Last Week of Class!

Well I have to say that I don't think I have ever been sad for a class to end. I really enjoyed coming to this class each week and have found it to be a valuable part of my education. I echo some of the other responses that I wish I had taken this class earlier. It has given me a lot of tools that will be very useful for the rest of grad school and in my future career. Now as I am preparing presentaions for other classes I find myself thinking aout how to make it more than just a boring, typical power point presentation.

I enjoyed the lecture this week mostly because I never thought of having public health professionals at PR or advertising firms. It is a career path that I have never thought of and something to think about.

I am looking forward to the presentations and of course the food! I have enjoyed my group and think we have all work very hard on these presentations. Hope everyone has a wonderful, restful, much deserved break and a Happy New Year! See you in 2008!

Presentations!

WOW! I cannot believe how fast this semester went by. It is a little scary how quickly it all goes. I almost feel guilty becuase I feel like since I've been in school all I do is wish my life away. "I can't wait for this semester to be over" over and over again. Here I am almost seven years later and it seems like it all went by unbelievable fast. And I'm sure it doesn't slow down from here.

Anyway...enough of that. I thought the presentations are coming along fantastically. It is so great to see the different groups ideas on how to present their message. Who know so many people were so creative in our class? I am really interested to see the final projects. I just know they will be great!

Media: Friends or Foes?

This week in class we had a guest lecture from Laura Walcher public relations guru. I found her presentation to be interesting and she had some good tips about how to get the media to pay attention to your campaign. Although I have a better idea - I must admit I'm still not too sure exactly what PR entails. One thing in her presetnation that I thought was interesteing was her statement that "the media may be friendly but they are not your friends". I think this statement is so true. Just like us health communicators the members of the media have a job to do and that might mean that we will not always like what they have to say.

I liked the advise she gave us about writing press releases and also about how to follow-up. Follow-up is something that you will have to do no matter what job you have and I always tend to feel like I am being annoying when in fact I am just trying to get my job done. So I am grateful for the tips! Another point Laura made was about being informed about what is going on in the news. I wish there was a one stop shop that has all the information I needed! It can be so overwhelming to try and follow what is going on in the world. It is so importatnt to be informed but also challenging when you already have limited time. I am going to try to be better about this one - although I'm not making any promises!

Message Strategies

After seeing the "teasers" for the projects I am really excited to see the end result for all the groups. I like that we have the mini projects to help us get started and also so you can see where all the other groups are and what they are doing. I know all of the projects are going to turn out great and be really interesting!

This week's topic in class was message strategies. We talked about ways to frame the message and different ways to get your message across like using humor or fear. Personally I think that fear is a pretty effective way to get people to pay attnetion to the message. It relates to "wrong reason" health promotion in that people will sometimes change a behavior in order to avoid a negative effect. Fear may even be pretty effective for our project. If people believe that climate change is an issue they may be "scared" into changing small things around them to impact the threat to our world. It is such a chellenge to get people to pay attention to your message out of the thousands they are bombarded with everyday so it is important to be a little creative!

Mean Joe Greene

So even though this is totally unrealated to health communication I thought this was kind of cool. I work at the University of San Diego as an athletic trainer and we had a special guest at practice on Wednesday - NFL Hall of Famer Joe Greene. Now he was pretty much done playing by the time I was born but as a sports fan I thought it was cool to have such a memorable player come to practice and talk to our guys. Below is the Superbowl Commercial with Joe Greene. Check it out!

Time Flies When You Are Having Fun!

Well we are now done with module two and in the middle of the semester! It is amazing how fast the time goes by...and it's a little scary when you are working on your thesis! = ) I really enjoyed this part of the class. I thought it was great to find ways to reach your audience. As health communicators we always know the message we want to put out there but how do we know it is being recieved? It is great to have tools like PRIZM and VALS that we can use to try to figure out what kind of message our target audience will listen to.

The most interesting part was looking at geography when segmenting your audience. I guess I just never really thought about it before that people who live by the beach may not value the same things that people that live in the suburbs or the city do. There are probably a lot of similarities but some differences that could be important when trying to provide health information. So far this class has been very interesting and valuable - I even kind of like blogging now! But don't tell anyone! I'm looking forward to getting some good info from these projects and finishing up the class.

Defining Our Audience

This week in class we discussed segmentation tools that can be used to identify characteristics of your target audience. We used VALS and PRIZM specifically. The VALS survey (Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles) was more geared toward consumer habits and the PRIZM tool looks at neighborhood make-up by zip code. My VALS type is an Experiencer which actual described me pretty accurately. According to the description I am an avid consumer that spends money on fashion and entertainment, and I am an impulsive consumer (Sounds right huh - Mom and Dad?!). I really enjoyed taking this survey and thought it was an interesting tool for audience segmentation.

I invite the rest of you to try this out!
http://www.sric-bi.com/VALS/presurvey.shtml

The PRIZM tool looks at neighborhoods by zip code. After looking up Pacific Beach I got the typical sterotypes of a beach town. Singles, athletic people, young professionals. I think these types of tools could be very useful when developing campaigns. Not only can we use it to learn more about our own neihborhoods but we can use it for our audiences too.

Here is the web address so you can try it out.
http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=20&id1=1027&id3=92154

Finally, I want to mention that I am excited to get working on our projects! I am in the Climate Control group and I think it will be interesting to learn about the environment and how to protect it. I have been trying to do things to be "green" but I want to learn more! So hopefully I will have some good stuff to share with all of you soon.

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