Sunday, April 3, 2011

A Week of PR Professionals..

Last week my PR class had the opportunity to listen to not only one but two UWW alumni PR professionals. After listening to both PR professionals I found myself very inspired and excited for the future in the business world.

The first PR professional that we heard from was Melissa Bohl from GE Medical. Bohl spoke about how she was lucky enough to work with such a well known and established medical company. It was interesting to find out all the traveling she is able to do, even though she is in the PR department. It seemed like even though she was apart of the PR department at GE Medical, marketing was still heavily integrated into her job. Bohl informed us about all the different internal and external communication channels that GE Medical has. From internal newsletters and blogging to external communication that is highly filtered, the way that GE goes about their communication channels are very intriguing. She explained Yammer, a social networking site that can be compared to Facebook, as well as the use of different blogging between employees to keep the communication flowing throughout the company. I think it is safe to say GE Medical is doing a great job of working together with its employees to keep the communication throughout the whole company open.

The second PR alumni that we heard from was Cory Zimmerman, founder of Z2 Marketing located in Pewaukee. Zimmerman told us different stories throughout his presentation, but the most intriguing thing I found about him was the fact that he at many points fell short of success, but he never gave up. From being deaf at one point in his life to coming from a background of poverty, he has had to work for every piece of success that he has seen. One main client that Z2 Marketing has is the Milwaukee Wave. Within Zimmerman's presentation, we were able to see many different pieces of promotional material that Z2 Marketing has done for the Milwaukee Wave Team.

Both Melissa and Cory's presentations were very intriguing, I felt that Melissa's was more of a corporate feel where she had to watch exactly what she had to say whereas Cory was able to express his emotions and stories in more of a laid back way. Melissa explained more of what GE Medical is all about and the technical descriptions of what she deals with day in and day out whereas Cory talked about his general background and how the failures he endured has gotten him to the point of success that he is at now.