Big Changes

I'm moving to Utah! It's been a whirlwind couple of days, but thanks to help from Darrian I got a job at Radi8 Creative in Sandy. I'm so excited to start working there. It's an amazing company. 

So post-grad life has definitely been an interesting experience. If you remember, I moved to Las Vegas for a job at a PR agency, and after a few months I got let go. It was a huge blow to my pride, but I pulled together and got a job as a communications specialist at a tech startup four days later. There are a lot of challenges with a startup, and one of them is being dependent on a financial backer. Long story short, I switched jobs within the company and the startup went under. And then after that (and a lot of it I can't say because of legal issues and because I honestly don't know) the financial backer, my new boss, stopped paying me. I haven't gotten paid since Thanksgiving. 

I didn't tell a whole lot of people because I was embarrassed. I mean, I graduated from one of the top PR programs in the country, and eight months after graduation I'm on round 2 of being unemployed. I felt like everyone else had their life together and I was just not with the program. 

I can't lie and say that I handled this trial very well. There was a lot of crying and not sleeping and freak outs and anxiety and anger. I'd like to say that I trusted the Lord and was full of faith, but that's not the case for the most part. I was angry, and I felt like I was doing everything right but still not getting what I wanted. But when I humbled myself and really trusted Heavenly Father to just help me day to day, I was able to reach out to more people and be open to help, which is how I got the job at Radi8 Creative. 

So Utah, I'm back like I forgot something. See you Saturday.

I Didn't Choose Diet Coke, Diet Coke Chose Me

Have you seen this? It's the best. It looks like the "Diet Coke hunk" is making a comeback. I'm ok with it.

I was talking about Diet Coke with my friend the other day and it hit me. Diet Coke isn't just a drink. It's a lifestyle. You name drop it. You're not just getting a drink, you're getting a Diet Coke. You Instagram it. I am not immune to this.

"I'm so addicted to Diet Coke," you laugh and all your friends agree. "McDonald's $1 drinks on me!"

The PR nerd in me loves it. What has Diet Coke done to create a true lifestyle brand? When I see another girl holding that beautiful silver can I think, "that girl gets me." And I don't even know her. How did they do that?

Drinking Diet Coke says something about you. I don't know what it says, but it's something and Diet Coke has capitalized on it. Maybe it's the assurance that you're drinking something with zero calories, even though it's zero calories of poison that will undoubtedly kill us all in fifty years. Or it's the feeling of superiority and sophistication over the peasants that drink regular Coke. Or the aliens that drink Pepsi.

Oh, and guess who the new brand spokesperson is for Diet Coke? My girl:

First Day of Work

So today was my first day at MassMedia. It was a little overwhelming, but overall I liked it. But of course, in typical Melissa fashion it couldn't just go normally:

1. First, I manage to alienate myself within five minutes by announcing that I graduated from BYU. Everyone groaned and someone was like "I guess we can't swear now." No! Wait! Stop! That's not what I meant! I swear in my head all the time! It's fine! But of course, I didn't say anything and just awkwardly smiled and tried to laugh.


2. We got a quick tour of the office and I remembered that the break room was down a hall, but I couldn't remember which one. I walked down to the end of one hall and opened a door right into someone's office. Still, I'm better off than the kid who misspelled his own name on his resume and now everything has his name misspelled.


3. I did have the awesome awakening that I can take lunch whenever I want. I just have to bill 8 hours. It's an exhilarating feeling. Also, the intern asked me if I wanted any coffee. I was too stunned to answer, but he came back with Starbucks for everyone. Can I ask the intern to get me a Vanilla Bean Frappucino instead?


4. During that lunch break, I decided to find a place to eat my lunch that wasn't the office or my car. I started driving to Barnes and Noble but on the way I spotted a cupcake place called The Cupcakery. I decided to just stop in and see what they had. The cupcakes were beautiful and I started talking to the teenager behind the counter. I told him I was new in town and he pulled out their best-selling cupcake and gave it to me for free! AND he gave me a punch card with two holes punched in it already. I almost teared up. Am I making a bigger deal of this than I should? Probably. But it was just the nicest thing for some random high schooler to give me a free cupcake. 

Brad Lab Does Vegas

This semester I've been working with American Mothers, Inc. as part of Bradley PR. We worked with Project Next Generation, a campaign to get high school FCCLA students involved with helping collect books to donate to preschool children. Over the past couple months we've been working with the high school students as well as American Mothers to publicize the drive and make sure the local communities got involved.


This week, we were finishing up the book drive, delivering the books and talking to local media about the event. I researched reporters in the area who were interested in education and teens getting involved. I found a reporter with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and wrote him a quick email saying I liked his work and asking if he was interested in learning more about our project. Literally within minutes he emailed me back asking for more information!


On Tuesday afternoon (after stopping for important items like Gatorade, Cadbury Eggs and Pringles) we headed out to Vegas for the event. We listened to Sting, One Direction and even some Led Zeppelin. We stopped in St. George at Texas Roadhouse, and Jon loved practicing his "Southern" accent. He was really good....not.


We finally made it to where we were staying around 10 and just went to bed because we had to be up bright and early to put stickers on all of the donated books. We had aimed for 1,500 and ended up with over 3,500!

Ry was really disappointed that someone would give away Calvin and Hobbes books.

Junie B. Jones books were my FAVORITE when I was little. "It's me! Junie B. Jones. The B. Stands for Beatrice. Except I don't like Beatrice. I just like B and that's all. I am in the grade of afternoon kindergarten. It is very fun there. Only sometimes I have big problems. Cause that is life, people." I swear that all my humor came from those books. 

After a quick trampoline and ping pong break, we headed to Canyon Springs High School where they had the preschool that would be receiving the books. We unloaded all the preschool books and brought them into a classroom where there were twenty of the most adorable little kids. 

Unfortunately, and I'm not even lying, a guy dressed as Buzz Lightyear robbed a store and so all the media we had pitched were out covering that story. It was still great to see all the little kids who would be benefiting from these books. We even got to stop and read to the kids for a while.


Then we had to run to the hospital to drop off quilts for underprivileged children. So many babies leave Las Vegas hospitals with nothing, so another branch of Project Next Generation is the ABC Quilts project. ABC quilts donates blankets to babies in need.

Overall, it was a great trip. I learned a lot and it was so great to see a semester's worth of hard work pay off in the end!

I Love My Job

Droppin derivatives like threes, making Cougar fans forget

Ballers with no math like, what's his name Fredette? 

I pretty much love University Communications. We've been talking about this video for weeks and now it's finally here!

Spotted:
Michael Smart (of Michael Smart PR)
Michael Smart's kids
Joe Hadfield
Matt Hopkins
That rando from Brent's office

2012 PRSSA Regional Conference

This weekend, BYU was lucky enough to host a regional conference. We invited PRSSA chapters from BYU-I, Boise State, UVU and lots of other places to attend. We had over 130 people there and it was great to meet other young public relations professionals and learn about their chapters.

My favorite part of the conference was definitely the crisis challenge we had on Thursday night. We were divided into eleven teams and given a crisis: our renewable energy company had released some groundbreaking discoveries, but a couple other research institutions had issued statements saying that our research was inaccurate or faulty. We had just twenty minutes to release a statement to the press. Our next assignment was to talk to upper management, because they were starting to freak out about the dropping stock prices. Then, a former VP held a press conference, basically blaming management for the whole problem and saying that we had demanded that the scientists release the research and that we had known it was faulty the whole time. We had to issue another statement apologizing the public and explaining the situation.

Judges evaluated each of our statements, and my team ended up in the final two! We read our statement to the "press," answered questions and were judged again. We didn't end up winning, but the other team did a great job and totally deserved it :).

The crisis challenge was a great learning experience. It was such a rush writing the statements and making sure we handled the situation while maintaining our honesty and transparency. It was one of those times where I could just tell that I picked the right career path. It just clicks, you know?

Social Media Revolution

We watched this video in my Media Effects class a couple days ago:


Maybe it's just the PR geek in my, but I think this is the coolest thing ever. Most of us just use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for fun, but they really are influential and changing how information is shared around the world.

Ok I'm done.

Nash Conf

October 14-18 was the PRSSA (Public Relations Student Society of America) National Conference in Orlando, Florida. As part of BYU's PRSSA Chapter Executive Board, I got to go to the conference with some of the other members of our chapter. It was a blast.

The group on the first day

We landed in Orlando late Thursday night after a non-stop flight from Salt Lake. As soon as we stepped off the plane, I could feel the humidity in the air. Love it. Finally, air I can breathe. We were all a little stir crazy from being on the plane so long, so Jared kept telling everyone how excited he was to be in Vegas. Hilar.

The next few days were filled with speakers and breakout sessions. Some of my favorites included a crisis communications session by Richard S. Levick and a creativity session by Gary Buchanan, social media managing editor for Disney World.

There was also LOTS of networking. You know how much I love networking. (For those of you who don't know, forced networking lies on my "List of Things I Love" somewhere between the song "Pumped Up Kicks" and slow internet, i.e. not very high). I was able to talk to some representatives from Edelman and Taylor, two firms I'm very interested in working with after graduation.

The conference wasn't all work and no play, though. There was a Carnival Masquerade dance the first night and we also had the opportunity to explore Downtown Disney and other parts of Orlando thanks to our handy trolley passes.

Jared Gay- best dancer in the world

Jelly Bellies- my one purchase in Downtown Disney


Gorgeous sunset

The highlight of our trip was definitely winning the Teahan Award for "Outstanding PRSA/PRSSA Relationship."

And now, after waking up at 3 a.m. Florida time, I'm back in Provo with two midterms and a paper.

Gross.