Nov. 13 Meeting

-Social is on Nov. 28 at 8pm at Mellow Mushroom. Trivia is at 8; karaoke at 10.
Please email the PRSSA email account at prssalsu@gmail.com if you're
interested in going. Your dues are paying for the social!

Guest speaker: Robyn Lott with Fidelity Homestead Savings Bank- She is
looking for an unpaid intern for the spring. If you're interested
please contact robynlott@fidelityhomestead.com for more information.

Lott is a Mississippi native and received her bachelor of science
degree in communications/public relations with a minor in psychology
from Mississippi University for Women in Columbus. She received her
master's degree in communication and information sciences from the
University of Alabama in Tuscalousa.

Lott highly recommends internships while in school. During one of her
internships, Lott worked heavily with promoting direct deposits to
banking customers. Lott has an advertising perspective. She worked
for three years at a Lafayette-based agency called the Graham Group. She
received a step up for regular entry position since she had her
Masters. At Graham Group, she handled clients such as Hotel Monteleone and
various law firms.

She was promoted to account executive after working at Graham for 6 months.
It was a big change, she was a director supervisor. A big challenge
was when her mentor within the agency resigned. She was forced to
"sink or swim" and didn't have that safety net to double check her
moves while she was working. It also gave her an opportunity to
develop as an individual.

At this stage, she started to get larger accounts. She would also take
non-profit work as well if it met one of three criteria: they had
great creative opportunity to help build portfolios, if the group
would give them an in with a larger client that they did want, or if
it was for a charitable cause.

There's high turnover in the advertising agency world. You're
considered a veteran if you've been somewhere more than 2 years. She
was promoted to account supervisor at 2 1/2 years with Graham

Graham was set up in such a way:
3-5 people in media department
3-4 graphic designers
part-time copy writer
interactive department
administrative, accounting, human resources

Account executives handle the initial meetings with clients, pitching,
getting business, once the people are clients - they meet regularly
depending on the clients, sometime once a week, sometimes once every
few months.

There was a PR director that handled the media relationships for
Graham Group itself.

Lott said that agency work is never boring, you see new faces every
day; you can get as many accounts as you feel you can handle. She
found it to be frustrating, however, when she worked on projects that
never came to fruition. Even if she got paid for her work, she never
got to see the ideas materialize. Agency work can be very fast paced
to the point of confusion, you have to be an excellent multitasker.

She also found it difficult to form relationships with clients. It's
a very big deal to have clients for 3-5 years.

After she had been with Graham for a couple of years, she felt she had learned everything she could. She wanted a
new challenge. One of her clients, Fidelilty Homestead, approached her
about becoming their senior vice president of marketing and she took
the job. She felt it was going to be very fulfilling and they offered
great pay and benefits. If she had not proved herself in her agency
work, she might not be where she is today. Developing that
relationship with clients is crucial for future success.

As Senior VP her duties include: 2008 budgeting and planning, manage
Graham Group (she's now the client!), compile every department section
of business plan, 100th aniversary events and planning. She also
prepares a monthly newsletter. She said her weakness is graphic
design and it was very challenging for her. She said its better to
approach weaknesses by educating yourself further in those areas,
instead of giving up. She sought tutoring from a former coworker.

One of her goals was to give Homestead Fidelity a cohesive and
consistant message. They're a growing presence regionally and have a
lot of account holders. They are mainly based out of the New Orleans
and have lost a lot of clients due to displacement. She tries to
support the tellers and provide them with material to help the
clients.

She finds the corporate side of communications to still be fast paced,
but more on her own terms. She has more decision making ability.
Some cons is that no one is underneath her, she can only do so much
as a one-woman department. She tries to build relationships with
coworkers in other departments, so she can delegate tasks that aren't
necessarily hard, but time consuming- such as envelope stuffing, etc.
The corporate side is also not as creative an environment. It's a much
more button down atmosphere than agency work.

She is glad she started off in agency, it gave her a large portfolio
very quickly, you have rapid rates of promotion. She just didn't
necessarily want to spend the rest of her career in agency work.

Lott's advice is not to be afraid to go out on a limb, benefit from
adversity & change. When looking for an internship, you shouldn't
rule anything out. Even if you're not necessarily intersted in PR for
health care, it can be a great place to start and gain experience.
You won't type cast yourself as the "hospital guy."

Our last meeting of the semester is Nov. 27. We will welcome Ann Edelman from Zehnder Communications as our guest speaker. We look forward to seeing you there!

Oct. 30 Meeting

-Next year's National PRSSA Conference is in Detroit! Dates TBA! If you're
interested please talk to one of the officers and we'll start coming
up with fundraising ideas now!
-Lindsay Southwick has been appointed interim PR Director for the rest
of the semester.
-Dr. Cleo Allen at the Dept. of Social Services spoke at the
meeting. She has an internship available in the spring. Please
e-mail the account if you're interested and one of the officers will
contact you with more information.

Dr. Allen has received degrees at both Southern and LSU. She began in
journalism and then switched to PR. She is also APR certified. She
worked in journalism for 16 years, then moved to freelance PR and
began teaching mass communication. She was initiated into state work
in fall 2005. It was "trial by fire" with the many complications from
the hurricane season that year.

There are three agencies within the Department of Social Services:
Louisiana Rehabilitation Services, Office of Community Services and
Office of Family Support. She helps develop incentives to families
who participate in foster and adoption services and communicates with
the media. She is currently working to promote National Adoption
Month (November) and will be having an event at the Governor's
Mansion. Her work requires press releases, trying to get a cover
story in the feature section of the Advocate. Also in November is Hunger & Homelessness Weeks (Nov. 11 - 17), which encourages people to
understand homelessness in the state, individually and as groups. It
also gives them a great opportunity to let the public know what DSS and the State are doing to help the poverty situation.

Allen said that one of the hardest parts of her job is that she
receives reports of fatalities or near fatalities of children everyday. She
said she must be prepared in case there is high human interest in a
story. It's heartbreaking to read about neglected and abused
children.

Allen said it used to be very difficult to speak to the press because
they were not allowed to talk about the private lives of the people
involved in such instances. "No Comment" looks very guilty. They
were recently given the ability to clarify, confirm, or correct
information that a media source might already have, just not give out
any additional information.

Much of her job requires both internal and external communication.
She advises that students takes writing very seriously and read as
much as possible. She expects her interns to monitor the media
and try not to miss any stories. You never know what you have to
respond to. A lot of her communications include memos, press
releases, quarterly meetings and newsletters. One draw back to being a
state employee is that if you are "unclassified" it means you can be
replaced once a new administration takes over.

Allen recommends getting masters or PhD degrees to anyone who would be
so inclined. Grad school broadens outlook, very beneficial, helps
look at big picture. Doesn't necessarily recommend working first, it
took her 17 years to go back to school. It does help to work in order
to get a better idea of what you want to do, any truly interested
student would always benefit.

She received her masters in Journalism and her PhD in Political Communication.

Our next meeting will be held Nov. 13 and our speaker will be Robyn Lott from the Graham Group. We hope to see you there!