PRSA members will enjoy one complimentary admission, valet parking access, Sullivan’s savory holiday fare, two drinks, and festive music. Non-members may attend for a nominal fee. Register NOW! Space is limited!

On top of that, we will raffle some bell-ringing prizes every 30 minutes, with proceeds benefiting the PR Foundation of Houston. Prizes include:

• One lucky winner will have the chance to drive around in style with a complimentary weekend use of a luxurious Jaguar—compliments of Jaguar – Houston Central.
• Want to win a happy hour party at a hot, new place on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday for you and 30 of your BFFs, including complimentary appetizers and two glasses of wine each? – compliments of the newly opened Phoenicia Specialty Foods and MKT Bar.
• Who wouldn’t want Whataburger for a Year? Enjoy a tasty Whataburger sandwich each week for a year – compliments of Whataburger, Inc. 
• A $150 gift certificate to be used at Del Frisco’s or Sullivan’s – compliments of Arthur Mooradian, GM.
• Beautiful Jewelry made with hand-blown glass beads – designed especially for PRSA, this jewelry is the work of Charlotte Holden, jewelry artist.
• Been putting off getting professional photos taken? You have a chance to win an individual or family portrait sitting, clothing consultation and 8×10 color or black and white signature portrait valued at $650 – compliments of Alexander’s Fine Portraits.
• Houston’s own St. Arnold’s Brewery has provided a gift basket, which includes a selection of their unique beer, root beer, brewery tour passes, glassware and other Saint Arnold goodness. Who wouldn’t want a basket of goodies to add some fun to your time off during the holiday season?  
• Attend a wine tasting for four generously donated by Water2Wine Houston. The winery is an actual wine-making operation, where all wines are fermented on site. You will have access to more than 100 wines from 13 countries and everything open for tasting, your taste buds can travel around the world without ever leaving the winery.
• Goodies for your culinary cheer – a basket full of yummy treats from Goya Foods.
• Pick up a holiday gift basket filled with all sorts of sweet treats, valued at $50  – compliments of Lombardo Luscious Treats.
• Start the New Year off with a health kick for the whole family with a 6 month household membership – compliments of YMCA of Greater Houston.
• Mini home makeover – Spend a $250 gift certificate on some lovely home furnishings – compliments of Finger’s Furniture.

So, let’s get our “Mingle” on together on December 5 – see you there!

• Luncheon keynote speaker: Alan VanderMolen, President/CEO, Edelman Global Practices and Diversified Insights Businesses
• Henry de La Garza, Building Trust After a Crisis: BP  and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
• Lee Warren, Marathon Oil, The Importance of Building Solid Relationships
• Kelsey Ruger, ChaiOne, I.N.S.P.I.R.E.: Using Storytelling to Engage, Inspire and Move People to Action
• Kathryn McNeil, Building Grassroots Campaigns From The Ground Up
• Monica Danna, Maggie McDonald and Kelsey Ruger, The X, Y, Z’s of Social Media: Optimizing New Media in a Multi-Generational Workplace
• Kami Watson Huyse, APR, Prove It! Measuring the Impact of Social Media
• Allie Herzog, Creating Trust Via Social Media
• Breakfast Media Panel features Deborah Collura, Vice President of News, Post Newsweek Stations (KPRC); Wayne Dolcefino, investigative reporter for KTRK-TV Channel 13, and Gary Jaffe, News Director for Channel 39 NewsFix will discuss Trust in TV News.
• Ian Ord, Co-Founder, Fifth Ring, Joe Pogge, Strike Marketing and Graham Makin, Weatherford Establishing Trust While Delivering Your Message Globally.

Interest is growing for PRSA Houston’s premiere one-day conference, Oct. 26, at Reliant Park.  It’s a not-to-be-missed opportunity to gather new tools, stay abreast of the industry and network with professionals of all ages.

REGISTER NOW!  (Take advantage of Early Bird savings thru Oct 12.)

Full-day, half-day or lunch-only registration options are available.

Details

What:          PR Day 2011: A Matter of Trust

When:         Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011

Where:        Reliant Center, One Reliant Park

These questions and many more are addressed in the “Best PR Tip You Ever Got,” from 69 public relations pros from around the country. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” “Write a personal thank you note.” “…personal and tailored pitches get more media attention and coverage.” There’s even a tip from a PRSA Houston Board Member Leslie Friedman (see #23).

In keeping with that mandate, the Houston PRSA Board has reviewed the suggested chapter bylaw template, made revisions to fit our chapter’s needs and now seeks membership approval.  To take effect Jan. 1, 2012, the bylaws must be approved by two-thirds of those voting in the annual election (and we need a quorum of 25% of our voting members to participate in the election).

So what’s new in the bylaws?

• The most obvious changes are that our chapter officers will be elected by the membership annually and that directors will be elected to one-year terms annually.
• Directors will be limited to three consecutive terms. Officers other than the past president, president and president-elect will be able to succeed themselves once.
• The offices of treasurer and secretary may be combined and held by the same person, at the discretion of the board.
• The board will consist of president, president-elect, vice president, secretary, treasurer, past president, PRSA Leadership Assembly Delegates, seven directors-at-large, and the president of the Public Relations Foundation of Houston.
• All board members will be required to sign a conflict of interest policy.

Things that remain the same:

• Leadership Assembly delegates will still be required to be Accredited in Public Relations and will serve three-year terms. Successive terms are allowed.
• Bylaw amendments require a vote of two-thirds of the present members, provided a quorum is established.
  But, don’t take our word for what the proposed bylaws say.

This is your chapter and you should be an informed member. You can read the proposed bylaws. Please make sure to ask questions, if you have them, to of the current chapter officers and directors.

A couple of days later, I read with great interest, Ken Makovsky, APR, Fellow PRSA piece in Public Relations Strategist titled the 7 Reasons Why the Golden Age of Public Relations Is Within Reach. The dichotomy of the conversation with my friend and this article got me thinking: Are we, as communicators, entering the golden age or perhaps the apocalypse?

I actually think what some organizations are experiencing is communications paralysis. Think about it, 20 years ago a company might send out a press release, do some B2C or B2B marketing (i.e. flyers, brochures, tchotchkes, etc.), have a commercial on TV, the radio or both and, maybe, just maybe, they were thinking about investing in a new-fangled website.

In today’s consumer-friendly, technology environment, I could be a stay-at-home-dad with a side business selling monogrammed baby bibs and have all of those things and so much more. Honestly, all the channels at a communicator’s disposal now can be overwhelming…which is exactly why communications professionals who can think strategically, see the golden opportunity before them and harness its formative powers, do not see this era as the apocalypse.

But, I’m just one guy. So, I conducted a quick, informal survey with 20 senior-level, creative service agency professionals, and the overall sentiment reflected my friend’s assertion that business fundamentally is going well right now and, in most cases, agencies are busier than they have been in the last couple of years. I also learned agency clients are demanding more in-depth research to better target customers and justify their communications investment.

This bodes well for those seasoned communicators who can harness this paradigm shift and draw a line from communications/brand strategy to the bottom line of a business. It is also exciting for the conversationalist youngsters who are free from the conventions of traditional communications and willing to explore a changing communications landscape.

— Ed Davis, PRSA Houston president-elect, director of Media & Public Relations at the United Way of Greater Houston.

PRSA and KUHF are co-hosting an event on June 7 from 6 – 8 p.m. held at KUHF – Houston Public Radio on the University of Houston’s campus. This will give you a chance to meet and talk with the reporters and staff from KUHF and PBS, two premier media outlets in Houston. Tours of the studios will take place during the event as well, so you can get an up close view of day to day operations.

During the casual networking session attendees can discuss the do’s and don’ts for pitching stories.  This is your chance to pick the media reps’ brains and ask questions such as, “what is the best way to get our story on the air” or “or what is the best way to contact you.”  These are the people that will give you the inside scoop.

This face-to-face interaction will help to expand the new or growing relationship with the reporter, and you can bet that next time they will open your email or take your phone call over John Doe on the other line. 

Here is a sneak preview of the people you will get a chance to mingle with:

Debra Fraser, Station Manager

Paul Pendergraft, Senior Producer, News & Public Affairs

Capella Tucker, KUHF News Program Director

Jack Williams, KUHF News Director & Houston Anchor, All Things Considered

Pat Hernandez, KUHF News Reporter

Andrew Schneider, KUHF Business News Reporter

Chris Johnson, Classical 91.7 Host, Afternoon Drive

St.John Flynn, Classical 91.7 Program Director & Host, The Front Row

Catherine Lu, Classical 91.7 Associate Producer, The Front Row/ Host, Afternoon Concert

Hurry and register before it is too late.

Hope to see everyone there!

I really don’t want to rehash the conversation (instead, I’m here to start a whole new one). If you are interested in the specifics of the PRSA guidelines on this subject check out PSA-17. I also checked with the Texas State Attorney General and the Texas Workforce Commission and they said potential employers should familiarize themselves with the Pay Day Law. Specifically, I was advised that if any employee, including interns, do work for an organization they should get paid. “Sure, that makes sense,” I said. But, the Texas Workforce Commission took it a step further and said that if you don’t pay an intern or an employee, they can actually come back and file a claim against you provided they have documented the hours they worked and the work produced.

To me the bottom line is if the work produced by an intern has any value whatsoever to the employer—I’m talking to nonprofits too—the internship should be monetarily compensated. The benefit of the arrangement is that each party, employer and intern, has a vested interest and motivation to make the arrangement productive.

To me there’s actually a bigger issue here than whether or not to pay interns and that is the ethical treatment of interns. The worst is when I hear stories about students being relegated to filling drink and lunch orders or being subjected to cattiness in the work place.

Typically, I hear students or junior communicators tell me they wish the people they interned for had talked to them more, explained things or put them into context. Most times, their employers just dictate orders and the interns blindly follow them. As professionals, aren’t we better than that?

Here are few tips to make the internship productive for both your organization and the intern:

EXPECTATIONS: On Day 1 set expectations for what the intern should expect and what your organization expects of the interns.

VARIETY: Give the intern a variety of work to do for a variety of clients. Most interns still aren’t 100 percent sure what type of work they want to do or in what industries. Give them a chance to see a diversity of both.

MISTAKES: No one is perfect and often making mistakes are the best way to learn. Allow your interns to make mistakes, but coach them on how to learn and improve from those mistakes.

FACE TIME: Expose interns to new business pitches, let them participate in client meetings and, if you’re a large agency, facilitate a Q&A with the boss.

REVIEW: On a regular basis, sit with the interns and discuss how things are going. I recommend weekly meetings but bi-weekly would be effective as well depending upon the duration of the internship.

EXIT: At the end of the internship, have the intern sit down and do an exit interview or survey so you can learn what they most valued and how you might improve.

RECOMMENDATION: Not every intern is going to be able to move into a permanent position with an agency, but give them the next best thing, a glowing recommendation they can use in their search for a job.

So, I ask that each of you take a minute to remember how your internships were, what you would have liked to have changed and apply it to how you treat interns now. The students will get more out of it. Your organization will benefit from it. Our profession will be better for it.

— Ed Davis, PRSA Houston president-elect, director of Media & Public Relations at the United Way of Greater Houston.

I’m not a scientist or a doctor, and don’t pretend to understand how different types of sugars react in the body, but what interests me here, as HFCS gets rebranded as corn sugar, is how we, the public, even though we know better, can be influenced by a good marketing campaign. Instinctively and intuitively, my brain drew the conclusion that corn sugar was somehow natural and virtually unprocessed, but just by the nature of what it is (sugar… made from corn), there must be heavy process involved.
Upon doing a little more digging, I discovered that Big Corn has been courting mommy bloggers in an effort to spread their message. We know that mothers do the majority of the grocery shopping and are often the ones educating children on the values of eating apples instead of Dunkaroos. Some mommy bloggers have engaged in the conversation with CRA and have been convinced. It’s caused a stir in the blogger community, and popular blogger Jessica Gottlieb has spoken out on the subject, asking mothers “to collectively say ‘no thank you’ to processed foods.”

Food PR has taken center stage over the last several months. KFC released that crazy, attention-getting sandwich, artist Sally Davies let a Happy Meal sit out for 180 days, and photos of what mechanically separated chicken looks like before it’s molded into those strange loaves have all made front page headlines. Now High Fructose Corn Syrup’s producers are on the offensive, proactively working to reverse the mindset that it is one of the major causes of obesity, whether it is or not.
PR pros, I ask you: What would YOU do if Corn Refiners of America was your client, and your task was to rebrand HFCS as “natural”?

Esther Steinfeld is public relations manager for Blinds.com <http://www.blinds.com/>, a major online provider of custom window treatments.  In 2010, Blinds.com was named the No. 1 e-commerce company in Houston by the Houston Business Journal.

Smith was the guest speaker at PRSA Houston’s luncheon on Sept. 1, where he discussed the year-old media outlet’s mission to promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide concern.

A lot of my personal satisfaction comes from the fact that I simply love to write, paired with the constant state of ecstatic disbelief that someone is actually paying me to do it. I know I’m not in the majority; most of my friends either hate what they do or they can’t stand whom they do it for. I’ve always thought this was just a natural attitude toward the “dues paying” stage of the career life cycle I made up just now. I never stopped to think about why I believe in my company.

At the July PRSA Houston Workshop, David Grossman, president and founder of The Grossman Group, practically laid it out for me. Speaking on the subject of executive communications, Grossman said many executives have no idea how to communicate, often having been promoted for other reasons. However, while my company’s CEO prefers to handle much of the internal communication himself, he seems to have a natural handle on many of the ideas Grossman shared. That’s not to say his expertise is common knowledge. I know my college courses focused primarily on what we say to the public rather than maintaining corporate morale.

While working in the mortgage industry during the now waning housing crisis, being informed is crucial to establishing and maintaining employee morale during these troubling times. It’s hard to put forth your best effort and focus on the job at hand when the possibility of unemployment and the terrors of job hunting loom over your head. Nothing is neutral; even to stay silent during periods of uncertainty sends a strong message to the workforce. I have no way of knowing whether our CEO is familiar with Grossman or the ideas he shared, but my company’s leader seems to understand how powerful the messages he sends to his employees can be. He kept everyone informed, and I’m certain that it’s at least partially through those efforts that our organization made 2009 its most profitable year in its 22-year history.

According to Grossman, employees want to know answers to eight key questions.  Our CEO provided those answers throughout the housing crisis. The questions are arranged in a hierarchy beginning with a desire to know how the individual fits into the organization and ending with how the company is functioning as a whole. It’s knowing the answers to these questions that helps establish a vested interest in the company and the sense of security that goes hand in hand with a feeling of sustainability from the organization.

1.     What is my job?

2.     How am I doing?

3.     Does the organization care about me?

4.     What’s going on with the company and with my personal status?

5.     What is our business strategy?

6.     How is the company doing as a whole?

7.     What are our vision and values?

8.     How can I help?

It’s also important to note that whenever industry or corporate change occurs, we return to question one.

What many executives don’t understand is that communication sends the message that they mean business. According to research Grossman presented, effective employee communications is a leading indicator of financial performance and a driver of how engaged employees are with their companies. Organizations that are led by highly effective communicators had a 47 percent higher total return to shareholders over the past five years compared to firms with less effective communicators.

It’s not that business leaders don’t want to communicate, but rather that they believe one or more of three common myths about employee communication. They think they don’t have time to communicate, or that they don’t have time to plan for it. But as Grossman pointed out, companies typically allocate time to clean up a mess, but don’t always invest time to prevent a crisis.

Another myth is that people won’t react to a lack of communication. However, people naturally interpret just about everything. Even if we stay silent, it is in our nature to speculate and theorize amongst our peers as to where the organization and our jobs stand.

As for the third myth, many leaders believe that simply talking is communicating. However, communication is much more involved than that. It requires listening, acting, purpose and strategy. Communication is a two-way street. We have to listen to those we entrust with the day-to-day responsibilities to create positive employee engagement.

It’s important to practice and plan communication. I don’t know what my CEO’s strategy is when planning his communications, but he inherently understands how much it affects his employees’ performance. It’s the reason our company has thrived while others have failed. It’s the reason I love where I am and intend to stay there for quite awhile.  It’s the reason I look forward to the Monday morning grind as soon as the final credits of The Simpsons roll on Sunday nights.

Jason Saenz is a public relations writer/editor at Cornerstone Mortgage Company and has been a member of PRSA Houston since January 2010.