Jean-Jacques Rousseau - What A Mind

"People are born free but are everywhere in chains."

The quote above is from Genevan philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He is really influential in two aspects, one in The Social Contract and secondly, he was considered the founder of romanticism. Essentially Rousseau was anti-establishment and thought society would cause nothing but a negative effect upon a human's life. He believed that the regulated systems with laws, governments and elitist groups were wrong and the 'Newtonian world'  wasn't a true of full expression of what it meant to be to be a human being. It's often said Rousseau was quintessentially anti-enlightenment - he was a noble savage.

After researching Rousseau, it becomes clear he saw the society as the enemy, the main thing that corrupted a man's true nature. He felt as if he was removed from society was he was still pure and true to his human instinct and hadn't yet been indoctrinated into society's way of living and didn't really care how society viewed him. He acted on the way he thought was best and stood true to his instincts and believed others should do this also in order to be a 'truer' human being. This was a different way of looking at things and met controversy against philosopher, John Locke, who had the idea that a labouring man in the heart of society would have a nicer life than the king of a primitive tribe - whereas Rousseau thought the opposite. Rousseau felt that the further away a man was from the society, the better that man would be.

This really sparks the debate of the practical, tangible, Newtonian was of life vs the spiritual, instinctive way of living. Essentially, it became the realists against the spiritualist.

Although these ideas originated in the 1700s, they are far from forgotten. The 1960s saw a rebirth in Rousseau's ideas and people began to live by their own rules and started to live on the outside of society. The song below is John Lennon's song 'Imagine' released in the early 1970s and is a new age adaption of Rousseau's theory.

Despite appearing to be the father of so many movements; the hippie movement, the green movement, communism and so on, Rousseau's ideas and thought weren't necessarily clearly formed. He wasn't trying to make a society or a movement - he was just picking up ideas and throwing them out there. Maybe 'throwing' isn't the right word, but they were just his thoughts about the nature of man kind and the adverse effect and influence of society upon man kinds behaviour. People postulate what he said, when in my opinion, they were just ideas - not laws of life.

Rousseau believed in the supremacy of the strength of the majority and direct democracy, however, due to his early life in Greece, he knew that his ideas would only work in small societies. The larger a society became, the worst it became and soon enough it would be corrupt and run by elitists. After all, Rousseau refuses to believe society was created by people. There wasn't a point where everyone agreed a government would be a good idea - it is just the way that man kind evolved. Rousseau believe that there is a state of nature when people in their primitive form were given free will, free spirit and open expression of their passions and feelings. He felt as if people shouldn't be bound by a governing body but should live as far away from society as possible, only getting together for necessary reasons such as building a house or putting out a large fire, but after the task is complete, he felt the group should completely and immediately dissolve. Rousseau was completely anti-association.

Part of the idea Rousseau was going for was thoughts and cognitive thinking being entire separate from instinct. Men are like other animals. It's only when you put another man's influence amongst others and create a political society then things go wrong. It starts making the human kind possessive, greedy and corrupt.

Many say Rousseau was a great influence of The French Revolution. Although I do agree with this, in my opinion, The French Revolution would have still happened due to the situation the country was in, similar to the rising of the Nazis which I believe would have still occurred without Hitler because of the state of the country after the World War I. France was a totalitarian state and it was run by individuals who believed they were righteous and God had directly blessed them with their power. This basically stripped all power from the common, working man is France and made them completely powerless as those in power believed when they were creating new laws, it was 'the voice of God' and the decision of God. The country was bound to have a revolt, it is just the way of society. Something had to give.

If it wasn't for Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the world would be a very different place. The idea of alienation by society has been picked up throughout the centuries and throughout the different eras. Rousseau was about free will, basic instinct and being as far away from society as possible. His idealism weaves it's way through literature, political thinkings and music. His influence is seen everywhere to this day. Who is to say whether it's right or wrong?

Marketing and Public Relations

Marketing and Public Relations

Public Relations

Noun:

1.       The professional maintenance of a favourable public image by an organization or a famous person. The state of the relationship between the public and a company or other organisation or a famous person.

Marketing

Noun:

1.       The action or business of promoting and selling products or services.

All business, charities and organisations rely on a public relations team and a marketing team. Both public relations and marketing and incredibly important in gaining any form of success or decent reputation. They are what can make and break a company. The teams do all the work not necessarily seen in the public eye and are made to think thoroughly before any actions are made. I am now going to outline the functions of marketing and public relations and how and why that is carried out in organisations such as North Warwickshire and Hinckley College (NWHC). NWHC is a college with two campuses, one in Nuneaton which has courses such as Beauty Therapy, Mechanics and ICT. The other campus is in Hinckley which is an arts college, with courses such as Journalism, Music Performance and Dance. Although already a well-established organisation, it still relies heavily on PR and marketing, particularly during the current economic climate and the opening of the new Hinckley campus.

Marketing is the action or business or promoting and selling products or services. This is necessary for an organisation to do as without it there would be no profit and essentially, no one would know about it. There are different stages in which marketing teams operate. The first is the strategic planning stage, it is necessary to find out who the target audience is and then anticipating who wants it, in the words of Susanne Davies, marketing manager for NWHC, “you need to know what they want, before they want it.” The next thing to do is satisfy audience expectations whilst knowing the audiences likes and dislikes. Those in the marketing industry need to know how an audience want to use a product or service, when they want to use it, how they want to use it and so on. Marketing officers need to know everything about the audience and how to portray the service or product they’re providing and what format is wanted to the target audience.

There are several different ways that a marketing officer works including direct marketing, publications and websites, social media, recruitment events, annual reports, strategic plans and competitor analysis. Direct marketing involves text messages, e-mails and letters. This helps the market officer directly contact an audience which makes it more personal and can contain a lot of important and necessary information. It is also very rare these days that a person wouldn’t have access to an email account or doesn’t own a mobile phone so it is more cost effective and easier to contact people directly.  Publications, websites and social media all come hand in hand. These are all ways of easily broadcasting a message whether it be about an event, a product or recruitment at once. They can also reach an audience that they wouldn’t normally target so it can bring in a wider range of attention. Recruitment events are also a useful way of reaching out to an audience for a marketing employee, it helps them use personal techniques so they can talk to an audience member one and one and really sell a product. Annual reports and strategic plans don’t go to an audience directly but helps a marketing team together to realize aims, targets and achievements which can bring a team together and help focus. This is similar to competitor analysis. In reviewing how competitors are doing and the way they’re reaching their audience and the feedback they’re getting helps a marketing team review on how the business or organisation they’re working for is doing and possible changes they can make to up the game and get better results than competitors, as it is always a marketers aim to have their organisation at the top of the industry and the best it can be.

Davies has been working for NWHC since 2008 and has had 10 years experience prior to working at the college which makes her more than competent of taking on the role of marketing manager. She studied a public relations and marketing degree and university and worked in the private sector before embarking on the management role at NWHC. Her marketing team consists of two marketing coordinators, a marketing assistant, a graphics designer, herself and the college looking to recruit a junior designer onto the team.

The team works effectively together using the afore mentioned techniques to promote the college. They hold around one college per month to keep the college fresh and relevant, keeping it in the public eye, and also hold recruitment days for young, prospective college students at local schools. As well as this, they control some aspects of the college prospectus which goes out to anyone interesting in studying with NWHC.

However, it’s not easy work. As hard as it is trying to recruit people to study at the college, they have to acknowledge competitors and keep advancing. Davies said “The market place is so competitive, last September 3 colleges opened on our patch so we have to be more aggressive with our approach.” She went on to say “Warwickshire College and Stevenson College are now operating on our patch and we have to respond to that.”

Competition with other colleges isn’t to only trouble that the marketing team faces, over the past year they’ve had to deal with the loss of EMA, transportation issues from campus to campus as well as a lack of resources. Speaking on behalf of the marketing team, Davis said “We don’t have an endless pot of money; in an ideal world we could have more resources.”

Current goals of the marketing team are; maximizing, strengthening recruitment through marketing campaigns and to support college growth geographically, evaluation of the college brand and launching a new brand, to improve the learner experience by celebrating success, creation of a new college website and a continuing goal, “to acknowledge that the learner is at the heart of everything we do”.

Marketing and public relations work hand in hand yet are two different disciplines.

Rowena Knight is head of public relations at North Warwickshire and Hinckley College and said “PR is about reputation” which accurately sums up her role, to maintain a positive and respected reputation for the college. The current PR industry is thriving, with the job rate hiring more than any management function of the last 15 years. The UK PR industry is the more developed in Europe and is growing faster than advertising. Rowena got on the job training and said “no two days are the same.” PR includes working with colleges and partner schools, planning a PR programme and gather knowledge about the sector and organisations.

Each year, there is an annual PR plan made which includes objectives, target audience, key messages, tactics, timings, budgets and evaluation. Although not necessarily seen, there is a lot of hard work that goes into PR. For the organisation, the PR has the responsibility to creates press releases, articles, features, case studies, letters, speeches and any online copy. Not only is it a significant amount of work to do, Knight also has to do it in strict keeping with what she’s told, to maintain the college reputation and make sure it is the establishments views and opinions in any work produced rather than her own.

Another important part of PR is media relations. A PR has to be proactive and reactive as well as developing and maintaining a good working environment and relationship with local press and business to network effectively.  Knight said “it is important to communicate with the media.” Whilst having to deal with work externally such as phone calls and press conferences she also has a lot of internal work that she has to deal with as well, such as meetings with the principal, staff briefings, award ceremonies and international visits and guest lecturers attending the college such as Ben de Lisi.

Marketing is all about promoting the college in new, original, exciting and creative ways yet marketing varies greatly in different industries as marketing techniques for a supermarket would involve entirely different techniques as to that of a college. PR, although obviously differing through different industries, remain the same with trying to keep a good reputation and reflecting the establishments or organisations opinion in a formal and very uniform style. Both are incredibly important for any business to have any form of success.