Thank you

Thank you to the entire class and everyone who voted for helping our Safe Harbor grant proposal end as #89 among hundreds of worthy competitors. Yes, we're disappointed we didn't finish in the top 10, but during this process, we certainly helped spread the word about Safe Harbor and the work they do.

One student told us that she talked to some members of the shelter staff who expressed their appreciation for our efforts and said they voted every day. All in all, good work was done, even if we don't get to walk away with $25,000. I am very proud of the class.

Updates

The good news: out of 236 entries in the $25K category, we have been between #86 and #92 for two weeks.
The challenging news: we need to get to the Top 10 in order to win. Please keep voting!
You vote online (link below) or TEXT 103648 to 73774 -- or better yet, do both every day!

Tonight, Vanessa F. from Pivot Point Communications will be calling in about her career in PR and the work she does as founder of a PR company that specializes in social media. Should be great!

Vote Now through Nov. 30!

Networked Nonprofits

We've started reading and discussing a new book, The Networked Nonprofit, by Beth Kanter and Allison H. Fine. The book does a great job of taking social media beyond the realm of personal networking and fun as used by Millennials (the generation of our class) to advocate it as an imperative for nonprofit organizations to succeed now and in the future. We'll be applying many of the book's ideas to our work with Safe Harbor, especially for the group that will be developing a social media strategy for the charity.

Political Ads - Communicating for Change?

For the next few weeks, the class will continue to work on our projects for Safe Harbor, but we're shifting focus a bit to talk about political campaigns. Clearly, political campaigns communicate for social change, but they do so in a wide variety of ways. This week we'll be discussing political ads - the good, the bad and the ugly.

We'll review and discuss some of these ads and ideas in class:

The GOP had to pull an ad in West Virginia after it was exposed that the casting call asked for "'hicky, blue collar types," offending their audience. This is another good example of bad spokespeople.

Director Ron Howard doesn't think anyone should use spokespeople. He has an interesting idea to level the playing field for political ads.

What does Ron think of this ad by Christine O'Donnell, which has stirred up plenty of discussion?

NPR has started a program called the Message Machine to fact-check political ads and explain who's funding them.


Politifact.com is a leader in fact-checking politicians, and they're keeping busy checking new campaign ads.

We're In!

I'm proud to announce that our project for the Pepsi Refresh Grant has been officially submitted for the November voting schedule. Pepsi still has to officially approve us, but I don't see any reason why they wouldn't. We're now working on developing emails, Facebook statuses, Tweets and press releases to help spread the word come November 1. We need everyone's votes!

You'll be able to vote for us and follow our progress at www.refresheverything.com/StudentsForSafeHarbor.

Blog Highlights

I wanted to draw attention to some of the great insights students are posting as we navigate through the textbook about strategic communications.

Social Media in the News
Alyssa's blog discusses an interesting story in the news this week. She explains: "This week Provost Eric Darr of Harrisburg University in Pennsylvania has declared a black out of all social media sites on campus." This inspired Alyssa to analyze her own use of social media.

Do you think we use social media too much? Is it only for entertainment, or are there "legitimate" (i.e. educational, professional) uses for it? This class is about using social media to inspire change in the world -- how can that be bad? ;)

Values in Advertising
Laura took the idea of understanding audience values and found an interesting advertisement showcasing values (of a sort). Check out her blog (the 9/13 entry) for the video and her insightful discussion of it.

Know Your Audience
Emily discussed an interesting advertising campaign implemented by Hummer in association with McDonald's. Do we all agree that the Happy Meal toys were an example of misunderstanding the audience?