Blog Topic 6: Professionalism!

With the ability to use spell check and similar tools, it is without any hesitation I say that it is just outright laziness and unprofessional to have spelling mistakes or grammatical errors in a piece of writing in relation to public relations. Professionalism is extremely important in regards to being a public relations practitioner. It’s about trust and presentation, leading to professionalism. Without excellent presentation skills there is little way of showing that one is professional. Correct grammar and spelling is a clear indicator of proper presentation skills. It indicates that the writer is interested and has clear understanding of the English language (Lawson 2014). Having appropriate headings and a format that is easy to read that offers little confusion, is some of the ways to show how I used presentation skills to reflect professionalism in my blog. Appropriate style of texts can be seen as more professional; however, it does not mean other styles are not to be used. It simply means that the document may be less formal (Lawson 2014). Being a blog it would be seen as a less formal document so the style of text would not exactly change the whole professional look. The use of different colours is seen as not necessary when writing a document (Lawson 2014). Blogs will typically use colours for effect in writing; however, to maintain a full professional look in my blog I used white as the text colour to contrast with the dark background. With the use of appropriate colours, headings and no grammatical or spelling errors I have demonstrated presentation skills to reflect professionalism in relation to public relations. 

Lawson, C 2014, Module 6 The public relations campaign: logistics, COMM11110 Introduction to Public Relations study guide, CQUniversity, viewed 6 May 2014, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/course/view.php?name=COMM11110_2141

Blog Topic 9: Crisis!

There are many crisis’ in public relations history but one very interesting public relations disaster I’m aware of is the guitar fiasco that resulted in a substantial amount of negative publicity toward United Airlines. The disaster occurred in 2008 where, Dave Carroll and his band were flying with United Airlines. The band were looking outside when they saw the baggage handlers throwing guitar cases; subsequently, breaking Dave’s Taylor made Guitar. He made multiple attempts to have United pay for the damage of the guitar they caused; however, nothing came of it. He then wrote a song titled ‘United breaks guitars’ and got millions of views on YouTube. The song was widely broadcasted all over the internet and also on the news. United Airlines was looking at a public relations disaster, the bad reputation was travelling around the world very fast. To fix the reputation this song was having on United Airlines they offered Dave Carroll the money to repair to guitar; however, the time to act had passed (Lawson 2014). It was months after the scandal had happened, too late in regards to what is acceptable in a public relation crisis (Wilcox et al. 2013). Dave refused the money but he did suggest United gives the money to charity. In relation to time after a crisis, United Airlines suffered, the song had already been out for many months before action was taken to reconcile the situation. In saying this, United Airlines did apologise and offer for the guitar to be repaired. In my opinion, although the airline did take too long to repair the damaged reputation, it did apologise and was able to reconcile the difference they and Dave had, repairing the reputation the song had caused.

Lawson, C 2014, Module 9 Public relations issues: conflict, COMM11110 Introduction to Public Relations study guide, CQUniversity, viewed 6 May 2014, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/course/view.php?name=COMM11110_2141

Wilcox, D, Cameron, G, Reber, B & Shin, J 2013, Think Public Relations, Pearson, New Jersey.

http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/music/ubg/story/