Comm 406: Relay and Public Service Advertising

In our Public Relations group for Relay, we are working to maintain the public image for the campaign. Our job is basically to make sure the students as well as the community in Shepherdstown,WV are aware of what the campaign is actually about. We are basically the information providers. Our jobs include sending out press releases and making sure that information and ads for the campaign can be put into newspapers, fliers, etc. For each idea, our group has come up with various events. For all of the events, we decided that it would be a good idea to create a "like" page on Facebook. We also thought about building dinners and bake sales (which would raise money) around each event. For the Pirate theme we thought it would be a good idea to have a movie night at the opera house showing "Pirates of the Caribbean" which would also raise money. We also thought that it would be a cool idea for everyone to change their language to "pirate" on Facebook for that day. For "Rockin' Relay" we came up with the idea of having a Rockband contest where you would donate money to play the game. The winner's name would be posted on Facebook after. For the superhero theme, we thought of having everyone change their Facebook picture to their favorite superhero for the day. We also brought up having a Spiderman web-shooting contest in which people would donate to play. We also thought it would be a good idea to give all the cancer survivors capes to wear during the events. We thought that advertising all of these events at local schools would be affective. Fundraisers at these local school could also help to raise money. Even though we have all of these ideas, I think that they could use some extensive work. Comparing it to the "Public Service Advertising," article, it seems that we have a lot more work to do. I think that Relay for Life needs to be thoroughly researched in regards to just how much Shepherd University has raised in the past years. It would also be good to see where we rank in comparison to other universities. The most important thing that we would need to do would be to stress that Relay for Life is not only for Shepherd students. We need to come up with some other good ideas to urge the Shepherdstown community that all of the events are open to general public as well. In order for this campaign to be effective, we need to make sure that students as well as general public know what Relay for Life is all about. The campaigns that I read about in the article were successful because of their constant drive to stress the issues as well as come up with creative events. I think that our events are very creative, but there is always room for improvement.

Jeffrey Simms Photography