Friday, February 5, 2010

Week 5

This week's lecture was on Experiential Marketing. Interesting lecture.In today's world, consumers now are into active participation. Confucious once said, (I got this from the lecture notes by the way);

"Tell me and I'll forget,
Show me and I may remember,
Involve me and I'll understand"

I remembered reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference, it describes how social issues are very much dependent on the involvement on the people around us.

So, that means experiential marketing aims to tell people about products by connecting with them. Connection and relevancy is important. Experiential marketing has a "personal touch" element added to it where people actually might give time for you to explain what's in it for them. People today lack time and meaning. So if they can't get anything out of you, they won't give up their time for you.

I think that's so much for me on experiential marketing.

Ooh, debate's starting... Will continue this when the class is over? OK.. Class has been over for more than a day. Totally forgotten that I haven't finished blogging. My bad.

Anyway, here's on the reading for last week by Marianne D Sison on "Theoretical Contexts". This reading's kinda "heavy"- tough to understand, but I'll try my best to response to this one though. Read through it twice but can't really grasp what it wants to say.

Here goes; in Public Relations (PR), there are theories to it. And from what I picked out from the readings, is Grunig's and Hunt's four models (Grunig & Hunt, 1984 cited in Sison, 2009).

Here, Sison (2009) went about describing Grunig & Hunt's 4 models and they are:
a) press agentry
- This model mirrors the "publicity model" as McQuail (2002) suggests. As the word "publicity" suggests, it serves to obtain media attention. As Sison (2009) states, the "press agentry" is a one-way communication.

b) public information
Public information is a linear form(Shannon and Weaver 1949 : Weaver 1949b cited in Fiske, 1990) as well. In this model, information seminated to the people is the truth and it practical for PR professionals to give facts to their audience.

c) two-way asymmetric
- By far, I find this model most interesting because it uses scientific facts to convince people and thus, it is said to be capable to "manipulate" people to act as how the organization would want them to. I couldn't understand how was this two way, but Sison (2009) claims it is two-way because research about the audience is carried out before materials used on the audience is formed. I think for this model, one of the tools is to understand cultures. I think it would be easier to communicate with the understanding of cultures, so in a way, it is two-way, because PR practitioners would need to do research on the "local culture" especially working in a foreign country or in an MNC.

d) two-way symmetric
- And finally, this model as Sison (2009) says that it is the most preferred form of PR practice. This is because it strives to establish a common understanding between organisations and the public.

After all of this "heavy reading", the best model, would be the "two-way symmetric". It's because that's the main role of a PR professional- to coordinate the relationship between the organisation and the public.

That's so much from me for this week.

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