MLB's Civil Rights Game

Indians v. Cardinals...

March 31st...

5:30 p.m./ET...

Civil Rights Game.

Check this out!!

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070326&content_id=1859895&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

SMU Baseball v. A&M Commerce this weekend!!

It's been a long time! I'm just getting back into the swing of things now that I'm home from Memphis and spring break.

The baseball team got rained out of its first tournament at Tech last weekend, so we've moved that tournament to the end of our schedule, April 28-29th.

This weekend will be our first NCBA tournament...meaning it's official! We'll play at A&M Commerce, about an hour from SMU, this Saturday and Sunday. We play two, 7-inning games starting at noon Saturday, and one, 9-inning game starting at 1 p.m. Sunday.

A fanbase is forming on campus, and we should have a decent number of students coming to support us this weekend!

Our jerseys came in the mail last week, and we had a great practice down in Arlington this past weekend. I'm excited to see how we play in real game situations against some really good competition...the team chemistry is really strong and it's exciting to watch the guys hit the field together!

It's been frustrating, as always, struggling to find playing fields week to week, but we're doing our best. Inaugural seasons are always tough in the way of funding and facilities, but we're making it all work...and we have been receiving some alumni and Student Senate support recently, which has been a great relief!

I'll keep you posted on our official results and schedules over the next few weeks.

Hope all is well and you have a great week!! I'd love any comments about SMU, baseball, PR, or anything else on your minds!

Thanks for reading...

Perfect Face for PR?

This week, each class member had to select a PR case study and present the situation, the tactics used and the outcome of the campaign. We were also asked to contribute our two cents on the execution and results of the campaign…

The Situation: Jongleurs, a comedy club chain in the UK, hoped to bolster ticket sales for its new dinner and comedy packages during the pre-Christmas period of 2006. It enlisted the help of Van Communications. The goals for the campaign were to promote Jongleurs as a “leading authority” on comedy and associate it with the UK’s finest comedy talent.

The Strategy: Van Communications launched the Face for Comedy campaign, looking for the “perfect face for comedy,” from June-November of 2006 with a £10,000 budget. Jongleurs commissioned Dr. Anthony Little, who has specialized in facial perception for eight years, to analyze the faces of top UK comedians to see if being “born with a funny face” could explain the success of some comedians over others.

With special software, Dr. Little fused the facial features from 179 pictures of twenty popular comedians into a face many likened to the creator of "The Office," Ricky Gervais. The findings revealed softer, more feminine features were more likely to make audiences laugh.
Gervais endorsed the campaign. It was targeted at national print and broadcast media mostly, and a presentation was made for media of this “perfect face for comedy.”

The Evaluation: The campaign was mentioned on national broadcasts such as BBC1, Channel 4, Five and Sky News, as well as in print in the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, The Sun, The Times and The Independent. The campaign also received at least 48 online mentions.

An in-house analysis found 110 items of Jongleurs-branded coverage relating its two desired messages as a “leading authority” with the “best comedy talent.”

The Outcome: The campaign seemed to meet with great success, although I’m not sure the tie to Jongleurs was as apparent as it could have been. The idea of a “perfect face for comedy” and the creation of a face that resembled someone famous in comedy at the time was both clever and appropriate, but this story alone seems to have generated most of the interest. I wonder if the tie to Jongleurs could have been more enmeshed in these efforts.

At the time of this campaign, I had no idea it was going on (it was launched in the UK for Jongleurs…also based in the UK), therefore I cannot give my genuine opinion of the campaign and its success aside from what I gleaned from different UK sources.

The comedy chain’s reports found a twelve percent increase in ticket sales for the dinner and comedy package in the pre-Christmas period.

It is difficult to tell how credible the study of the "perfect face for comedy" actually was, however. Dr. Little showed pictures of faces with various features to volunteers and asked them to rate how funny they thought the person was. If this method was in fact used, the volunteer samples were not necessarily random or representative of all comedy club audiences.

A critic of this study, Tommy Sheppard, director of Edinburgh's The Stand comedy club, found no evidence from his experiences to support the idea of certain facial features predicting comedians’ receptions from a crowd.

This campaign hit on a topic of particular popular interest (the fusion of faces into the “perfect face for comedy”) which appealed to everyone…this creative angle was well-utilized and received significant media coverage. Whether the campaign actually brought Jongleurs the boost in sales it was looking for is another story, and less was said about the success of the campaign than the campaign itself.

Jongleurs seemed pleased with the campaign of Van Communications, and judging by the big media hits the Face for Comedy campaign received, we can assume it met many of its initial objectives and had better, unforeseen results because of its work with a professional, Dr. Little, and because the likeness of the “perfect face” was eerily similar to an actual celebrity in the industry who willingly cooperated and endorsed the campaign.

I'd say Van Communications was on to something...the perfect face for PR, perhaps?

Sources:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-23373983-details/Has+Ricky+Gervais+got+the+perfect+face+for+comedy/article.do

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6135148.stm

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1962982.ece

https://webmail.smu.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.prweek.com/uk/thisweek/campaigns/article/644929/CAMPAIGN-Jongleurs-finds-Britains-funniest-face/

http://www.vancomms.com/index2.html

SMU Baseball: Road Trip #1

Hey!

So once again my life is consumed by baseball. Aside from crafting this weekend's line-up and preparing for our first road trip to Kingwood College (KC), I've been compiling a huge list of sources for a research analysis of minor league baseball. It's been crazy, but I'm really happy I can devote so much of my time to the sport I love...I can't imagine spending this semester any other way!

This Saturday we head to KC for a double-header...our first real test against another NCBA team this season...and also my first time wearing baseball pants-haha! Hopefully I'll have a victory or two to report back on next week! The first will be getting the team onto the van by 7 a.m...yeah, good luck with that (0-1) :)

With the help of a few webmasters our website is finally becoming a reality. The information currently posted is old and will be updated over the next few days, so be sure to check back for stats, pictures, schedules and player bios! http://www.smu.edu/baseball/.

On another note, our class is prepping for our meeting with Cure magazine Monday. I'm looking forward to discussing the vision for the Cure/Heal blog and helping them make this forum for cancer patients, survivors and their families and caregivers a tremendous resource!

I head to Memphis with the basketball team on Tuesday for the conference tournament too (I'll be the little one wailing on the saxophone). It'll be one busy week, but spring break is in sight!

More to come...have a great weekend!