Mark Mckinley and Public Relations

Today marks the final day of our PR and new media module, and for me the final week of teaching. Many of the students on the module, including myself, are not from public relation backgrounds. Therefore the module has provided a brief yet valuable insight into the world of PR and the practices adopted and teached.

Prior to the module I had a strong preference towards marketing and the gains that brought to us. However, thankfully now I can see much more of the wider picture and the benefits that public relations offers too.  This is something that I feel will be of value to me now and much later in my chosen career also, a business student with an insight into public relations and new media also.  

Today Carnegie launched its rugby league floodlight nines tournament. The event will be staged in the summer and compromise of some of the best teams in the country and Leeds Met rugby league team.

The games will be nine a side instead of tradionally 13 per team, and it is a tournament I am likely to be playing in myself. Once again this is excellent public relations for Carnegie, also teammates and myself. An opportunity to play infront of the rugby league community at Headingley Carnegie stadium and the local media. One that I will certainly relish.

Today marks the day for the beginning of the final student week for the assesment of our PR and new media blogs. Im sure this will be met with mixed reactions and anxiety from fellow class members, many of which will no doubt carry their blogs on as they have possibly opened up new chapters to them and already presented new opportunities along the way. And of course many will not.

For me this new experience had given myself the chance to express my thoughts on the subject of PR and new media. Imparticular the links I have made during my time at Leeds met, especially through my love of rugby league and the public relations Carnegie has given myself and teammates of mine in recent months.   

Being a student and a sportsman at leeds met has brought home to me the importance of rubbing shoulders with champions. And this is a perspective I know the university puts alot of emphasis on throughout partnerships, community and worldwide links.

The other day I got the chance of some excellent publicity at no cost to myself whilst rubbing shoulders with champions.  I have written a short piece on my memories of the challenge cup in rugby league for the RFL website, and my post is along Robbie Paul and Jon Wilkin, the latter a winner of the challenge cup. 

It has been brought to my attention, and im glad that it has, that their may be some confusion over certain topics on my blog. The area concerned is rugby and inparticular rugby league. It was probably a fault of mine to assume that the reader understands their is two versions of rugby and the difference between them, rugby league and rugby union.

To the neutral spectator the two games appear very similar, and in some respects they very much are. Both are played for a period of 80 minutes on the same size pitch, one similar size to a football pitch, and have rugby sticks at each end. To register points teams score a try, equivalent to a goal in football, and after a try a conversion attempt over the sticks is taken by the goalkicker in the team.

However, the respective similarities end their. In rugby league their is 13 players on a team and 15 in rugby union. The major difference being in the tackle, in rugby league a play the ball is conducted and in rugby union it is ruck and maul. This is difficult to explain in words and is much clearer seen in action, for more information on rugby league please visit the governing body’s website Rfl and also for rugby union where more information can be found.

The ‘Carnegie’ brand is already a household name throughout the sport of rugby league. One of the most evident reasons for this is their sponsor of arguably the most prestigous competition in world rugby league, the Challenge Cup. Of course this brings in huge amounts of publicity for Leeds Metroploitan University in countless ways, television coverage, shirt branding, advertising boards and word of  mouth to name but a few.

Yesterday evening saw the draw of the 5th round of the Carnegie Challenge Cup live on BBC news channel. Once again positive nationwide publicity for the ‘Carnegie’ brand and in this case myself.  As I had the honour of making the draw, along with Mark Aston, on live television of the Carnegie Challenge Cup. As exciting as this was I must admit it was also alittle daunting as it was my first experience of a television studio, and where the spotlight was firmly on me. However my TV debut is one I will never forget, and I was proud to represent Leeds Metroploitan University on national television.

With so many deadlines and exams approaching fellow students and myself, its quite easy to get lost in a world of new media. Whilst sitting at your laptop/desktop trying to complete assignments, new media can prove a massive distraction on todays technology.

Being an active person myself and fortunate enough to have a strong circle of friends I prefer to interact and communicate with my friends/family on a physical basis, rather than an online or cyber relationship. Again I am fortunate enough to be able to be in a position to do this, as many of my peers in my class do not get to see their friends and family on a regular basis. This is where the wonders of modern technology and new media pay off, people can speak to each other that are thousands of miles apart in an instance, and whilst it may distract them from more pressing matters its always a nice option to have, isn’t it?

For me facebook, msn, myspace and the numerous other new media devices often prove a distraction, as I am only delaying the inevitable, and putting off my university work. However, they do open a world of accessible and cheap communication methods for people globally. After all it is good to talk.

Controversial British Sprinter Dwain Chambers has joined super league outfit Castleford Tigers on a months trial. After reading so much material on this recently I felt compelled to add my own thoughts.

The full reasons for this will remain between the player, his agent and the club respectively. However the copious amounts of publicity Mr Chambers and Castleford Tigers have recieved from this ’stunt’ has to be one of the reasons. Castlefords training ground has been a ‘media circus’ in recent weeks, and I’m sure this is what both parties intended would happen. I am not doubting Dwain Chambers ability as a world class sprinter, despite his drugs scandal, but the super league competition should not be taken lightly or under-estimated. And I feel it takes more than raw speed to make it as a winger (which I presume is the position he will play) in this world-class competition.

Being a fan and player of the game I care about the future and reputation of rugby league. The game has had enough adverse publicity in recent years to do without anymore at a time when British rugby league has the potential to be as strong as ever. I just hope that this is not a publicity stunt by the parties involved, that is trying to re-kindle the career of a shamed athlete by plastering him all over the media world. 

Although I have very little experience in keeping a blog, as already mentioned, this week I gained a huge personal honour. As captain of the mens rugby league team at Leeds Metropolitan University I was asked to write a blog entry for the Times newspaper ahead of the third round of the Carnegie Challenge Cup that our team was competing in.

Wow… Was my first impression, what a huge accolade for myself to write for the times online. All of a sudden I had gone from maintaining my own, small and relatively unknown blog to the Times. Please follow the link below to view this article and any feedback would be greatly welcomed. 

 http://timesonline.typepad.com/rugby_league/2008/03/post.html

When it comes to PR, and especially new media, some things are fairly new to myself. None more so than blogging, this is something I have seen and noticed when browsing the web but one thing I have never actively taken part in, reasons as to why I’m not sure of. The process of communicating via regular blog entries, making comments and also hopefully recieving them is new and exciting to me.

I am aware this is something that is not new to certain members of my PR and new media class, this is something I can benefit from as particular class members are further advanced at this concept. Other popular new media packages in the day to day world appear to be facebook, bebo and podcasts. Thankfully these are programs I appear to have a little more experience of, and shown here is a recent podcast I completed before competing for the university in the second round of the Carnegie Challenge Cup.

http://mediacast.leedsmet.ac.uk/podcastserver/stusport/ChallengeCupPreview/