IMC Hawks Blog

Category: Social Capital

  • Communication Studies Next Top Model

    Did you know that you can employ Integrated Marketing Communication in any organization? It’s an easy way to reach your target publics and increase membership and participation in your organization. However, few people actually know how to use it properly. Communication Studies Society (CSS) has been heavily utilizing IMC in the past few weeks to increase attendance at the Com Studies Day events, which is this Friday, April 1st. CSS and the entire Communication Studies Department have been utilizing social media outlets, such as Facebook and Twitter, to build anticipation for Friday! There is even a friendly competition between the professors to see who can get the greatest participation from their students to attend the events.  Our Advanced IMC class will be live blogging and tweeting from all of the events, with voting on who is the audiences favorite model at the Dress for Success Fashion Show. To follow the days events or participate on Twitter, type in #COMStudiesDay in your tweets or follow @IMCClass.

    The use of social media during Com Studies Day creates social capital within the community by allowing everyone to get a front row seat in the action and alumni to see how successful the Communication Studies Department has become.

    Other than using social media, CSS has been posting flyers and taking advantage of the Communication Studies Department newsletter that gets distributed to every Communication Studies major, which is the target audience.

    So be sure to come to all the Com Studies Day events, and if you can’t make it, follow us on twitter. More importantly, be sure to vote for Scott Burgess (@scottrburgess) and Allison Day (@Allisonday32) as your favorite models and send your votes to @CStudiesSociety.

    Happy tweeting!

    -Allison Day, Jessica Berinson, Megan Canny, Melissa Gagliardi, Scott Burgess

  • Make this Spring Break about Helping Others!

     

     Instead of partying in Panama City or Cancun and ultimately only hurting your liver, make this spring break or next years about helping others by becoming a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.

    More than 10,000 students in 2011 are volunteering their time for spring break. The numbers are rising from 2006 when 1,531 students volunteered to spend spring break to help rebuild the storm-torn US Gulf Coast.

    According to Desiree Adaway, the Habitat for Humanity senior director of Volunteer mobilization said, “Students have a number of options to consider for their school spring break, and we are so grateful for their interest in volunteering their time with Habitat,” “Their efforts will help provide safe, decent and affordable housing for so many families in need.” Habitat for Humanity is trying to market now towards college students on their spring breaks.

    Not only are these spring breakers helping others but they are also “building” social capital. Habitat for Humanity is a great way to meet others and spend time with friends who enjoy doing the same things as you. This opportunity gives you a chance to travel across the country to different places and learn of other cultures. From February to June Collegiate Challenge participants will volunteer in 200 Habitat locations and donate 1.3 million to the Habitat affiliates they visit.

    For more information on becoming a volunteer.  www.habitat.org/volunteers.

     -Lindsey Baggett, Drew Mayer, Micaela Fouhy, Will Cosden, Brianna Golden

  • My spring break is cooler than your spring break!

    So instead of spring break being a week or so off school to relax and catch up, for some its an opportunity to party as hard as possible… in the coolest place possible.  Each year we try to top last year’s adventure.  It seems that spring break has become a status competition and the winner goes on the most epic trip EVER!

    College students aren’t the only ones to have caught on to this trend, though.  Travel agencies, hotels, the alcohol industry, cruise lines, etc plan for the months of March and April to bring in as many spring breakers as possible; cruises to the Bahamas, houses in Key West, Miami, Cancun, Vegas, Palm Beach, Panama City- you name it.  The point is to capitalize on the hopes and dreams of a wild week in a tropical location.  Much in the way Hallmark promotes Valentine’s Day, the travel industry pushes for cheap deals in hot places.  These divisions most often even come up with package deals to make this happen.  The alcohol divisions are really the ones who luck out.  They team up with the cruise lines.  They team up with the hotels.  The airlines partner with hotels- it’s all one big money making family.

    All you need is anywhere from $500-$1000 and you get a wrist band that says you’ve paid and you’re ready to party!

  • Globetrotting Couch by Couch

    As you can tell, we have Spring Break Fever in Advanced IMC.  During our break many of us will travel, but those of us who aren’t going anywhere can probably attribute that to one reason, or lack there of, cash money.  Spring break can get pricey and when I mentioned the price to one of my friends they were quick to offer an inexpensive (actually it’s free) travel solution; couch surfing!

    I had heard about couch surfing, but decided to do some research to find out exactly what it’s all about.  Couch surfing is a hospitality exchange network/website that allows people to register and either host travelers on their couch, stay on other couches, or do both across the globe.  The way it works is you go to couchsurfing.com and create a profile.  From there you can choose to search for a couch based on the location you want to travel to, view profiles of people who have couches in the area and if you find somebody who you think would be cool to stay with you send them a request.  If approved you have a free place to stay for a night or two.

    Sound kind of sketchy?  Maybe, but couch surfing figured out how to quell the sketch factor of staying with strangers by having your friends, people you’ve hosted or folks you’ve stayed with give you review.  If a person has bad reviews obviously this is a tell-tale factor that you may not want to stay on their couch or have them stay on yours.

    Over the past few weeks in class we’ve been talking about building social capital.  Social capital deals with social cohesion and personal investment in the community.  Couch surfing is helping to increase social capital by involving people who may otherwise never encounter each other.  Its designed to give people a cultural perspective and opportunity to encounter people, places and experiences in a country or location that they may not otherwise be privy to.  By staying with locals you are getting a first hand experience of the destination you’re visiting.  If you choose to host people you are only bolstering social capital ever further by making an investment in the couch surfing community as well as the global community.

    I find the concept of couch surfing fascinating, and although I am not couch surfing over spring break I am going to host a person.  How’s that for social capital?

  • True Life: I’m on Spring Break

    With college students across the country and world closing their textbooks, embracing a week of freedom, and embarking on wild adventures, we see it fitting to pay homage to the originator of the modern definition of spring break, MTV.

    In 1986, MTV filmed its first season of Spring Break, and has done so every year since then. Usually it popularizes fun beach cities in the south such as Daytona Beach, Panama City, Fort Lauderdale, and of course, Cancun. It is a week-long affair full of concerts, parties, and outrageous contests. MTV has branded spring break as a time for young people to let loose. This year, they are breaking away from the traditional East Coast/Caribbean locations and heading out west to Sin City itself, fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada!

    How has spring break, a time when students everywhere have a week of nothing to do, become a billion dollar industry that fosters the growth of social capital among college students? The answer is branding. When you hear the names Panama City, Cancun, and South Padre Island, the image of beautiful beaches do come to mind, but the majority of the time people envision huge, day long parties on the beach, crazy clubs, and excessive amounts of alcohol. What most people do not realize is that Spring Break is a major component of the economies of these cities. Each year, over 250,000 students descend upon Panama City alone over a period of four weeks. Local officials and residents actually embrace the students because they understand the amount of money being spent by spring breakers.

    Nonetheless, no matter the location, Spring Break is still branded the same way – as a time for students to let loose. So now we’ll ask the question: what are your plans for Spring Break, and do they fit into the brand image created by MTV? Our very own Scott Burgess and Megan Canny will be tackling this issue head on as they venture to Panama City, Florida. Wish them luck on their endeavors!

    -Allison Day, Jessica Berinson, Megan Canny, Melissa Gagliardi, Scott Burgess

  • Why Blogs?

    Upon visiting TED, I browsed through a few videos before selecting one to watch and comment on. Mena Trott on Blogs was my final choice. How appropriate! Trott and her husband founded Six Apart in a spare bedroom of their house in 2002. Six Apart has been at the heart of social media and blogging since 2001! The company has many great blogging services including TypePad, Movable Type and Vox which help people connect with others and share their stories. Throughout her lecture Trott talks about how blogging gives regular everyday people the power to share their life’s journey online.

    Although Trott mentions how blogging is changing the way we read news and receive media, CNN and other big networks have their own blogs used to update readers the moment breaking news happens, it is the personal stories that capture her heart. She talks about a blog titled Interplast, in which doctors travel to developing nations and preform plastic surgery on those who can’t afford it. The doctors document their travel and tell their story through this site. Another example she gives is of a man who had a son named Oden born at 25 weeks. The father took pictures of Oden and wrote updates daily. By day 96 when Oden was able to go home readers were cheering.. Trott makes it a point to say that these might not be stories that would be covered in a magazine or a newspaper, but they do pull at your heart. This made me think of our class blog and how although we discussed world issues we still made it feel personal with our senior send off, ILM week, and com studies week.

    Trott also shows how blogs can be used for records. She discusses how she can only trace her family tree back a few generations and then it stops. Trott proposes that we can use blogs as a way to record our lives. Should her grandchildren or great grandchildren ever want to know what life was like for Mena Trott, they can look no further then her blog. Like Mena we have set up a blog for records. Every IMC-Hawk from here on out can look back at what we have accomplished this semester, Hopefully it will continue to keep building and there will be a long history of posts.

    Through the blogging assignment in this class we as IMC-Hawks have had our eyes opened to the powerful messages blogs can send, the people they can reach and the footprints they can leave.

    Jess Smith

  • Impossible is Nothing

    I’ll always remember how I felt when I was about to graduate from highschool – excited, elated. I knew I was only a summer away from moving to the beach where I would be at UNC Wilmington for the next four years.

    Once I was here Wilmington soon became my community, UNCW became my home, and the people became my family. But I never expected the past four years to go by so fast. So now, with only weeks until graduation, and as I look back over my experiences, and forward to what comes next, I don’t know how I feel. There is a crazy mix of emotions. I’m excited  for the next step in my life, but sad to close the door on this chapter. I’m confident in my abilities and skills, but terrified of no longer having a safety net to catch me if I fall.

    It didn’t take me long to fall in love with UNCW, and especially the Wilmington community. The idea of staying in Wilmington after graduation was always something that I dreamed about. At the same time, I was always warned to not get my hopes up about that because there just aren’t that many jobs in the communication field in this town. But, there is something to be said about working hard, not giving up and never settling for anything other than what you really want. I am happy to say that I will be staying in Wilmington after graduation with a job in public relations.

    -Nicole Doherty