STUDENT LIFE
PHOTO BY ANDRES LEON
BY JOEY MARTINEZ
THE PR OLYMPICS WITH BRENDA MELARA
DIVE INTO THE LIFE OF THE PRSSA PRESIDENT AND BATEMAN TEAM
B
renda Melara is a Long Beach State public relations major and marketing minor graduating in the spring of 2022. She is the president of the Public Relations Student Society of America’s chapter here in Long Beach, also known as the PRSSA, as well as an intern at a healthcare specialized public relations agency, Samson PR Group. In addition to Melara’s busy schedule, she is also involved with the Bateman team at LBSU. The Bateman team is composed of five PRSSA members who spend the semester creating, implementing, and promoting a real campaign for a client. They then present their results on a campaign book in competition with tens of other schools doing the same campaign. The school that has gotten the most impressions from their campaign wins. Melara has fittingly named it the PR Olympics. Long Beach actually holds a bit of a reputation in the PR Olympics, winning first place in 2019 and beating 66 schools across the nation. Applications for the Bateman team are open to PRSSA members in the fall, and final decisions are reached by the end of winter break. The process of making and going through a PR plan with the Bateman team
includes first doing research, then the planning process like creating objectives for spreading information about a national to world issue. Next is implementation and the tracking of people they reached out to, such as keeping track of signatures and participants at an event. This semester, the Bateman team’s client is the Lymphoma Research Foundation, a group dedicated to researching and spreading awareness of lymphoma cancer with implementations of the campaign beginning February 7. They then determine whether their campaign was successful.
“The women in the chapter from the executive board are doing great things“ “Even if you don’t meet the criteria that doesn’t mean your campaign wasn’t successful because it doesn’t matter if it was a hit or if it could just reach a couple of people. At the end of the day you spread awareness on lymphoma. Like you didn’t know that lymphoma was common amongst teenagers rather than everyone else and now you do you know?” She got me, I didn’t. Of course, either way they have to keep track of their outreach otherwise the client wouldn’t know what they were doing for them. “Just by doing something, just by
thinking critically and examining your audience and having a purpose and actually doing something, you’re already making a difference rather than if you weren’t doing anything.” On what Melara does in the PRSSA: “My duty as president is to be there for my team.” She keeps track of everyone and their projects while trying to find any way to assist them. “The women in the chapter from the executive board are doing great things. I find that if I give them the freedom to explore and make something of their own that is so much more rewarding for them and for me rather than micro-managing all of their projects… I love it.” Melara was elected president after spending one semester as Director of Events, one as Director of Alumni Relations, and another implementing her fundraising ideas. When recounting her experience on the board, she mentions that “It was definitely a plus because I think I can relate and I can understand them better because I was already in their shoes once and I understand the amount of work that many of their roles require.” Melara and her experience in the PSSRA “One piece of advice that recently stuck with me was ‘don’t be afraid to make mistakes.’
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