Background: Women’s inequality is an issue that continues to remain in effect today. This is a subject that merits attention and focus. The PR campaign that was launched by STABLIO is called “Highlight the Remarkable” and focused on bringing recognition to some remarkable women who played an integral role in history by highlighting these women. The company took three famous black-and-white photographs that related to historical moments and used a yellow highlighter to feature the woman in the photographs. The campaign was meant to bring focus to the fact that women are often an influential yet overlooked part of history. The women who were featured in this campaign were Katharine Johnson, a mathematician who worked at NASA and was instrumental in being responsible for the calculations that sent Apollo 11 to the moon. Nobel Prize winner Lisa Meitner who discovered nuclear fission and First Lady Edith Wilson who assumed her husband’s presidential responsibilities following a stroke.
PR Theory: This became an enormously successful campaign and blew up on social media going viral within days of its launch. STABILO ’s vision to highlight this issue became so successful that the company received multiple awards as a direct result of this campaign. The agency sees this campaign as a task to question common societal attribution of history’s triumphs solely to men. This campaign successfully demonstrates the Agenda-Setting Theory by showing that the media can be largely instrumental by influencing their audience about which social narrative should receive prominent focus.
PR Theory: The Uses and Gratifications theory is also relevant to this campaign. It started with ads in Germany and turned into a global conversation. It created buzz not only in traditional media but in social media as well. The campaign recorded a massive 15 million Twitter impressions and STABLIO mentions increased by 97.4%. This campaign has remained extremely relevant on multiple channels across the internet. After this campaign went viral it inspired people to change the narrative of history by highlighting the remarkable. This campaign also resulted in individuals suggesting other remarkable women in history for STABILO to highlight in future photos.
Globalization PR Relevant: The rate at which the world is changing and the importance of social media has forever changed the simple beginnings of Public Relations. PR agencies must remain responsive to issues of social importance, and be socially aware while maintaining a level of transparency and accountability that wasn’t necessary just a few years ago. Interesting in itself is how the field of Public Relations embraces those changes and adapts to grow and remain an integral and relevant part of the media machine. This campaign that uses a highlighter, a tool used in a personal hand’s on approach has been accepted into various types of media.
Relevance to PR: This campaign highlights how public relations is both creative and clever. It deliberately and effectively used a promotion for a company by using wordplay to highlight a product, while tastefully encapsulating an important social issue. What better way to demonstrate the enormous power and positive momentum that a public relations campaign can produce?
Wild flowers…Spring has sprung and re-sprung again here in the commonwealth of Kentucky! Although I enjoy the change of seasons. I love some snow, yet I prefer the snow to stay in the winter. Now that it is spring…I ardently welcome the greens of the trees and new grass. The vibrant colors of the budding trees and blooming flowers. The songs of the birds. The opportunity to walk the dog. I look forward to the smells of freshly cut grass, and of cookouts on the grill. Even my dog has demonstrated his views on the subject by demanding to go outside and peacefully sitting on the sidewalk with eyes closed and relaxing in a warm breeze. Today I witnessed a pair of ducks leisurely floating in something akin to a lake, but it was not much more than a puddle on the lawn. A reminiscence of a recent spring rain shower.
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