On October 14th, Steve Staedler,
an account executive at LePoidevin
Marketing shared his knowledge with my PR Tactics II class. Mr. Staedler
taught us about business-to-business public relations, a program called Cision,
and his current PR strategy for one of his biggest clients, SnapOn.
Mr.
Staedler spent a significant amount of time talking to the class about Cision,
a service many PR and marketing professionals use while on the job. This
web-based software provides users with a number of valuable services. Media monitoring, media list building, press release
distribution, and media analysis are a few of the services this program has to
offer. Steve mentioned a company called Vocus,
a major competitor for Cision. Their software has boasts similar features that
are helpful to professionals in the field.
Following
our discussion about Cision, Mr. Staedler separated the class into a few groups
to examine a case study. Each group was instructed to devise a 3-year campaign
aimed at raising awareness for SnapOn’s Technical Education Program. After
students brainstormed a few strategies and tactics, and incorporated those
plans into a realistic timeline, Steve shared with the class steps his company
had already taken to kick off this campaign. In order to position SnapOn as a
leader in the tool industry, Staedler wrote a whitepaper on behalf of his
client. This whitepaper was ultimately published in a magazine called Wind Tech and landed a photo on the
cover page which can be seen below.
Overall,
Mr. Staedler was a terrific guest speaker. The content of his presentation was
extremely helpful to my fellow students and I. Learning about the software that
is available from companies such as Cision and Vocus may come in handy as we
begin our careers after graduation. I especially enjoyed the case study because
it was a hand’s on way for students to test our skills and compare our ideas
with what Steve and his company actually did in the same scenario. I can't wait to see who our next guest speaker will be!
Ahhh, this summary was great! I had to miss class this day, and I was wondering about the case studies. It was great to read about those, as well as Steve Staedler's background and some information on Cision. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteChristen - I enjoyed your summary as well! I thought Mr. Staedler was extremely knowledgable and offered some great insights! I really enjoyed the case study, and I appreciated the "real world" advice he brought to the classroom.
ReplyDeleteI love how he do a little workshop in class. I think it helps everyone interact and be hands on in the classroom. Whenever students are brainstorming together they always come up with great ideas and learn for one another.
ReplyDeletei completely agree learning about software like cision and vocus will come in handy when we are in the pr world. I also though he was a great guest speaker and had a lot of experience and insight
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