Meg Kane from Vault Communications Speaks to Temple PRSSA

Temple PRSSA's second guest speaker of the semester was Vault Communications Senior Account Manager Meg Kane. She spoke yesterday at our weekly chapter meeting about the key to success in the public relations field. Meg graduated with a bachelor's degree in communications from La Salle University and went on to earn her master's degree at the University of Maryland at College Park specializing in crisis communication, strategic public relations and political rhetoric. Upon graduation from college Meg took a job as the sole PR person for a small all-girls school where she learned everything from writing school newsletters to graphic design. Her first job was unknowingly one long job interview for her second while Vault Communications President Maribeth Roman Schmidt recieved a steady flow of the school's many publications written by Meg. Her strong writing skills got Schmidt's attention and in 2005 Meg decided to take a job at the then fourteen-year-old agency.

After explaining her background in PR Meg took us through two very interesting case studies that she's experienced at while at Vault Communications. She spoke of the daily demand of creativity that is necessary to be successful in PR and gave an example from Airgas, an important Vault client. Before working with Vault Communications, Airgas was a three billion dollar company that was practically unknown to investors. They enlisted the Vault team to help raise awareness to investors of the solid investment opportunity that their company offered as a profitable company with an ethical CEO in a time where most big businesses were failing. After a year of relationship cultivation with Jim Cramer of CNBC's Mad Money Airgas CEO Peter McCausland was finally invited onto the show. Eight Mad Money appearances later, the Vault team decided that it was time to land more interviews on different invester based programs. This is where the team's creativity made them stand out.

As most investors know, each company that is traded on the stock exchange has a three letter abbreviation assigned only to them. For Airgas, that abbreviation is ARG. The team was planning on pitching Airgas's story again in September, and stumbled upon the silly national holiday Talk Like a Pirate Day that takes place every September 19th. Knowing this, Airgas's stock exchange abbreviation couldn't have been more perfect, ARG, as in ARGGGG matey! This connection was all that the Vault team needed to make before the ideas started flowing. They decided to make an unconvential pitch to get the attention of the national investor-based media instead of just sending another press release. Two weeks before National Talk Like a Pirate Day all of the journalists on their media list recieved gold wrapped chocolate coins like those inside a pirate's treasure chest. One week before, the same people recieved a pirates hat, still with no idea who it was from or what purpose it had. Finally, a few days before the big holiday, the journalists each recieved a pirate pinata that, when they broke it open, contained ample information about Airgas. The journalists were stunned and loved the creativity of the pitch and within a week Airgas booked eight interviews with national media!

This case study was an example of the point that Meg was driving home with her presentation yesterday: creativity and hard work are the keys to great PR. Her case study is proof that it can pay to take calculated, sometimes quirky risks in order to stand out in the sea of mundane press releases and media alerts. Research, creativity and confidence all play a role in developing these out-of-the-box ideas. Meg's story was definitely an inspiration to me and reaffirmed the reasons why I want to enter this challenging but often rewarding field.

Qdoba Day!

Today PRSSA is having a Qdoba fundraiser! All you have to do is bring the PRSSA flier into Qdoba and hand it to the cashier when making your purchase. PRSSA will get $1.50 from each entree and drink purchase made with the flier! The fundraiser is from 11 a.m. until 10 p.m. today. After the PRSSA meeting today we'll all be heading to Qdoba, which is a great opportunity to get some early dinner and hang out with your fellow members!

What to do if you haven't printed a flier yet:

• Check your e-mail! The fliers have been sent out over multiple listservs.

Or

• Come to the PRSSA meeting today in room 217B of the Student Center from 3:30-4:15; extra fliers may be floating around the meeting!

Hiring a Reporter?

"If your business depends on free publicity from newspapers, what do you do when the papers can no longer afford to send reporters to cover you?" asks New York Times reporter Richard Perez-Pena in an article published on Sunday.

"In professional sports," he says, "the answer, increasingly, is hire your own."

A California hockey team, The Los Angeles Kings, recently hired a reporter to compile coverage of the team for its website. Apparently, the team gave the journalist "a multiyear commitment and complete autonomy to post reporting or commentary." The reporter will travel along with the team and cover its competitions.

“'We have a passionate fan base who want instant information about our team, but there’s been declining news coverage of us,'” a spokesman for the Kings was quoted in Perez-Pena's article. At the same time, the journalist enlisted by the team said that the job change would represent a pay increase and a higher level of job security.

So, is this situation a win-win?

Or, in blurring the lines between journalism and PR, does it represent an ethical dilemma? Is there, in fact, a major difference between PR and journalism-for-hire?