No matter how hard we try, eventually all of us screw up. Whether it is at work, or in our personal lives, we will all eventually have to write an apology letter. I don’t want to give the wrong impression when I tell you that I have become pretty good at writing such letters, I am not a constant screw up. But I am not perfect either, and have done somethings that need apologizing for. I’ve found that a really good apology can speed up the process of forgiveness and mending relationships. So here is my basic template that I use to write an apology.

1. Dear (name of person)

2. I writing to apologise for (blank)
Stating what it is you are apologizing for should always come in the first sentence. It shows the person that you know what you have done and acknowledge that it needs to be apologized for.

3. A. there was no excuse for my actions
B. This mistake was the result of miscommunication among our staff.
The person whom you have wronged will want some sort of reasoning behind your actions. A. works best for personal apology letters and is better than saying something along the lines of “I was having a bad day,” or “I had just broken up with my boyfrined.” The person who is receiving the letter does not care about your personal issues and will not see them as a valid excuse for doing the thing you did. It is better to just take the full blame without trying to make excuses. B. works best for job situations like coworkers or clients. You want to give them a reason for the mistake without going into to much detail and making yourself, or you company, look unprofessional. Give them a reason, but keep it somewhat vague.

4. I (we) am (are) very sorry for this mistake.
After saying what it is that you have done and giving a reason for why it happened, make sure to say you are sorry.

5. It will not happen again.
The person who is reading the apology will appreciate that you know what you did and are willing to learn from your mistakes. NOTE: it is very important that you don’t do whatever it is you are apologizing for again, if you do you will look like a two-faced moron.

6. I (we) hope you can forgive me (us) for this error.
This statement kind of puts the ball in the reader’s court. It puts them in control of where the situation goes, and a person who feels wronged will enjoy feeling that sort of power over you.

7. I am a big fan of your work and hope that we can continue to do business in the future.
Say something nice about them! It never hurts to suck up. Make sure to end the letter by saying something that shows you want the relationship to continue.

Though writing a good apology note cannot heal all wounds, it is a good start that will make you look like a professional and a good person instead of a person who does (whatever it was you did).

I think this could be huge because it incorporates everything we love about myspace and facebook – profiles, pictures, video, networking – with the extra twist of being able to show you friends what you are doing at any point in time. It’s like twitter, but with web cams!

]]> https://stephaniepr.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/a-new-form-of-social-media/feed/ 1 sdaland2 https://stephaniepr.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/credibility/ https://stephaniepr.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/credibility/#comments Tue, 27 May 2008 18:22:28 +0000 http://stephaniepr.wordpress.com/?p=27

The idea behind the “Made to Stick” chapter called “Credibility” is that readers are trained to be skeptical about where there information comes from, and we as writers must find ways to give our writing more authority. The Heaths talk about a few different techniques for giving your message more credibility: external validation, statistics, testable credentials and using examples that pass the “Sinatra Test.” An example passes the Sinatra Test when one example alone is enough to establish credibility in a given domain.

External validation is a nice way of adding credibility to your message; especially if that person giving the validation is an antiauthority. An antiauthority is a person who you would not expect to serve as a spokes person; for example, a woman dying of lung cancer doing an anti-smoking ad instead of a traditional authority like a doctor or nurse.

Statistics are also a good way to increase the credibility of your ideas. Statistics are concrete and easy to understand (e.g. you are 25 percent more likely to eat a hot dog today than a corn dog). People like statistics because they add authority to the message, and no matter who did the study, most people take the numbers to be true.

As public relations professionals we must be able to add effectively add credibility to our message so that people will not assume every press release or media advisory is just a cheap sales ploy in disguise.

The creative team at HP took it to the next level by building a life sized display to demonstrate how its computers could help run Disney theme parks.

So how do we learn to make our writing more concrete? I think the most important this book tries to convey is that we should think like our readers. What do they understand? What would make our writing more interesting? By doing that our ideas will become less abstract and our stories more sticky.

What I like about this video, and I think Catie did a good job conveying, is that horse shows are not just a hobby for some people, they’re serious competitions and big business for a large niche of people. At the Mother’s Day Show especially, people put down big money to train and prepare for a shot at the $10,000 prize of the mini grand prix, a competition featured in the video in which a rider must guide their horse through a course of nearly 5-foot-high fences (this is generally the highest level of competition).

Catie is a very cool girl and my team and I had a great time showing her the ins and outs of the horse show world. Hopefully, during our the Equestrian Team’s competitions, we will have a great contact at the ODE and be able to create more good PR for the team

Although I was pleasantly surprised to see Whitney Thompson become the first plus-sized model to win ANTM; I couldn’t help but notice that public relations wise, the she was the better pick over her competitor Anya.

Whitney is student from Atlantic Beach, Florida, and she has spent her whole life battling stereotypes against full figured women. She proclaimed in the casting session that “I have hips and I have breasts and I am proud of that.”

Compare that to Anya, the Hawaiian native who seemed to do better overall in the competition, but came across as a ditsy blond with some sort of strange speech impediment. She had a great energy in her photos, but her TV commercial was pretty terrible.

As much as Producer Tyra Banks and her band of zany judges try to deny it, ANTM is about producing models that will appeal to the masses. Girls like Whitney are repeatedly chastised for being too “commercial,” and yet the prize is all about being commercial, and being the best role model. Girls are punished over and over for being “fake,” but every picture is taken in a ridiculously unrealistic situation and then retouched to the point where they look more like paintings than photographs. Whitney’s story is endearing and relatable and will make a perfect cover story for seventeen magazine.

With Dove’s Real Beauty campaign seeing huge success, it was the perfect timing for curvy Whitney to take the crown. Even Tyra herself has become a spokeswoman for healthy body image when appeared on the cover of People Magazine, after an unflattering picture appeared in the tabloids, with the caption “You Call This Fat?” Perhaps, after eight seasons of stick thin models winning, Tyra saw this as the perfect time jump on the “real women” band wagon.

What do you think? Does Whitney’s win change your perception of ANTM or the modeling industry?

Horse owners are stuck between a rock and a hard place because you have to feed and shelter the horse first, but once you get done with that the amount of money left to pay for horse shows is significantly smaller than it used to be. So what do you do? Not feed them? Unlikely.

AQHA President Ken Mumy had this to say: “In these days of increased prices for nearly everything, we want to serve our members in the best ways possible. With today’s rising fuel costs, exhibitors are feeling the pinch, and by lowering the points, our hope is that members will be able to qualify more economically. We always look forward to seeing the best competitors at the World Show and want to help people who are World Show bound.”

The AQHA reports that qualifiers are already up compared to 2007, which was also a tough year in terms of prices.

I think this is such a smart move on the AQHA’s part. It is so simple and yet I believe it will have a huge impact on the association’s image. It makes them seem more human, and in touch with what is happening in the world. The PR department is doing a good job communicating with its members, through website announcements, newsletters, and articles AQHA trade magazines, to assure them that while there is this problem of rising prices, the AQHA is going to stand by them and try to help.

While, I would imagine competitors who have the means to pay the huge entry fees to the world shows, which can range from $500-$4000 per class, probably don’t worry too much about the cost of gas, it is still a nice gesture for the association to make.

The whole trip was pretty fun, I got to hang out with a lot of people from the journalism school who I have had classes with, learned what the inside of a PR agency looks like, and talked with some people who actually work in some agencies.

I wanted to take the time to say thank you to one of the people who made the regional experience worthwhile: Taraneh Foster, general manager for Woloshin Communications. Taraneh was nice enough to spend almost an hour and half talking with Bryan Saxton and I when we were only suppose to have a half hour. She actually read our resumes and writing samples and gave good, helpful feedback. Unlike the woman who scoffed when I told her I wasn’t sure what a media list was, Taraneh seemed to be there to help future public relations students instead of simply searching for cheap labor. She gave tips on everything from what to put on our resumes, to where to get cheap business cards. She even encouraged us to send us revised copies of our resumes, so she could critique them. I really feel she went above and beyond the norm of what’s expected at a job fair, and just think that as students we should be so very grateful to have role models like her to look up to.

So here’s to you Taraneh, thanks for making the Portland Paddle a great experience, and I promise this blog post is not in lieu of a thank you card.