Dana Moore Gray, Ph.D., APR
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Marketing, advertising, and PR
Marketing, advertising, and public relations all are strategic efforts in business. Practitioners in these professionals use many of the same skills such as strategy, planning, writing, and production, so the professions are sometimes considered to be sister professions. But their purposes and roles are very different.
The purpose of marketing is to increase revenue and sales. My definition of marketing is "the management functions related to delivering the right quantity of the right products/services to the right customers at the right place and time using the proper methods of promotion." I prefer that definition because it focuses on the concept of the marketing mix defined by Neil Borden. According to Borden, the marketing mix is the blend of the four P's of marketing: product (including service), price, place (distribution), and promotion. Some have added additional P's to the blend including people, processes, and physical tangibles.
The P that is promotion is the umbrella term for all of the communications that surround the product or service. It includes packaging because that contains communications about the product or service. But promotion is best known for many of its tools including advertising, public relations publicity and special events, direct mail, trade shows, interactive media, advertising specialities, etc.
Advertising is the best known tool of promotion. I define it as the paid placement of a message. Advertising includes mass communications efforts such as television and radio commercials, newspaper ads, and billboards. A major advantage of advertising is that the marketer has complete control over how the ad or commercial will look, when it will appear, and for how long.
Perhaps the most underutilized promotional tool is publicity. Publicity and special events are two forms of promotion that fall under the auspices of public relations, a sister profession of marketing. Public relations focuses on strategic relationships. My definition of public relations is the management function that builds mutually beneficial relationships with target publics (or audiences). Examples of typical target publics include employees, investors, the community, the news media, governmental agencies, and others.
Public relations is perhaps the most underutilized promotional tool available to marketers because public relations can deliver publicity for marketers. I define publicity as earned media coverage. It can be much more effective than advertising because it, by definition, brings third party credibility (meaning that reporters and editors have signed off on the information as being newsworthy). A marketer can't buy an ad on the front page of the local newspaper or at the top of the local news television show. The downside is that a public relations practitioner must truly understand how to work effectively with the news media in order to get the type of publicity desired. Unlike advertising, publicity doesn't use a contract and there are no guarantees of news coverage. Special events oftentimes earn publicity when they are newsworthy and pertain to people. News is about people. In another post I will discuss strategies of publicity and newsworthiness.
In summary, marketing, advertising, and public relations are sister professions that can use similar skills of strategy and creativity. But they have very functions. Promotion is the umbrella term for marketing communications tools including advertising, publicity, and more.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Sloan report about online learning
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Hybrid format courses - best practice #2
"Online learning tools and components can provide ongoing and dual access to course content and navigation. Learners can download instructor presentations before classroom meetings, bringing the presentation handouts to class. Such preparation for class allows learners to then take strategic rather than copious notes to supplement the presentation information (Blake, 2000; Byrne, 1997; Galloway, 1998; McEwen, 2001; NcNeil & Robin, 2000). As a result, they can spend more time interacting in the classroom with the facilitator and the content. The same is true for student presentations if learners are presenting content during traditional classroom meetings."
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Hybrid format course design - best practices #1
Defining hybrid format courses
I firmly believe that learning should be fun. Why? When a person enjoys learning then they tend to learn more and retain more. Whether or not a person has enjoying the learning process can affect how much they engage with the course content, with their peers, with their facilitator, and within themselves through reflection. How a course is design can affect how engaged learners become.
Effective hybrid format course design: A hybrid format model and study of best practices
Distance Education Report, 8(7), 3.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Children with adult responsibilities
Recently I've observed what I sense may be a growing theme among high school and college students. Almost all of my 16-year-old son's friends work - and many of them have to. The vast majority of my college students work multiple part-time jobs or a full-time job in addition to a full load.
This is not like the days of ole' when I was in high school when kids only worked during the summer or maybe weekends. Kids today have more responsibilities and multiple demands on their time.
Given that, what happens when we as facilitators begin to treat high school and college students as adult learners - at least in the andragogical terms of tying new learning concepts to existing knowledge and experience, explaining why something is important to learn and getting buy-in before beginning learning experiences, etc.
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Reflective journals and humanism
These are characteristics of humanism and align with the shift in focus of the student from passive to active, the focus of the teacher from sage on the stage to facilitator, and the growing awareness that students have different learning styles and strategies and are there is more than one appropriate way for students to learn. Humanism also points to learning that is social and constructed.
I've been working on my prospectus and the literature points to growing acceptance of a learner-centered approach to education. Simply put, students who are more actively engaged in the learning process (whether in the classroom or online or somewhere in between) tend to have better learning outcomes. Reflective journals are a good example of a learning component that engages the learner.
Having said that, one criticism of humanism is that it can become permissive. The focus is on learning rather than teaching and concepts such as assessments must be clearly communicated or students can become disoriented and disengage.Thus the pros and cons (or cautions) of learning components such as reflective journals.