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[upbeat music] >> This is, obviously, the Introduction to Public Relations, but before we get into that, I want to give you a little bit of background on myself. I came here, this is my second year teaching here at Biola, and, before that, I was in the PR industry. The agency world, kinda the lingo for PR, which meant I worked with a company that represented numerous individuals. Anyone know who that person is? Oh, so sad. [students giggling] Okay, really famous guy, Nixon administration, Prison Fellowship, Angel Tree. His name's Chuck Colson, great guy, get to know him. Well, he died, but his legacy still lives on. He was my client and probably my favorite account that I ever represented. And that tells you, actually, a lot about me. I use this picture in my intro classes because you will find in the world of PR, people are complex, communication is complex. And it's not just one thing that let's you understand how someone thinks and then all of a sudden you can figure it out and solve this communication quandary. There are actually multiple layers to people, and that seems very obvious, but sometimes in the world of PR, you wanna make brushstrokes across people. So something else you can tell about this picture is I'm with another person. It happens to be my husband. His name is Kiyong Kim, so if you came in expecting to find a Korean, that's why my last name is Kim. I married a Korean. And he and I both worked in the agency world. Now, he works at Compassion International, specializing in the Korean market. And that should tell you another layer to me. I am a cross-cultural person because of an interracial marriage. For the last two years, except for the last couple months, I was in an all-Korean church, the only white person every Sunday, and it was taught in Korean, except for youth group. So I understand that dynamic, and I love that. I love being pushed out of my comfort zone, usually, and I think that's something you should embrace probably as a PR person, because you want to get to understand other publics, other points of view, other ways of living life. My background, academically speaking, I was here in the same seats as you for my undergrad. I was a journalism, public relations emphasis, and my Master's was in Christian apologetics. And then I went into the industry, and I got my APR, which is kind of like the CPA for accounting, but for public relations. We call it the accreditation for public relations. So out of the 120,000 people in the US who say they are PR professionals, there's about 5,000 who've gotten their APR. So it's kind of something that I would encourage you to shoot for long term if you're gonna stay in the industry. It's a worthwhile thing to pursue. That's a bit of my background. We're gonna jump into PR now. So what is PR? I want you to turn to the people next to you and just choose one person so you can brief, tell them what you think public relations is. I like talking, so do, please talk. [students talking] All right, you guys have a lot of good ideas. I know I'm interrupting some of them, but I'm gonna give you a glimpse of man-on-the-street interviews where people were asked this question, what is public relations? Can you tell us what it is? Because what I want you to understand is there's a lot of misconceptions about what public relations is. One of the reasons I'm passionate to be here, at Biola teaching you, is not only because I love students, and I love getting to journey in life with you, but because I love public relations. And it's really misunderstood. And when you understand what it does and the power it plays in culture, it just, well I think, makes you fall in love with it. That's why I do it for a profession. But here's some ideas that you might hear when other people try to define public relations. [upbeat music] >> Interviewer: Do you know what PR stands for? >> I fully don't, no. >> Interviewer: Take a guess. What does the initial PR stand for? >> PR, pretty great. >> Interviewer: Okay, what if I told you that PR could also stand for public relations? Ever heard that word? >> Public relations? >> Interviewer: Yes. >> Public, what it be, I mean, where they are? >> Interviewer: They are? Public relations >> Oh, public relations, public relations. >> Oh, now you know what I'm talking about. >> Oh, okay. >> Do you know what that is? >> Right. But aren't you like people who work for the public? >> Right. >> Right. >> Interviewer: Now, is that the job you'd ever want to do? >> Would I like to work in public relations? Um, I'm not too sure. You've got to have a character for that. >> Interviewer: Oh, you can work with any character. >> I mean like, you gotta deal with people. >> Interviewer: And you don't like to deal with people? >> Mm, basically, I try not to. [students laughing] >> Interviewer: Do you know what public relations is? >> That's it, public relations. >> Interviewer: There you go. And you know what that means, right? >> Well, not really, but it's communicating. Being in the real working world, you would need to have public relations skills. >> Interviewer: Really, why would that be? Why kids? >> Well, from what I've read, most of your students today don't get enough public relations skills as far as communicating with the public. They're good at what their skill is, but they're not good with dealing with people. >> Interviewer: That need PR help. Who do you think needs PR help today? [laughs] >> Well, I would say the whole world. >> Interviewer: The whole world needs PR help today? >> I would think so, 'cause no matter at what level that you need to communicate, you need to be able to speak and to get across your point, whether it be in medicine, whether it be in education, whether it be in even sociology or whatever your field is. You really, even if you're just a blue collar worker, you still need to be able to communicate with people, so I would say it wouldn't hurt anyone to take courses in communications. >> Interviewer: Do you know what PR stands for? >> Um, generally speaking, it's public relations. In my way of thinking, sort of calling it a short abbreviation for it. >> Interviewer: And what do you know about PR or public relations, what is it used for? >> Generally speaking, it helps somebody's image. Spin for companies, corporations, actors, stars, that sort of thing. They're trying to create an image, whether it's the truth or not. It's generally a little on the off on the truth end of things. A huge unknown balloon of money goes into, I mean, you look at advertising, that's a kind of PR, and it's billions. >> Okay, it keeps going, you could keep getting other perspectives. I really find that to be fascinating. One, because I have to try to explain what public relations is all the time, and what each of those people said, I usually get snippets from different people. Either, well, you deal with people. Good, that's in the name, true. Or it's all about communicating, and everyone has to communicate in life, so, obviously, you need to be a PR professional. Okay, we do communicate. Or it's all about hiding and spinning the truth, and it's where the money is. So if you really want to make a lot of money, and you can lie really well, get into public relations. That's kind of some of the predominant thoughts, which, honestly, it makes me laugh, but it also makes me sad, because I love the field of public relations. I think it has incredible potential, and I'm gonna tell you more about that. But, first, I'm going to show you the academic definition for public relations, and guarantee you you will to know this. It's on almost every quiz, every exam that I give is what is a definition for public relations? And I do look for it word for word. So this is the one we use for this class. Public relations is the management of communication between an organization, instead of and, and its publics. Now, we can expand on this, but this base definition helps us understand a few things. One, public relations deals with at least two entities. You're dealing with a large-scale group or public image, so you can represent a single individual and be their public relations professional representative, but you're doing it on their public image, so you might be doing that for a president, for a celebrity, for even just a really famous figure. So, for example, DBC here on campus. He has public relations efforts that go out on his behalf. And the public relations' person is concerned with all of the publics. We're gonna talk a little bit about misconceptions. I can't tell you how often public relations is used as a synonym for advertising or for marketing. Sometimes it's used as the evil stepchild to journalism, but, if you understand the definition of what we do, you get to see a glimpse of the role we play in culture and in business. Public relations is curious to know how every public is responding to an organization. That means you're gonna look at employees. You're gonna look at consumers. You're gonna look at the neighborhood you live in and the people who are responding. You're gonna look at mainstream media. You're gonna look at social media. If a crisis happens, you're gonna look at the people impacted by that crisis. You are concerned with the entire publics, so, in this way, you are kind of managing the perception of an organization or an individual who represents an organizational persona, if that makes sense. And that's why it's so applicable. So here's a couple of the facts that let you understand why public relations is such a big deal. First, one that I like to start out with, is US News named us one of the best professions to be in between now and 2020. And it just makes sense when you look at the second statistic that shows the growth. Right now, we've had a lot of economic concerns, right? I heard a lot of people say, shoot, I'm graduating. What job do I get? It's so competitive. Public relations is really good because it's growing right now. There's a lot of opportunity, primarily because we work with all the publics, and we work with any number of entities. So you can be in nonprofit, you can be in for-profit. You can be in this country, you can be outta this country. You can work at an agency, you can work in-house. You can work for causes, you can work for religious organizations, you can work for schools. All of these are organizations that need to manage their communication with the public, and that's one of the reasons for our huge growth. One of the things I like about it is I tend to be a very passionate person, which you guys will get to see throughout this semester. I get very excited, and I really wanna come behind and help organizations with what they're doing. That's why I loved working with Chuck Colson. He did what I believed in. He helped apologetics. He helped prisoner's families. He helped people understand how your faith and culture intersects, and I got to help him spread that message. I couldn't think of anything better. When I started to graduate, when I was getting ready to leave, I was thinking of heading to the Amazon and helping a missions organization. I could not think of anything better than to be in the Amazon doing PR, great combination. I have friends who work with the Red Cross. I have friends who work with Disneyland. I've had friends who work in professional sports. All of it is something that kind of hits to the core of who they are. They've discovered something that makes them passionate. They've discovered something they care about, and they care about it so much, their job is to help spread the word and to manage that communication. That can make me get up in the morning, on those days when you're like, it's Monday, it's early, I can't believe I'm getting out of bed. But at least I'm doing something I love. That's why PR is growing so much. So let's talk about PR in everyday life, 'cause this is abstract. Organizations can represent anything. Publics can mean anything. There's always PR industry things happening, but there's a couple I wanna show you recently. Subway. Anyone heard about this PR fiasco? Oh, don't worry, you'll hear a lot. This happened just recently. A guy, I believe he was in Australia, took a picture of his Subway sandwich, his footlong Subway sandwich, next to a ruler. Ah yeah, ringing a bell. It was 11 inches. This is a problem for their brand. Subway's brand is that they will give you a footlong sub, and if their subs are 11 inches, this is an issue. And you wouldn't think it'd be a big issue until lawsuits started coming out about people who said you have been deceptive. You are telling the public a lie. So the public relations side from Subway needed to step into this. They needed to manage that communication, right? Because you can't, as an organization, just ignore it. You can't just stay silent. That sends a different message. It sends a message that you're hiding or that you've lied. So how do you interact with that? How do you respond to something like this? How do you admit fault but carry your brand forward? How do you point back to the values that your organization is founded on? Anyone watch this? Good, good, a couple of you. This is kind of a big deal for our country and all. It's the inauguration, and this also is a huge public relations endeavor. Now, there's multiple types of PR involved with this. One could be media relations. Those are the people who specialize working with reporters, figuring out where they're gonna be able to stand during this, when they can ask questions, which reporters are gonna be admitted, where the microphones are gonna be, what the best angles for pictures are gonna be, what can be used, what's gonna be released to the press. But you also have a whole bunch of VIPs that you can see sitting in the background. There's a lot of public interaction there. If you have dignitaries coming, if you have diplomats who are showing up, how are they gonna be escorted in, where are they gonna sit, what's their impression of the US going to be based on their experience in this situation? Then you have the whole public crowd. If you saw outwards, you would see thousands of people crammed into a very tight space. What's their impression going to be? What's their view of the organization of the United States going to be after they attend an inauguration? And how can you influence that? How can you help that along? How can you make it a positive experience? Anyone participate in this, also in January? Human Trafficking Awareness Day was in January, and a lot of organizations, especially nonprofits, there's a ton down in Orange County, who are all around cause. Public relations, again, right there. How do you get someone to not only say yeah public relations, okay, and I can get on board. I don't think there should be human trafficking. How do you go from that to someone who will donate, who will help support your cause? Who maybe will volunteer? Who will go and speak to the press on your behalf? How do you get someone from yeah, I think what you do is a good idea to I am a huge fan, and I will support you no matter what? That's what this is about. How do you get an awareness day out there? How do you make people passionate about that cause? Because it's a good cause, right? I think we can all agree human trafficking's bad, but how many of us are active in that cause, and how could they make us active? That's a PR question. How do you influence values, opinions, beliefs and behaviors? What about his, anyone go to an Angel's game? They haven't started. Okay, there's a couple, good. Angels is right down the street. They have a lot of PR involved. This is kind of the celebrity side. So one of the things I was able to do last year is go behind the scenes and see their media relations efforts. That's a lot. They have a lot of young guys coming in to play ball. Can you imagine how much training you have to do with them? They told stories about people who would get contracts, and if they tweet out that information before it's official, you can lose your contract with the Major League. Or if someone is participating in a lifestyle that might not reflect on what they want their brand to be, and that's captured and shared on Twitter, what do you do as a PR person? So how do you equip these guys, who are there to play baseball, who are very good at what they do, to interact and carry a public image of all-American, wholesome family? How do you do that? That's a PR question. The biggest thing, one of the latest in PR that's changed the industry absolutely is social media. This has kind of revolutionized how we do life, how we communicate, and a lot of people right now are into social media. So I'm the advisor for our PR students, and, inevitably, a couple times a semester, I have students coming to me saying I got a social media internship. That's because all organizations right now want to understand how it works. How do you get on board with social media? What does that mean? How do you actually build an authentic relationship via something like Facebook? And how do you respond when something goes wrong on Facebook for your brand? Hopefully you've all seen that happen, brands have had something bad, and how do they respond? That's a fascinating thing, and you should be interested. You should be watching as PR students. So what is it really? We've talked about what it looks like, the organizations you can be in, some of the glamour behind it, some of the ways, basically, that you can get involved in any sector of business, but what could public relations be? It's a process. It's something, you're gonna learn, that you just approach, and it's very rhythematic. Now, PR's interesting, because you have this rhythm, and you also combine it with incredible creativity, because it is a very competitive industry. But this process is one you're gonna become very familiar with, and you will use across the board. It's called RPIE. Some people call it ROPE. Some people call it RACE. You may have heard it used other things. For this class, RPIE. It represents research, programming, implementation, evaluation. Almost all your PR programs can be broken into those four categories. Anything you're doing for a client, you can come up with using this model, and as you look at the different ways PR is taking place in the world around you, you will be able to identify those sections. So research, anytime you're getting behind a client, when you're getting ready to do a campaign, you need to know what you're talking about. You research your client. You research the industry. You research anything and everything. There's a student-run PR agency here on campus, and they take on real-world clients. One of their clients that they worked with was the LA Zoo. When they were doing their research, they didn't just look at the LA Zoo, they looked at who went to the LA Zoo. What else did those people do? How often did the media cover the LA Zoo? What do people generally think about when they think of the zoo? What kind of other zoos are doing activities, and what are those, and who are they attracting? And what demographics do those represent? So you start doing this broad brushstroke so you understand the big picture. Because any time you're representing an organization, it's not just one organization. It's not the first time that's ever happened in humanity. You can find information that will inform your idea for a campaign, which leads into programming. Programming is kind of the fun part. It's the part that a lot of people just want to jump to because it's where you put your big ideas down. And we're gonna talk about how you make big ideas and then how you make 'em tangible, so you can measure 'em, so you can get an ROI, so you can show to your company, to your bosses, to the C-suite, all of the value behind what you did. And that's where the creativity comes in. That's where all of the new ideas that you really think are gonna make your brand stand out, your message stand out, because we live in a world where you are bombarded with messages. How is yours gonna be any different? That's where it comes out. Implementation is a crazy calendar. You put down anything and everything you have to do, and PR people care about the details. You have to understand how long is it gonna take a printer to print something? How long is it gonna take to get approval for a quote, because you can't just say someone said something. Do you need photo rights? When do you need to reserve different areas? Do you need city licenses? All these questions are things you care about because it can implement your ability to run a campaign. So you find out everything you need to do, you assign someone to it, you put the dates in, and you start watching it. And it's a beautiful thing when it goes well. As you will learn in PR, there's always experiences when there's nothing that's going well, and you change midway through. At the end, you do an evaluation. Say here's what we set out to do. Did we do it, did we not do it? And you give an explanation for why. If you succeeded, fantastic. Give ideas of how you could do something even better next time. If you didn't succeed, it happens to everyone in the industry. It's part of being in PR. Give ideas of what went wrong and why so that next time they attempt it, it can have a better result. Evaluation is not a win or lose type thing, it's really informing your next step, whatever that next step is gonna be. There's a couple distinctions that really make me love public relations that I wanted to share with you. One is that it's people focused. I think, especially with the negative image that we have about public relations, or that some people can have, it's easy to lose sight that it's about people. So if you're someone who loves people, who's passionate about getting to know others and is fascinated by that communication dynamic, public relations is a really strong fit for you because it's about influencing values, opinions, beliefs and behaviors. When people equate us with advertising or marketing, there are a lot of similarities. But we're not necessarily concerned with whether a product sells. We're concerned with whether you believe in our product, whether you wanna buy it or not. Whether you think we're a good company. Whether you can get behind our values. Whether you know what our values are, because we wanna influence your opinion about us, and, sometimes, that influences values and beliefs. And the last set is behaviors, because if you can get someone to act, that's huge. So in the human trafficking, there's a lot of people who believe that it's a bad thing to have human trafficking. There's equally a huge number of people who don't do anything about it. The PR process guides you through that. How do you influence it? It's also ethically based. Now, you heard the last person in that video talking about oh, PRs, you know, they're really good at spinning and hiding things. That is unfortunate that we have that reputation in our industry, and I would argue that we're quickly overcoming it. The industry as a whole has said that's not what we're about. That's a misunderstanding, because we are based in ethics, and everything you do in public relations comes out of your ethical understanding of the industry. Now, it's true, there are people who have messed up. There are people who have done very unethical things and abused this power that comes with influencing values, opinions, beliefs and behaviors. But that is not the industry standard. Our industry is based in ethics, and that's something I can get behind. Especially coming from Biola, you're gonna find a lot of connections with that value in the industry because it's all about valuing the people, truth, honesty, integrity, advocacy. Those are fundamental pillars to the entire industry, and I love that about it. I also love it's role in culture, business and society. When you are influencing values, opinions, beliefs and behaviors, you're gonna make a lot of change. Now, some people have a hard time because in PR you can often be behind the scenes. You're usually not the one on the stage. A lot of people probably don't know your name. But you get to see the change that you helped bring about. It takes a lot of work. It's a lot of late nights, a lot of early mornings. You are playing the go-between between different parties. If you're a middle child, you're kind of familiar with this. But you really have a unique role, and you see change because of what you do. And when people come to me and I, usually I ask when they say oh, I want to major in PR, I say, okay, what do you want to do? What do you care about? If you find something that you are so passionate about you want to see it succeed, you're really a good fit with PR because you're behind it trying to make that change. In the business world, we need people representing us. We need people in an organizational sense who will be that go-between, who will monitor what the public thinks about us, because if you don't monitor your brand, your business is not gonna succeed. Public relations has made and broken different businesses. And, obviously, society. The businesses that function in society, the values that culture holds, all help form what kind of world we live in. I am thrilled to be in a profession that actually influences that in a very, very tangible way, and I think throughout the semester I'm hoping to show you all the different facets that public relations touches. Last but not least, one of the things I love, especially because I am a Christian that informs my view of the profession is our role in how public relations actually, I think, connects to our faith. I put up one Bible verse, 2 Corinthians 5:20. You're probably very familiar with it. It's about being an ambassador for Christ, right? You guys familiar? All right, just making sure we're awake. Public relations is representing an organization to the public. The church, the Christian life, is representing God to the world around us, right? We are called to be able to do that. We are given a sacred calling of having something very profound, life-changing, that we hold, and we're trying to get the public, the world, to understand that. We're trying to influence values, opinions, beliefs and behaviors. That's the foundation of our faith. We want people to fall so madly in love with Jesus Christ that their world changes because our world was different. And, it's interesting to me, a lot of people ask me why in the world did you do your Master's in apologetics. Because I really love apologetics. I think our faith has a lot of reason behind it. I love any chance to talk about it, but they seem to get a disconnection between public relations, 'cause then they say well, why are you in the lying profession? And I say, you know, I'm actually in the profession that aligns closely with Christian apologetics. I'm all about representing and understanding where people are at so you can manage that communications process. I don't wanna walk into a room and just guess what the public's speaking, and, I think often, unfortunately, that can sometimes happen in the church, when we don't understand a group of people who are different than us, who are not in the church, who are not Christians. We might classify them very quickly and say this is what they believe, this is how they behave. But public relations knows better. Public relations knows that every public is very intricate, that there's a lot of dynamics that make it up. And public relations is people focused, so you spend time getting to understand the other side and then saying, okay, now that I know you, and I value you as someone who bears the image of Christ, you hold this opinion, and I can value that whether or not I agree with it. How can I communicate truth in such a way that you hear it? Not so I'm throwing slogans at you, not so you say oh good, one more Christian crossed my path and didn't even know who I was, but so that you can authentically see that I care so deeply about you I wanted to share this truth with you. That to me is exciting. That to me is a deep connection with my industry and my faith. And that, again, is another reason why I can wake up every morning and be thrilled that I'm here teaching you about PR, that I still do PR in the industry. I do consulting. And that I get the opportunity to integrate so deeply into culture, society and values. Throughout this course, we're gonna cover a couple things. We're gonna look at the developments of public relations. One is the historical foundation. We have a younger historical foundation than some may think. There's a lot that started with PR around the 1900s, some in the late 1800s, but other professions seem to go really, really far back. I like to argue that could look at some of the things the early church did as public relations, so I will bring that up in class and say that we are quite historical. But, for the most part, I'm gonna be talking about our founding fathers, the people who really brought about modern public relations. And then we're gonna look at the modern day application, because as you saw, our industry is rapidly growing. There's a lot of new developments based on the type of communication styles we have now. Social media has changed things, but mass communication changed things, the rise of business changed things, so all of these changes formed our industry, because we're new. We're young. We're also gonna look at the changing landscape of the communication platforms. It wouldn't be a tangible PR class without talking about what does it mean that your brand can be influenced by a Twitter post? What does it mean that any employee in your organization can post private information at the flick of a hand? That changes things, so public relations is different because of our communication climate. And, finally, we're gonna look at the globalization and industry expansion. We live in, in some ways, a much smaller world than we used to, and I love how PR can bring together organizations nationally. My husband is an example to me. He works with Compassion International, but he specializes in the Korean relations. And they're talking with people in South America. That's a unique blend, and it's made possible through communication and also through the advent of an interest in the relation to publics outside of your front door. We live in a small world. We live in a globalized economy. And then industry expansion. There's a lot of niche markets now. I'll ask people, what do you care about? What do you want to go into? And sometimes the very specific answers I get shock me. Like I wanna be in health care for children size one through three. I'm like oh, okay. That's interesting because there probably is that industry. You love that. I talked to someone today who's going into an internship with a bug extermination area. It's an industry, right? These things didn't use to be industries. Maybe one or two people, but there's huge industries now. And because of that and because of the role public relations plays, we've changed. You can go into so many different sectors, and the titles we take on are different. You might become a director of communications in one area or an account executive in another. You might be a community manager, aka, running Facebook in some places, or you might be the crisis communications coordinator. There's so many different ways we interact with culture now, and they're all public relations functions. In Intro to PR, I really want you to have a solid understanding of the process. By the end of this class, RPIE is going to be so familiar, you're not even gonna wonder what it means. You're also gonna know the historical framework. If I ask you who the father of modern public relations is, you're gonna know. You're gonna know who Ivy Lee is. You're gonna know about how railroads influenced our profession. Those kind of things will just be natural. [coughs] Pardon me. Sometimes, I think, people dread the historical side of understanding this, but what I hope you come to see, and what I've come to see, is that the history gave us the foundation to be where we're at. And unless you fully understand your history, you're not gonna understand the context with which we practice public relations today. You might have kind of a brushstroke view, a kind of idea of how it works now, but why does it work this way now? How did we arrive at this place? And what was our original intention in society? Why do we have a bad reputation? How long will it be before we have a good reputation? All of these questions can kind of be formed by our history, when you look and understand what we've done. Ethical guidelines is huge. We're gonna spend time talking about that. I mentioned that our industry is formed on ethics. And it's true. Across the board, we have ethical foundations. And there's sectors of the industry that have you sign ethical agreements before you practice in them, so we'll look at some of those. But at the end of the day, I want you to understand the ethics that guide this. I talked to a PR student who was not coming through any classes you're taking, so don't worry, but I asked, "What did you learn about the ethics of PR?" And she looked back at me and said, "That there are ethics." That was the extent of what she could tell me about the ethics in PR. You are now all equipped to know that there are ethics. By the end of this class, I want you to be able to articulate what those ethics are, what they mean. And sometimes, I think, in this Christian context, we can get complacent. We can say well, of course we're gonna be ethical. We all love Jesus. We're all at Biola. We all go to chapel. But, if I'm honest with you, my most difficult ethical decisions that have come in public relations have been around other Christians. It has been in the Christian context that my ethics in my profession are most challenged. So I want you to understand what these ethics are, how they play out, the real tension that can be there so that when you're faced with an ethical decision, it doesn't surprise you and you're ready to go. You know how you're gonna handle it. We're also gonna talk about the industry sectors and opportunity. I named off a ton, but each one is unique. Government public relations is very different from corporate public relations. Agency work is very different from in-house. Crisis public relations is so different than community relations. So I want you guys to understand kinda those sectors, become familiar with them and maybe even discover a couple, or one if you're really that gung ho, that you wanna be in, that you find interesting. 'Cause usually, the truth is, all of them will not interest you. I'm never surprised when someone comes up to me and says that really was not interesting. What I do want you to know is that if one sector doesn't interest you, that's okay. Don't write off the whole profession. Sometimes people hear one part and say oh, I do not want to work with the media. I can't do PR. Well, what about the community? Do you like little kids? 'Cause you can go out and run a booth. Those kind of things, there's so many applications, and I want you to know those applications to truly appreciate what the industry is. So now we're gonna go into talking about the class a little more. We're gonna through objectives and the syllabi and all of that. I'm gonna go ahead and hand those out for you guys. Thanks. We have three main objectives in this class that you'll see in your syllabi, but the first is to gain factual knowledge about PR. This is Intro to PR. I want you familiar with course terms. I want you familiar with things that we use in the industry all the time. For example, if I say go pitch to the media, what do I mean? I want you to understand, again, the difference between maybe billing practices and all those different terms. So gaining factual knowledge, who, what, where, when, all those terms, that's encompassed in that. I want you to learn the fundamental principles of PR. How does this industry work? How does it thrive? What role does it play? Those are principles that kind of guide the industry, and then I want you, obviously, to develop skills, competencies and points of view needed by PR professionals. I am fresh out of the industry, and I hate using that term 'cause I'm actually not out of the industry. I'm still doing public relations work, and I'm teaching here at the same time. So I am very passionate about making the most out of these 16 weeks with you. I do not want this just to be head knowledge. I want it to be something that informs how you practice public relations. If you leave my class and intend to go into public relations, I hope this is of use to you. That's why everything we do is geared towards making you the best public relations professional possible. Your background understanding, your knowledge of the process and your insight into the current industry is what will help take you to the next level. So that's why we're gonna develop skills and specific competencies. There's a couple assignments, actually several, but we'll go through them. One, you have a campaign presentation. This is your opportunity to look at any industry sector you want and find an interesting public relations campaign. You're gonna tell me about it is essentially what this assignment is. Now, I would encourage you to find something you're interested in. Every time I talk to PR people, I can almost tell you, across the board, people who stay in PR, who like the classes, are doing stuff that they're interested in. People who end up leaving PR or who hate the class, which I hope is not the case with any of you, tend to pick stuff that they're not interested in. I would hate that too. PR is something that requires passion, requires dedication, requires hard work, so find something you care about and review a campaign from there. That'll make it much more interesting for you. We're also going to do an agency presentation. There are so many agencies in between LA and Orange County, but you can do any. And they all specialize in different things. Some specialize just in the sporting industry. Others specialize in nonprofits. Some specialize in representing the food industry. What you care about is probably the kind of agency you'll want to look into. And you'll look at things like do they take interns, and what is their history? What campaigns have they done? What are they currently working on? Who are their current clients? All of those things will be part of your presentation, and you'll make a professional presentation. I love while you guys are doing presentations you can take so many notes because you're gonna get a lot of insight if you need a PR internship because everyone's gonna be coming and sharing about different agencies. You're gonna do a campaign proposal. This is the largest project for Intro to PR, and it is essentially you getting behind an organization and creating a PR campaign for them. Now, in this class, you don't have to launch the campaign. In other PR classes that you'll take, you probably will, but in this one, you just create it for them. If you launch it, you get extra credit. I'd recommend launching it, but I'm an overachiever, so whichever way you want to go on that. With creating a campaign, you have to interact with an organization. It's basically impossible to make a campaign for someone you've never talked to. So you're gonna need to pick a campaign, pick a person that you wanna work with or an organization, talk to them, interact and do that throughout the semester. Because it's gonna take a lot to make this campaign, you do not want to put it off. At the end, we'll be talking about your groups. You'll have some time today to meet with your group and figure out when you guys wanna meet up, what organization you might want to do, what your backgrounds are and how you can all contribute. If this seems overwhelming, don't worry. Most people told me they were scared spitless when they heard this, but at the end of the class, they thought it was the easiest assignment ever because you're gonna do this so much throughout class. We do have a quiz. Because a core function of this class is to get you familiar with factual knowledge, the quizzes can be a little intimidating. Take notes, attend class, make sure you're doing your reading, and you should be fine. It's gonna be over terms. It's gonna be over concepts. We're gonna have a midterm and a final. I really am not a fan of surprising students. That's not my favorite thing in the world to do. So you should be very clear with what's on your midterm and final based on what the quizzes were, based on the class materials. So save those, study those. And, of course, we'll review as we get closer. Some things that you'll want to know about the class. You have two unexcused absences, which equal six hours of learning. That's a huge block and a lot of money, if you look at the tuition count. And then after that your attendance percentage drops. The syllabus outlines that. I use your Biola email. I put a lot of information on Blackboard. We'll have class announcements there, you'll be turning in assignments, and usually that's linked to your Biola email. So if that's not connected or you don't check your Biola email, this semester would be an awesome time to start doing that. And I really love getting to know you. I am here, yes, I do love PR, but teaching was never on my agenda. It was a passion for public relations and a passion for people. So I'm here because I want to get to know you. I wanna help you towards your future goals, so come meet me. Sign up for office hours. Get to know me. I do bribe people. There are brownies and blueberry muffins in my office as we speak, so do come by. See me, hang out, get to know me. Ask questions about class. I'm usually hesitant to sometimes put this up, but I've decided I'm just gonna start including several things at the start of classes. To get the most out of this class, you have to own the experience. You have to decide that this is gonna be a valuable 16 weeks for you. That you're gonna make it something that contributes to your long-term success, not just the end of this semester. To do that, obviously, you have to do homework. You have to show up. You have to be present. Knowledge and academic training, it's hard work. Public relations is hard work, though, so it's good practice. You need to plan ahead for your assignments. PR is not a last-minute thing. You can't throw together a PR campaign the night before. You could, people have tried, and their grade reflects that. So, on second thought, just plan ahead, do well, really get behind the organization. If you care about what you're doing a campaign for, you will want to do a good job on it. You will want it to be something that goes into your professional portfolio that you want to show employers later on. Don't be afraid to fail in this class, not as in an F. If you're like me, I freaked out anytime someone said A-minus, so not that kind of fail, but in the sense that you're not gonna get everything right. This class is designed to take you from mostly not knowing a lot about PR to having a solid foundation. I don't expect you to know all the answers, and we're gonna do a lot of in-class exercises and practices and times for feedback. You're not gonna be perfect at that, but, if you're letting that fear of wanting to be perfect hold you back from really throwing yourself in the process, you're not gonna grow. So don't be afraid to fail because you have plenty of room to make mistakes in this class. It's not going to make or break this class, your grade, if that's what motivates you. But, more so, it makes you a better PR professional if you're not afraid to fail, because you're willing to take risks. And some of those pay off really well. So I expect you, or would hope that you could use this class as more than just a class. Make it an experience that informs your future, informs your profession and is truly valuable to you. I've also added this because I've been surprised since I've come out of the agency world. Professors are human. This is a picture of me and my husband hanging out at Catalina Island, which brings up an important point. I'm married. I love being married. Being a wife is my favorite thing in the world. So on the weekends, I'm being a wife. When you email me at Sunday night at midnight asking me what homework is due on Monday, I'm not gonna answer. I'm with my husband. Keep that in mind. Lack of planning does not constitute an emergency. That seems harsh, but as I've thought about it, I think it's empowering, actually, because it requires you to plan ahead. It requires you to be on top of it. I love questions. I love meeting up with you. I love talking. We'll have lots of time in class where you can ask questions, time in my office hours. You can email me during the week, and I turn that around in about 24 hours usually. But I also think one of the things we can lose, not only in this day and age of social media but in the industry, where you're on call 24/7, if you've had a PR job, it can be draining. Learning boundaries is hard. There's a high burnout rate, and I want to model for you how not to burn out. So I decided to treat this almost like a client. I want to give you my all, and I will. I'm gonna pour a ton into this class, and I think great things are gonna happen. But I'm also gonna have boundaries, because in our lives, we need to be able to have those boundaries to have other areas flourish. Marriage. Take notes, be active, be proactive. They have a blog out there. I almost shared it, but then I thought it might be too harsh for the first day, of things professors hate to hear. So please don't miss my class and then email me and ask if you missed anything important. No, I just showed up for three hours, but since you weren't there, we did nothing important that day, and we decided to hang out. Of course you're gonna miss something important if you miss class, so please don't do that. If you do miss class, and I understand, we're all human, things happen, talk to someone. Get notes. Find out what you missed from them. It's really hard for me to regurgitate in an email three hours of face-to-face experience, so make sure you're talking to someone. If you do come to class, which I hope all of you do quite regularly, be ready to take notes. One of the things that surprised me last semester was so often when people wouldn't take a note, even if it was one sentence on the board that I'm like this is important. And then I'd take the PowerPoint down and they'd be like, hey, could you email me that? Well, yeah, but take notes because it makes you remember. There are some things that there's just gonna be a ton of information. I'll probably put that up on Blackboard in a presentation, but, for the most part, you want to get in the habit of recording information you need. That's valuable in the industry. One of my first lessons when I got an agency job was never go to a meeting, any meeting, without pen and paper. Even if you boss just said hey can you step in for five minutes. Always have pen and paper, because it's not their job to remind you what they said. You want to be on top of it. That's how you're gonna make it in the industry. That's how you're gonna make it in this class. There's a couple things that because you're new to Biola, maybe, to PR, probably, that I want to let you know about. Biola PRSSA is the Biola Public Relations Student Society of America. We're just gonna call it PRSSA. They are the largest pre-professional organization for PR students in the country. We have a chapter here on Biola's campus with over 40 members. Now, there are some pictures. Last semester they went to the American Music Awards. Down below you can see when we went to Angels Stadium and saw their media relations. Up above, the six girls, they were up in San Francisco at a national conference. There's a lot of professional experience that comes from this. We have two parent chapters, one in LA, PRSA, the Public Relations Society of America, and Orange County. That means you have instant connection to a lot of people. You have a lot of people who are looking out for you because you're part of PRSSA. Our first meeting is on February 5th. It's at 7:00 or 7:30, somewhere in there, in the business building. You'll see information coming out about this. I will definitely have it, but I'd recommend getting involved in PRSSA. If you're interested in taking your PR skills to the next level. Another area that you might want to consider for future semesters is 6th Street PR. It's our on campus, student run PR agency. And, as you know by now, I'm a big advocate of making the most of your experience. Do something that matters. Take it with you beyond just a class. We work with real-world clients. They've done LA Zoo, Phoenix by Four, Judson's Legacy, We Car from Enterprise, lots of others. We've been around for about four semesters. And what you can do is get involved as just a staff member, but you can also work your way up, and you can become an account executive. They have a student director over the whole firm. We have a creative director. There's a lot of different facets. It's a legitimate position that you can put on your resume. We've had numbers of clients come to campus and be really impressed and say wow, I thought I was gonna get a student presentation. That was fantastic. Here's my business card. Call me if you're looking for an internship. Those kind of things are what come out of this, so it's a worthwhile experience to get a lot of hands-on experience, I guess. At the other side of it, you're involved with PRSSA, you're taking classes, you're doing internships, here's what some of our students have done. We've had a student do media relations over this past summer in DC with World Vision. They've been at Laguna Playhouse. We have one of our graduates with the Spanish-speaking subdivision of Lionsgate. We've had the at the LA Galaxy Academy, Warner Brothers Records. The far bottom left, your right, is a agency. It's a PR agency, probably most of you aren't familiar with it, but we've placed a couple of our students there. So you have a huge opportunity. I think sometimes we underestimate it. Public relations has not been widely known on Biola's campus, that is changing. But, more so, it's changing because our students are doing incredible things. They are finding what they're passionate about, they're getting the skillset to do it, and they are being competitive. We are in a competitive market. We're in LA, you guys. We're competing with Cal State Fullerton, which has a huge PR program. We're competing with the School of Annenberg at USC, which has a dynamic PR program, and, you know what? Our students are making it. They are placing in competitive internships. They are doing extraordinarily well. And that makes me excited, again, because I love PR and also because I love seeing Christian PR professionals doing things well in the industry. Because when you do well in PR, you bring glory to God. It's not just about being good at being a Christian and being okay at PR, it's about doing excellent things to bring God glory, to change culture, to help people who really need it. [upbeat music] >> Announcer: Biola University offers a variety of biblically centered degree programs, ranging from business to ministry to the arts and sciences. Visit Biola.edu to find out how Biola could make a difference in your life.