Tag: PR

Belieb’ing in Repair

Leave a comment

Our team chose to analyze Justin Bieber and how he immediately handled the communications issues that surrounded him whenever he chose to partake in poor ethical decision making. While Bieber had many poor decisions, we decided to focus on three incidents to further study those at a deeper level.

When we began our study we looked into past studies so that way we could have a framework and a brief understanding on PR studies of other celebrities. We looked at studies about Michael Phelps and other celebrities. From this we were able to tell that important and some of the most successful tactics were mortification to be able to repair a celebrity image. On top of this, we were able to see how the image of a celebrity before a crisis can affect how quickly or slowly an image can be repaired as well. Unsurprisingly, if a celebrity or brand has a great reputation and track record, one mistake can easily be fixed in comparison with a poor track record with lots of mistakes.

In our research, which is in total over 40 pages of materials not including our code sheets, we were able to analyze Justin Bieber and his team’s success or lack thereof of repairing his image after the following three scandals: urinating in a mop bucket and curing the name of President Bill Clinton, assaulting a limo driver and finally, getting arrested with a DUI charge. Each one of these events was detrimental to the reputation of Justin Bieber, whose brand image had been known for his innocent and charming young boy reputation. He was admired by young female fans, and these antics were a direct hit to his target demographic, fan base, and ultimately customers — the parents of these young female fans who hold the purse strings to which CD, concert ticket, and other items get purchased.

The research questions that we sought to answer were the following:
What image repair strategies did Justin Bieber use to respond to the negative public relations incidents that occurred during his scandals?
How effective were the image repair strategies that Justin Bieber used during these scandals?

After looking at media coverage, analyzing Bieber’s responses on social media, we were able to answer these questions. Overall, his strategies were not that impressive. He had no positive coverage that we could find surrounding these scandals or his responses to them. While the majority of the coverage was neutral, just detailing the facts, there was a good section that spoke of his scandal quite negatively, and many called him names. When Bieber did respond, he didn’t use mortification tactics and ultimately our team believes this was to his demise.

In comparison, when Bieber released his album, Purpose, he finally began using the mortification strategies and tactics, and that is when you can start to see his image repair truly begin. But while Bieber was not using these tactics, ultimately his reputation was slowly sinking and many were concerned that he would never be able to repair his worldwide brand and his career.

Bieber: The Comeback Kid

Leave a comment

After being dubbed the youngest artist in history with five No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 chart, Justin Bieber suffered through a public backlash filled with unflattering tabloid headlines due to his immature and arrogant behavior.

His rebellious antics included everything from spitting on fans, getting caught with drugs, walking off stage, getting caught with a DUI, a smiling mug shot, peeing in public, mocking former President Bill Clinton and more. Over the course of these actions, Bieber went from teenage heartthrob to another teenage celebrity gone wild. But with his own dismissal of his fans, he left himself with very few that still belieb’d in him.

The road to Bieber’s upcoming album Purpose has been an apologetic one, including even a radio single appropriately titled, “Sorry.” It seemed that in every promotional interview he did, he was apologizing for his arrogant behavior.

Including apologies to fans, his family, former President Clinton and more. His apologies were believable, especially when paired with him allowing himself to be the butt of the joke on shows like SNL and the Comedy Central Roast.

No doubt, Bieber couldn’t do this on his own. Admittedly, manager Scooter Braun said that once Justin was ready to take his career back again, they worked together, along with their team, to come up with the perfect strategy.

For my next group project, myself and two other members will be working on analyzing the crisis communication strategies of Justin Bieber as he made a 180 on his public image.

Millennials and the PR Workforce

Leave a comment

In a recently published article, “Silent & unprepared: Most millennial practitioners have not embraced role as ethical conscience”, Marlene Neill and Nancy Weaver presented their research findings about millennials in the PR workforce.

Overall, their findings found that there is an overall lack of confidence in offering ethical counsel within their role at work. The research surveyed a over 200 young professionals. There also seemed to be a wide gap in responses from those who have had a mentor verses those who had not and those who had had a course in ethics verses those who had not. Those millennials who had had a mentor who they discussed ethical issues with or those who had had a ethics course felt much more prepared to offer ethical counsel than those without.

Also, according to the research, out of those surveyed, many did not think that they would have to deal with ethical decisions in the future – despite having dealt with them in the past.

As a millennial, I found that the majority of this information made sense with few exceptions. When a young professional is new in their career they may not be willing to rock the boat or go against the status quo of their organization. They’re trying to please their bosses and not ruffle any feathers.

Also, it makes sense that the more training they received in ethics, the more likely they were to be confident in their abilities to provide counsel. I think that’s common with any topic or skill. The more practice you have, the more confident you will be to perform.

The one thing I found perplexing in the research, was the disconnect between millenials’ expectations for the future versus their past expereince dealing with ethical decisions. While most had to deal with ethical decision-making in the past, they did not expect to deal with it in the future.

My only explanation for this is that perhaps they believe that they will be in a position in the future where they are “higher up” and will therefore not be asked to partake in an unethical move. Or perhaps, in the past they perceived these things as unethical, and looking forward they may not see these situations as ethical. Whatever the case, I found it to be interesting for our generation, but perhaps it fits our over-confident and optimistic stereotypical nature.

Source: Neill, M. S., & Weaver, N. Silent & unprepared: Most millennial practitioners have not embraced role as ethical conscience. Public Relations Review (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2017.01.002

Goals and Objectives

Leave a comment

After our initial meeting, our team had felt pretty good about what was expected and what we needed to accomplish. The goals and objectives that we set out for ourselves are as follows:

Goals

  • The goal of this campaign is to establish a stronger connection between MISD and alumni that will encourage these alumni to donate money to the Midway ISD Education Foundation. One step in making this connection stronger is through an event that will recognize distinguished service award for retired employees that are nominated by alumni.

 

Objectives

  • Motivate alumni to nominate retired staff members for the distinguished service award, and encourage their attendance to the reception recognizing these nominees.
  • Create increased alumni awareness of the Midway ISD Education Foundation that they can donate money and resources to.
  • Encourage a sense of responsibility for the alumni towards their alma mater.
  • Increase the number of nominations by at least 10 by March 1.
  • Promote a recognition banquet for the distinguished service award recipients during Midway’s homecoming weekend.
  • Increase annual donations to the Midway ISD Education Foundation by 10%.

Overall, we are excited to continue helping the Midway ISD Alumni and work towards making this event a reality.

First Meetings

Leave a comment

In my senior PR media programming class, we were split into groups of three or four and assigned a nonprofit organization to work with for the semester. The goal of the project is to essentially help the organization by creating a PR campaign that could potentially be implemented. Our group was assigned to work with Midway ISD Alumni Association, and after our first meeting with Suzi Pagel, our contact for the semester, I was feeling relatively well about the project.

The first thing we needed to figure out, was what we needed to accomplish for the organization. So, we began by talking to Suzi Pagel about the current state of the organization and how she feels about their progress. This gave us the information we needed to complete a SWOT analysis. We also talked to her about what she hoped for us to achieve for them this semester.

The main things that we saw were that the organization wants to continue to foster relations within the alumni association. Through this, we decided it would be a good idea to implement an event over the Midway Homecoming weekend to honor distinguished alumni. This would help them reach their goals by creating a reason for the alumni to get together. We ended up trying to flesh out some of the details of what this event would require, logistically.

Overall, I felt pretty good about the meeting. It was productive, and we seemed to all be on the same page and were able to get a lot accomplished. I look forward to working with Suzi and Midway ISD for the remainder of the semester.