PR CRapOla

MY ADVERTISEMENT

This image is specifically to show that Starbucks is environmental and supports things like using a reusable cup instead of paper cups (tumbler). It is interesting though because Starbucks is not really doing anything environmental it is not really contributing any money. By taking money off of people's orders is not even giving money to the cause of the environment because they over charge so much anyway that I doubt they would really be losing any profit. Also, they support that you use a tumbler instead of a paper cup, and I'm pretty sure a tumbler is a reusable mug that is sold by Starbucks. Therefore, people will probably give Starbucks more profit during this Earth Day instead of Starbucks giving anything to the environment. I think this ad is crap. People get a fake sense of environmentalism by buying coffee from a giant conglomerate; this seems so twisted. Starbucks is showing themselves with a tree and something that says Earth Day, and people who don't even read the ad will be fooled into thinking that Starbucks has some sort of environmental agenda - when they don't. Really don't.

ONLINE SITE!!!

I chose PRWatch.org as my site for the week. First of all, I’ll just be honest in telling you that I did not go through any other websites, I just picked one and ran with it. When I stumbled on this website, the first thing I noticed with the logos for twitter and facebook and blogger so that you could join them instantly. I did and did not like this fact. I thought it was too like “oh, we’re just like every other website, so you should just follow us blindly just like every other fad on twitter and facebook.” However, I thought it might be a good thing in order to raise awareness about PR that people have no clue about. I know that before this class I had no clue about what PR really was and it would have been cool if one of my friends had something on their facebook that I could have joined or read about. Honestly though, I thought having the logos in such a big area and having it be the first thing on the page was really obnoxious. I feel like environmental websites get a bad rap sometimes for being liberal and out there which means that should try a little harder to make their sites to be as professional as possible.

In terms of content, one thing I did not like was the first story I noticed was entitled “McCain De-Mavericks” the story was about how McCain does not want to be called the Maverick anymore because he does feel that this name represents him. How is this PR valuable? Who cares what McCain wants to be called? I’m not just saying this because I don’t care for McCain either; I would have the same feelings if it were Obama. I was just thinking that a site like PR watch could bring a lot of valuable PR information to the public, why are they focusing on such dumb things on the slogans of McCain.

The website was effective and organized enough to get me to read many of the articles though - which I think is good. I learned that, apparently, Energy Star appliances are bogus. Apparently a company invented fake products such as a gasoline powered alarm clock and said that it used 20% less energy than its competitors and submitted it to Energy Star for approval and received it for all four of the fake products they created. Holy Crap! I thought Energy Star was a good thing, I suppose you learn something new every day. Based on stories like this I thought that the website was good for getting certain stories out that could have public value.

I did notice that most of the stories that are run are strongly democratic and not so much republican. I am not a republican but one would think that it wouldn’t be so left sided and represent the ideas of both sides. I think you would get more people to listen if you looked as unbiased as possible, I think the site had some biases. I could clearly see the left wings flying off the site.

Another thing I think would not contribute to many people wanting the information from this website would be the fact that you can’t see who some of the stories are submitted by; therefore you couldn’t tell if this was really reliable or not unless you did a lot more research. I’m struggling right now because I want to be able to get news in a place that does not require an obscene amount of effort and I feel like this site is not conducive to that desire. There are a lot of anonymous entries which makes me and I’m sure many other people skeptical of the site’s information. I wish there was a PR website that brought well researched reliable information to my hands.

Overall, I think websites like this can work if they don’t have too many ads on them, they don’t promote you following them on twitter, they have credible/well sourced articles and don’t overly display any political agendas.