This week in ISM, I had the amazing opportunity to attend the Dallas Cowboys NFL Draft Community Outreach Meeting. On Thursday February 8th, I happily made the trek down to AT&T Stadium in Arlington to observe as the Cowboys announced DeMarcus Ware as their community ambassador for the upcoming community outreach events associated with the 2018 Draft. It was a great event for me to see public relations in action, as the entire event was organized to communicate with the public and make fans aware of new and exciting things happening within the Cowboys organization. There was both internal and external media in attendance (which I'm sure was coordinated by a PR professional), filming and interviewing to create content that will later be used to promote and announce these community events. Whitney Faulkner and Emily Cruz-Robbins, both public relations department heads with the Cowboys, got on stage and explained two new community outreach efforts in collaboration with Arlington football teams- Community Quarterback and Student-Athlete Mentorship Program. The whole point of the meeting was to explain these programs to Arlington high school coaches and encourage them to get involved; later in the year, the Cowboys will come into Arlington schools and see how the community service efforts are going.
I learned a lot from this meeting, especially seeing how PR is put into action within a corporation. This well-thought out event, complete with a full breakfast and speeches from Charlotte Jones-Anderson (the Cowboys' chief brand officer) and DeMarcus Ware, showed me how much PR professionals have to work not only to communicate with the public, but also with officials within the organization. This really reinforced the idea that public relations is the liaison between business and consumer.