaken. Cutrone was funny, laid-back and less formal than I expected, but I’m sure she’s not like that at work.
Her early career was extremely busy, and Cutrone said she never really found who she was. She expressed her love of meditation and had a noticeably spiritual side to her. In the cut-throat world of the modeling, entertainment and publicity industries, everything moves really quickly. Cutrone admitted she got caught up in her career early on, but it all eventually caught up to her. Years later, with her young daughter and People’s Revolution, Cutrone seems to have found a new view on life. Though she didn’t “find” herself in the most conventional of ways, Cutrone’s past has left her with a wisdom she puts to use in her career.
Cutrone’s latest book is called Normal Gets You Nowhere: Trust Me They’re Lying to You, and she referenced it a few times during the Q and A session. It was dominated by a bunch of career questions as expected, but Cutrone really stuck to her belief that we need to know ourselves in order to be truly successful and comfortable in our own lives.
I was pleasantly surprised by Cutrone’s talk. Though I’m not interested in becoming a publicist, her outlook on life and careers were interesting and gave the audience a lot to consider.
I was really looking forward to this event because I felt that it would give us a glimpse at the future of the journalism industry. Although it was not what I expected, I felt it gave some really good insight into the growing Apple industry and how their various products apply to different parts of the journalism and media industry.
The panel discussed how apps for news outlets are considered “on” apps, due to their ever-changing, interactive nature. For things like this, the panel explained, the iPhone would be more beneficial because of its convenience and ability to be updated quickly. “Off” apps are things like magazines viewed on the iPad. This is because of it’s simple nature with few links and little ability to be interactive. The whole idea of the magazine apps for the iPad is to give reader the convenience of their favorite magazine without having to carry around an extra 300 pages, not necessarily to make it more interactive.
I personally think that if a magazine is going to have an app for it’s subscribers via the iPad, they should take advantage of the technology and make it more engaging. Maybe they could embed a video in the article or have moving pictures to illustrate a story. Or even simple things like questionnaires. They could also offer special videos or games to just to subscribers who use the iPad app. I feel in this day and age, innovation can make or break you and I feel like as much innovation a publication can use, the more methods it has for getting its content out to it’s readers.
On April 26, 2011, I saw Michael Brito, Vice President of Edleman Digital, present his lecture: From Social Business to Social Brand. Mr. Brito spoke of the importance of how the use of social media by both consumers and companies has an immense impact on businesses. The audience was encouraged to Tweet about the lecture using the hashtag, #Brittalk. This in itself completely proves Brito’s point of how much of an influence social media has over users.
Brito reinforced one of the major points that we have discussed throughout the entire semester. He stated that honesty and trust are two of the most important factors that PR practitioners need to be aware of when reaching publics, especially in the realm of social media. Being an honest and truthful practitioner is definitely one of the major concepts that I will apply to my future learning and career; gaining and keeping the trust of publics is arguably the most important part of being in PR.
Brito explained that the social customer is both more demanding and powerful than ever before due to the rapid growth of social media. To keep up with this, brands and business must communicate effectively with these consumers, meaning that it is essential to directly interact with these consumers—now easily accomplished through social media. Brito went into further detail by describing the importance of businesses using advocates of their company to an advantage, as well as providing them with relevant content to work off of. Hearing Michael Brito speak gave me a much better insight as to how essential social media is to all types of businesses and just how influential we are as advocate consumers.
When I heard that Danny Zuker was coming to Syracuse, I knew that I needed to go. I remembered Mr. Zuker from the special features on the Modern Family DVD, specifically as the source for one of the funniest storylines in season one, which involved Phil (Ty Burrell) suffering from kidney stones. What I didn’t know, however, was that Mr. Zuker was a Newhouse alum, which made attending his presentation all the more important to me.
Before going to the panel, I expected Mr. Zuker to be sitting at the head of the room, essentially spearheading the conversation by himself. But it turned out to be a discussion that was led by two other writing professors (the presentation was for their respective writing classes, but open to other students), which ended up working out well. Not only was the lecture a great opportunity to hear from Mr. Zuker and his writing experiences on Modern Family as well as his previous shows, but it was also a great lesson in writing for television overall, especially with the input the other two professors contributed.
I will admit, however, that I wish we could have spent more time talking about the behind-the-scenes aspect of Mr. Zuker’s work on Modern Family, but as one of the writing professors said, we were at a lecture for writing, not a lecture for Modern Family. Yet in spite of this, it was a rewarding and insightful presentation to attend, especially for someone like me, who isn’t a TRF student but has always been interested in TRF and screenplay writing, specifically.
On April 26th, Vice President of Social Media at Edelman Digital Michael Brito visited SU to talk to us about the transition from “Social Business to Social Brand.” There’s no surprise that social media is changing how the public receives information. It’s becoming so integrated into everyday life, it’s common for people to give it up for Lent nowadays; I kid you not, several of my friend’s gave Facebook up for Lent this year, and many failed. Because it’s so influential, businesses are rushing to social media’s doorstep to better reach their customers.
The “Social Customer”, as Brito called it, is growing much more influential. Because these various social networking sites allow people to reach a much bigger range of people, the word spreads much faster and wider than ever before. We’ve all experienced this. You’ll see that several friends on Facebook will say how amazing this movie was and how all of you should see it, and before you know it you just have to see this movie. Or someone on twitter will complain about how awful AT&T’s wireless service is, or how unprofessional an employee at JFK airlines is being towards him/ her. These little comments affect you, as a consumer, much more that you realize. Because the public is influencing each other’s product perceptions so much, businesses have to incorporate social media into their business plans in order to reach their customers and achieve success.
What Brito referred to as the “Social Brand”, these businesses and brands are turning to social media to not only connect with customers, but listen and respond to them as well. Brito used an experience from his own life to exemplify this transition to “Social Branding”. He was waiting in the airport to fly to Syracuse and he wondered if his flight would have wireless Internet. He tweeted this question and within a minute, that airline carrier responded asking for his flight number. He gave it to them and a few moments later he knew that his flight would in fact have wireless Internet. Through Twitter, that airline was able to connect with one of it’s customers and build a stronger relationship with him by helping him and answering his question in a very timely fashion.
While it’s important for business to use social media to help their customers, it’s also important to maintain good standings with them so their products or services don’t get trashed. For example, if someone tweets about how awful the Sheraton Hotels’ service is, the Sheraton Hotel could tweet back apologizing for the inconvenience and offering the customer some sort of compensation for the customer’s disproval. This shows that the Sheraton really cares about its customers and is always concerned about how it is performing. Brito made a point that because there is so much noise in the market, it is very important that a brand has multiple communication channels in order to get its message heard. I personally don’t foresee social media going away any time soon. In fact, I only see it growing and becoming more powerful, so the importance of businesses or any product/ service breaking into this medium is massive. Eventually, I feel every business will have at least one social networking account. It’ll no doubt become a norm of the business world.
Brito’s book Smart Business, Social Business will be released in July 2011. I figure I’d might as well do a little plug for the guy; he was interesting to listen to. Follow him: @britopian and visit his website:
