As a student in the Master of Communication and Media program at Rutgers University, I specialized in public relations. Below, you will find some of the projects I worked on of which I am most proud.
This first project is a cultural comparison storyboard. Our assignment was to select two competing organizations and analyze how each organization supports its culture through various messages. In addition, we had to illustrate how each company strategically positions and differentiates itself from the competition.
I chose Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s because I’ve always been interested in the rise of organic and sustainable healthy foods. Both are solid companies who’s organizational cultures are on opposite ends of the spectrum.
This second project I wrote as part of my Public Relations strategy course. Our assignment was to research how the PR industry is evolving in relation to marketing. We needed to draft a specific set of recommendations for current practitioners to stay up to date in both theory and practice, so they can best adapt to the changing environment. This paper specifically focuses on integrated marketing communications acting as its own discipline in an effort to bridge the gap between the two separate industries of public relations and marketing.
For this project, I was inspired by my boyfriend, who is a huge mixed martial arts fan. As part of my public relations strategy class, we had to prepare a campaign pitch for a potential client and explain our strategy behind it.
I focused on how the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) could initiate a corporate social responsibility partnership with police in an effort to lessen fatalities and injuries during arrests. UFC: Project Blue truly ended up being one of my favorite projects.
For this project, we were assigned to deconstruct a highly successful public relations campaign. We needed to prepare an outline that captured the highlights of the campaign and activities undertaken. I chose the Rutgers 250 campaign, which celebrated Rutgers’ 250th anniversary as a university. Because I was part of the 250th graduating class, who’s commencement speaker turned out to be President Barack Obama, I wanted to learn about what exactly went into planning a celebratory campaign like this one.