Mean In Green

The end of last semester my PR class started to work with the basketball teams to help promote the games.
The first home game we coined the phase "Mean in Green" and decided to use it for the whole season. The first game we planned together as a class and it seemed to be a great success. When this semester started in January we each were responsible for a basketball double header game. It was up to us to create a theme and publicize the event. For my game I partnered with Zeta Phi Beta and the Creekside Flippers.
Zeta Phi Beta is a sorority on the GCSU campus who wanted to use a game to help support their philanthropy. My contact was a girl in the sorority named Natalie. Their philanthropy is the March of Dimes Foundation so we decided to make the theme of the game "Come to the Game and Bring Some Change". Zeta Phi Beta brought large baby bottle piggy banks for everyone to put change in to go towards March of Dimes and they also raffled off different prizes throughout the game.
During the half-time of the girls game the Creekside Flippers performed. Creekside is a local elementary school in Milledgeville and the Flippers is an after school program with the elementary school where they learn to flip and tumble. My contact was Donnie Coburn who is in charge of the Creekside Flippers. A lot of people came to support the elementary school children flip across the court. They were extremely cute and so much fun to watch.
During the half-time of the men's game the GCSU dance team, the Sassy Cats, performed their 9th place nationals routine and wowed the crowd.
This seems like it was all so easy, but I did encounter difficult situations along the way. Working with Zeta Phi Beta went really well, they knew exactly what they wanted from the game and what they wanted to do. It was easy to create a flyer for them and they decided that they wanted to hand them out around the campus. However, I did make one mistake I forgot to put the "Mean in Green" logo on the flyer.
The next problem I has was getting in contact with Donnie from the Creekside Flippers we seemed to have some communication problems, but in the end they showed up an performed great.
Because of the difficultly I had trying to get in touch with Donnie, I did not have my press release done in time, which was a big mistake and I still feel awful about it. I did get it done, however, and it went up on the GCSU athletics cite.
Another challenge that my whole class faced was dealing with the Thunder Crew. At GCSU we have a spirit group called the Thunder Crew. They come to all the game, sit in the front row, and head up the student section. While athletics had come to our PR class asking for our help it seemed that everything we did the Thunder Crew would do the opposite. We would create a facebook page for the event and then they would create another with different information. Same goes for flyers, posters, and support. The girls basketball team always has less people at them then the men's game does, and one of our goals was to get more people out to the girls game. The Thunder Crew only seemed to support the men's game and that is what they advertised. The Thunder Crew and our PR class seemed to always clash with multiple messages going out into the Milledgeville community.
With these challenges, however, came the best takeaway learning experience. I learned that it's hard working with other people who don't necessarily work the same way as I do. You must be patient, be able to compromise, and most importantly be flexible.
Even thought we encountered these difficulties of working with the Thunder Crew I would say that the "Mean in Green" season was a success.
I believe that all of the games we provided PR for were a success. For each game I think that success is based differently. For my game success came to me in three different ways. The first was with Zeta Phi Beta. They raised a lot of money for the March of Dimes foundation and thanked me for letting them have the opportunity to use a game to get their message out there. To this day I am still friends with Natalie. The next form of success was with the Creekside Flippers. At first it seemed very stressful, but when they went on the court during the women's half-time they did an amazing job. They had family and friends come and support them, which brought more local Milledgeville community members out to watch the game. It has been hard to get community members to come and support our athletics by coming to the basketball games, but that night they came out. The third reason that I feel that my game was a success was the crowd. I felt that there were more people at the women's game then there usually is and I felt that more people were at the game.
Throughout the season, I believe, that more and more people showed up to more and more games. I believe that our PR made a great deal of a difference and that the fans who came to the games made a winning difference to our bobcat basketball players.
If I had to do one thing over again it would be to take my time more with the flyers to make them truly great. I would not have left out our "Mean in Green" logo if I did not rush and took more time with them. If I had to grade myself I would give myself a B. I think this because I did not do everything as great as I could have done it.
In order to keep "Mean in Green" going I think that the phase needs to stay so the college knows that when it's "Mean in Green" time...it's GAME TIME. Also, in order to keep it going I think that we need to coordinate with the Thunder Crew more efficiently and work together. I think that if we keep the phase going more and more people will start to recognize it and start coming to the games.
In general I think that "Mean in Green" was a success. Our class really learned to work together with this project and became very close. This was an amazing learning experience for us and I had a lot of fun!

PR for Panama City Beach Spring Break

This past week I celebrated spring break in Panama City Beach. While there I started to think what makes people, especially college students, want to go there for spring break. When I was younger Panama City Beach (PCB) was thought the be a "trashy" area and the only reason one would go there would be to PARTY. It was Destin that was known as the more family friendly beach.
However, in more recent years PCB has started to clean up their image; for years they hosted MTV's spring break, but this year they did not invite MTV back. They have also built a new beautiful pier full of shopping and restaurants and have more family friendly attractions. While looking through different cites for PCB PR, it looks as though they have cleaned up their image and have truly become more family friendly.
Reading press releases, looking at advertisements and going to different marketing cites I have noticed that PCB has not truly changed its image after being there. The beaches were full of college students playing beer pong, funneling beer, and taking shots. While PCB did not invite MTV back they did host BET spring break. In PCB I did see a few families, but everywhere that there were families there were a lot more drunk or crazy college students. Even at a miniature golf course high school students and college students were drunk and acting inappropriately.
This got me thinking...Can good PR change the image of PCB?
I think that it can, but will good PR has to come changes as well. I believe that the advertisements for families and opening new family attractions and a beautiful new pier are defiantly improvements. If they want more families to start coming and enjoy their stay they need to keep the good PR; however PCB also needs to take some action. Putting out a press release is just the first step there must be follow through and there must be changes.
They should keep some areas of PCB just for families and use PR to advertise those areas more. I do not know if the stigma that PCB has as a place for college spring break partying will ever change, but if PCB wants to make its place more friendly to more then just college students partying they will need to actually put more action into there PR plans.