6.5 Marketing,...Public Relations

After reading Box 5.4 (p.119, Cheney, et al) I found myself right in the middle of the discussion. You see over the last three years I've been involved in the "marketing campaign" to attract new members to our department. I was brought on to the project after a manager thought he wanted my input on what his subordinates were developing. As I sat at the meeting I was introduced, to what appeared to be months of design and development of a new logo, and posters that were targeting a specific audience. After all of the presentations I had my turn at the floor.

I just couldn't see the value in what was happening at this meeting. I went up to the white board and I asked? Why do we need a new logo? The new logo had been designed with the physical image of our state behind the star. One person said, "people don't know where we are located." That's when I realized that we, as an organization (at least this group), weren't confident about our "brand". I spent the last 15 minutes discussing the merits of our existing logo; a logo that we have had for the last 30 years; how we were the oldest, largest, and most progressive agency in Northern, California.

I began to realize that I wasn't only developing and designing marketing materials for the target audience (potential candidates to join our department), but I needed to create brand awareness for the members of the department, and begin to take advantage of exposing the community to our brand. This organization was realizing that it needed to be mindful of the message (the brand) within the organization in order to take advantage of creating a positive message outside of the organization.