Back On Track

This past weekend at ONU was huge for the Northern athletic program. The football and volleyball team battled the John Carol Blue Streaks (JCU), and both came out victorious. The football team travelled to JCU for the game. JCU students and alumni filled the stadium for JCU’s homecoming game. JCU was the favorite going into the game with a rank of number 11 in the country while ONU was unranked. After a full game of back in fourth play mostly dominated by JCU the ONU Polar Bears came out on top winning the game 30 to 27.  After talking with my roommates who both play on the football team they both expressed the amount of adrenalin and excitement that carried through the whole game.  One roommate even said it was the most exciting game he had ever been apart of.

As for the volleyball game, the first game went to JCU. The Lady Bears played well and down to the last points, but JCU prevailed. As for the next two games, ONU dominated the court. There was great team play on all ends. They made a few small adjustments offensively and defensively after game 1, which helped them control the following games.  

Both teams needed a win to re-gain confidence from weeks before. Anytime in college sports when you can beat a top ranked team on their homecoming day you are going to feel great. From a fans perspective I could not be happier for our athletic programs success over the weekend, and hope to see the momentum gained carry through the rest of the season, and playoffs.

The Importance of PR Campaigns

Organizations from every industry and background need an effective public relations campaign at one point or another. PR campaigns have the ability to do so much for both private and public organizations. A successful campaign in the public relations field should do several things. The campaign should have influence on multiple levels, and provide information for journalists, bloggers, broadcasters, business analysts, consumer groups and other commentators who influence your customers and prospects.

The campaign should also be memorable. There is no point in running a campaign to gain awareness in one area or another only to have your target audience or audiences forget what the purpose of the campaign was shortly after. I don’t like using the word finished with campaigns; I think a truly successful campaign is never finished. The results should continuously be measured up until it is time to take the next step, and launch another campaign.

Ultimately when done right, the campaigns effectiveness should be measureable. Going forward from the campaign, it is imperative to be able to measure the results whether they are in the form of media highlights, an increase in website traffic, more community involvement etc.  Measurement can be tricky, fortunately we have a wide spread of analytic tools to pull from to ease the measurement process. 

PR campaigns can be used to restore an image, gain awareness about a specific product or brand, and to let the general audiences know about the great things the organization is working on to continue to better themselves. Often this area is overlooked. We are past the days of PR being a fancy thing only some companies’ use. PR is a necessity for any business in today’s ever evolving world if they have any hope at lasting.