Here is my example of public relations in action! I chose to film an ornament exchange my apartment hosted. We sent formal invitations to every guest household and asked that they bring one $10 ornament and a dessert. We also promoted the event on Facebook. We had 21 attendees! When the guest arrived we had Christmas music playing softly in the background while everyone mingled. From there people fixed plates of food and our apartment provided hot chocolate. After everyone found a seat we had numbers 1-21 and let everyone draw. We decided against "White Elephant" because we did not want anyone to get their feelings hurt. We went in numerical order and had everyone pick an ornament, everyone watched them unwrap it and we clapped at the end to applaud the one who bought the ornament and the one who gets to keep it. This was our second ornament exchange at our apartment and we have found that it is a good way to get together one last time before the holidays and hang out before finals set in. We originally sent out approximately 36 invitations and only 21 showed up; although this is a good number I believe more would have come if it were not during last test and finals studying. I believe this was the weakness of our event-the time we chose to have it. I believe our strength was that the invitations portrayed what we wanted to happen, everyone brought an ornament and dessert and it was a fun time had by all. You may think the singing was staged, which it was, but we would have sang with or without a camera so this is truly a natural setting. It was only Phi Mu girls so everyone was comfortable with each other and mingled nicely. I wish our apartment had been bigger to accommodate all of our guest but we did the best we could with our space given. We all had a lovely time and believe that this was a form of PR because we were strengthening the bond between those of us already in a group. We promoted this event nicely and had everyone aware of it. It was organized and flowed smoothly. The event lasted about an hour, which is what we planned for, and everyone came in and out in a timely fashion. Over all I believe this was a very successful event. Everyone who came had a great time and we plan to have it again next year :)
