Bridging the Gap

How blogging can close the age gap for PR

Digging a little deeper into the idea of updating corporate images, I’ve begun to see the real impact blogging can have.

Like I said, I was a skeptic from the start. For me, the word “blogger” conjured up visions of milky-skinned teenage boys and 30-something-year-old men hunched over their keyboards, discussing the latest techniques for Halo.

However, I now see I couldn’t have been more wrong. Blogging has the ability to seamlessly blend the knowledge and expertise of a corporation’s older employees with the influx of Internet-savvy college grads coming into the PR work force.

Nearly three years ago, Blake Barbera, a San Francisco PR practitioner and blog-enthusiast, wrote a speech that captures exactly what it is that makes blogging so poignant in today’s corporate communications: “Blogs are a medium that give individuals and organizations a voice they never thought they could have.”

People want to be heard, and blogging gives them the microphone. When corporations partake in the blogosphere, they are showing their publics that they are willing to listen to their opinions.

This translates into an answer for PR practitioners looking to target younger generations- a generation plagued by apathy. Getting people my age to care about anything of substance has proved to be an uphill battle for many corporations. However, like Mr. Barbera said, blogging gives everyone a voice, even apathetic college students who once thought their opinions wouldn’t make a difference.

And although I continue to focus on blogging, PR and its relation to my age demographic (don’t forget I’m still a self-absorbed undergrad), I can’t ignore blogging’s impact on virtually everything. Take Heal Blog for example, where cancer survivors now have a forum to express “their ideas, thoughts, feelings, theories, and hopes.” No other medium can hit such a humanistic note so quickly and effortlessly.

Numbers don’t lie. Gartner, an information and technology research firm, suggests that the number of blogs reached an estimated 100 million in 2007. The best PR practitioners know a good thing when they see it and are flocking to the blogosphere, ready to capitalize on this economic and intimate form of communication.

Modernizing Miss America: BIG MISTAKE

Try and stay with me here (this isn't as big of a stretch as you'd initally think)- Saturday's 2008 Miss America pageant taught me A LOT about the dangers of modernization.

Much like the idea behind organizations incorporating blogging in an effort to stay up-to-date with expanding communication technologies, this year's Miss America pageant tried to spruce up their image. With a radically different format (think American Idol meets The Appentice meets the worst in reality TV), the pageant featured, among other embarressing things, a DJ spinning music on stage, a pathetic script and 52 ill-prepared and confused contestants.

The organization's decision to change the show is understandable. For years, the show has been on a constant downward spiral in terms of viewer popularity and commercial appeal. ABC dropped the show in 2004, followed by CMT, who cancelled their potential six-year contract with the organization after just two years. Here's a look at the show's decline:

1988- 33.1 million viewers (NBC)
2004- 9.8 million viewers (ABC)
2006- 3.1 million viewers (CMT)
2007- 2.4 million viewers(CMT)
(source: E!News Online)

Despite the show's so-called hip makeover, it's my guess that the number of viewers this year will be even lower, which brings me to my point- modernization is a tricky game that can prove fatal for organizations who are built on tradition.

It's honorable that the Miss America Organization allegedly wanted to update the show in light of the times- showcase more "real" women instead of the big-haired, plastered-smiling mannequins that have come to represent the pageant in years past.

Somewhere along the way to its image overhaul, however, the show lost it's class and sophistication- the very qualities that people have admired for 87 years (unless you're a guy, in which case you were happy to see this year's sexed-up swimsuit portion).

So, a word of caution to all looking to update their organization: if you lose your foundation, you will crumble. Miss America tried to target my age demographic with its gimmicky reality series, awful porn-like background music and "hard-hitting" questions (my favorite being: "Do you think Jamie Lynn Spears should be fired from her Nickelodeon show for getting pregnant?"...ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?). They failed miserably. To be quite honest, I was offended that this was their perception of what people my age would like to see on TV.

Modernization doesn't have to be tacky. I'll be the first to admit that I thought blogging was cheesy. However, I'm learning that if done correctly, blogging (and all modernization techniques) has the potenial to catapult an organization successfully into the 21st century.

And with that, I wish the PR execs at The Miss America Organization the best of luck in crafting next year's pageant- if they don't get fired before then.

Welcome

I'm Caitlin, a junior journalism major at Southern Methodist University. This is my first post for my CCPA course "Communication, Technology and Globalization."

I never thought I'd be "that" type of person to start a blog, but in today's communication world blogging is quickly becoming one of the quintessential ways to get your message out there.

I've always loved to write (hence the journalism major), but over the past year I've really embraced my CCPA minor and the public relations industry. Through this blog, I hope to learn the best practices in PR, and I'm open to any and all suggestions, so feel free to comment on my posts.

Here's to my first blog and my first post...enjoy!