College Students Use of Promotions - Blog 13

    I was looking around a lot this week to see how college students perceive public relations. I was curious to know what most people know about it and think about it. This was a perfect week for this too because most of my friends are in the Greek Community. Two of the fraternities had philanthropy events and contests this week.

    I was asking their PR chairs what they think PR is and most of their responses about were what I have come to learn as advertising. It made me think should there really be a define line between the two? Isn’t there a very good reason why the school combined the two majors into one? I have been talking with different employers and looking at job openings and so many are in the communications department where you need strong skills in both PR and advertising.

Cut The Chis flyers.

    So the best word we came up with that described what they thought of PR was promotions. It seemed like a mix of PR and advertising. And this week I have seen so many ways of the fraternities promoting their event. They used social media in the biggest way I have seen them do yet. Part of their week long events includes Facebook “like” contests. The participants that have the most “likes” on their page will win extra points at the end of the event. And the Facebook pages are not limited to reaching just UNT students. Alpha Phi sorority had their page reach the the national level. Their nationals event re-posted the link to the page so that every Alpha Phi world wide would see it. It seems crazy that just a UNT event could reach that many people so far away.

Participating sororities driving around campus with their banners on their cars.

    The other fraternity also used social media but not as intensely as the other group. The Sigma Chis had their yearly event, Derby Days, this week and their strongest “promotion” technique they used was through the form of t-shirts. Something so simple went a long way. Just on Thursday when we were collecting money outside the union I saw so many people wearing the same Derby Days shirt. People were asking us why we were all in the same shirt and what it was about. This was excellent PR in the word of mouth sense.

    It was quit a week for Greek Life. With the shirts, banners, social media and flyers all around campus people took notice. We were able to have many successful events all week and raised over $200 in one day for one philanthropy. The other events did just as well. And all week we promoted the Greek Preview Day that is happening this weekend.

Cut The Chis - Trenton Conger donating his hair to Wigs For Kids.

    All in all, I feel like I learned a lot from this week. I sort of thought PR was just press releases and fact sheets but this week was fun. From painting banners to sticking up Cut the Chis flyers all over campus I learned how others view PR and how in the real world public relations and advertising are mixed together and promotions is just as important as having a well put together press release.