#jou432

Shelly Haynes

-Public Relations and The Covid Ad Campaign-

With the ever changing world around us relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s interesting to look at how companies around us are adapting to the new wave of COVID friendly advertisements. 

As most companies take the approach of “Pro” social distancing and “Pro” mask, they also have used the pandemic to create the sense of urgency and need to offer services such as curbside pickup and at home delivery to hopefully combat the need for some people to feel like a visit to these establishments is needed.  

So far these companies have really taken advantage of the fact that consumers have a growing fear of COVID-19 and because of that, some companies are even having their highest grossing and highest and most profitable quarters in history. 

In 1960 Theodore Levitt wrote the article Marketing Myopia and was it was published in the Harvard Business Review journal. The largest theme of this paper was that industries often are too short sighted in what they provide to their customers to understand that they need to offer ever changing services that their customer desires (Levitt, T., 1960). A modern example of this can be seen with Blockbuster’s failing. They saw themselves as a company based solely on brick and mortar rental of dvd media to consumers. The company did not view itself as a provider of entertainment as a whole. They failed to adopt the mail-in subscription based model that Netflix started as and similarly failed to join the wave of streaming platforms. 

This week, I’ve read so many ridiculous posts about how the vaccine contains microchips, live viruses, and AIDS. I’m tired people who don’t understand science being able to spread lies that are dangerous. So, I’ve posted a lot about the vaccine.

My posts have not had as much activity on them, which I expected since people are tired of reading about Covid 24/7. Sometimes, it’s important to speak the truth even when others don’t want to hear it. 

shocker, I'm making another post about the sport of baseball. while this shouldn’t surprise you, at least I'm trying to attack the from a different angle. 

when it comes to baseball equipment, you can find a plethora of companies doing the exact same thing. and by that, I mean literally, the exact same thing. 

if you’ve seen one wooden baseball bat, by god you’ve practically seen them all. if you think of this in terms of just competition in general, it kind of breaks down the entire ideology of competition. whether that be Coke vs. Pepsi, Nike vs. Adidas, etc. 

what makes consumers or any normal person from choosing one brand over the other? when it comes to terms of baseball equipment at least, (or shoot any product now that I think of it) it’s strictly all about PR and marketing. 

what celebrity can endorse this product on the biggest stage that will create some buzz and help us sell more product? when it comes to baseball gear, it’s basically all about the star power using it on the field that helps build that trust relationship with consumers. 

any other product (such as a consumable like coke), will grab just about anybody to throw into an infomercial or on a cereal box and hope for sales. 

meanwhile a baseball bat company for instance wants a star swinging their product, and for them to succeed with it as well. 

I started a bathroom remodel over spring break that will last at least a few weeks. Normally, I would just post a single post with a before and after pic, detailing the entire event. I decided that I would upload pictures and anecdotes throughout the construction. 

I started with this post:

and I have been uploading content along the way to show the progress. 

I have broken up the monotony of bathroom remodeling by uploading a video of my dog at the dog park. 

When writing this post I could not fully come up with a good topic to discuss. When thinking about this social media journal that I have been writing here I started to think about my own online presence and what that entails.

Currently I am active on Instagram, Twitter, and several other platforms. When it comes to daily life I utilize Instagram and Twitter the most because they are just fun platforms to be on. Both have the ability to help people interact through new and fun ways whether that’s through memes or personal stories. 

The biggest personal example that I have found lately is through sports. When it comes to funny interactions my own college lacrosse team has seen some funny takes or interactions on Twitter by other accounts regarding our games. The Missouri Western Barstool account is the biggest example of this. The account posts their takes on Missouri Western athletic competitions. Often times these posts are meant to be taken as a joke and in my eyes they are pretty funny. But, they aren’t always taken that way by the other team. 

Another huge example is that of the NCAA March Madness tournaments. This example really deals with social media’s ability to call out injustices. Many female participants in the huge basketball tournament have posted on both Twitter and Instagram about what is a huge disparity in the treatment of athletes. 

Photos of the swab bags, weight rooms, and the provided meals for female athletes compared to those same items given to male athletes show the huge disparity in how these two groups of athletes are treated. Many have come out on social media in support of the female athletes and calling on the NCAA to act on the situation.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash  

When it comes to social media, it’s easier than ever to create multiple accounts per site. This can be an important tool for people with different brand identities or responsibilities, but this also opens up the door to potential security risks. It’s hard to remember a bunch of passwords, but using the same or similar passwords for multiple accounts can open you up to data breaches and potential identity theft. There are a variety of ways to combat this kind of online identity theft. Here are a few options, starting from worst to best.

1. Using the same password for every login.

Pros:

Only one password to remember.

Free.

Cons:

If even one of your accounts gets hacked, that hacker has your password for everything. If you’ve tied this to accounts with personal or financial information, this could open you up to some extreme issues.

2. Creating unique or semi-unique passwords for each individual site and writing them down.

Pros:

Somewhat safer than the previous option.

Still free.

Cons:

It takes time to think of passwords and they might not be as secure as you think.

Maintaining this kind of list is a lot of work.

It’s highly likely you’ll have to update these passwords at some point and forgetting to write one down will cause headaches.

If you don’t have access to your list, you’re SOL.

3. Using a password manager with randomly generated passwords.

Pros:

The most secure method by far.

Every site has a different password, but you only have to remember the password for your manager.

Many password managers also allow you to save things like credit cards, addresses and other sensitive information.

The manager I use, BitWarden, is free and open source. (Not sponsored, just a fan.)

Cons:

For some password managers, if you forget your vault password, you are SOL.

If you don’t have access to your manager, you lose access to everything.

Some password managers cost money.

Might be a bit complex for individuals who aren’t technology literate.