In Writing for Public Relations (STCM 33200), students are assigned a real company to simulate what PR practitioners create for a full product launch. Throughout the semester, students are partnered together to work through various stages, from introducing a new product, identifying a celebrity endorsement, and ultimately managing a crisis communication scenario.
As part of the crisis communication phase, Lecturer Emily La invited Denise Rosplock, a marketing and events management professional who previously worked at Reed Exhibitions and Informa, to give students an inside look at handling high-pressure situations at large-scale events. Rosplock shared insights from coordinating a major event featuring an A-list guest, Barack Obama, as the keynote speaker. She walked through the extensive planning to ensure the event ran smoothly, and PR considerations needed to prevent any crises from happening. In another example, she detailed how her team managed a crisis at an 80,000-person event, where they had to act immediately and develop communication procedures to address and contain the situation. This was done within eight hours, all while keeping the event running smoothly.
In the context of their company and celebrity-endorsement scenarios, students were asked how to navigate a now-damaged partnership due to the celebrity’s actions. They then created a fact sheet of the situation, an official statement to be shared by the company, and a video script for a company spokesperson to address stakeholders. Guest speakers like Rosplock help students envision how the assignments they work on in class can be applied in real scenarios.