JMS 480: Principles of Public Relations

Due: 6/4/09

Group Project Contract

Team Members:

Nick Acciani acciani@rohan.sdsu.edu (858) 382-1850

Sarah Cole (Team Leader): Shaharaha@sbcglobal.net (619) 985-8305
Tim O'Neill: oneillbunch@gmail.com (858) 869-4963
Jay Osterman ostermanjay@yahoo.com (818) 661-8603
Diana Petras diana.petras@hotmail.com (818) 319-3633
Sheridan Sands (Assistant Team Leader) sheridan@brownell.biz (858) 525-5577
Ricardo Zapata rzapata@rohan.sdsu.edu (619) 674-3464

Team project takeaways:

• A greater understanding of Public Relations theories

• Practical experience with developing a PR campaign
• Real world application of the four step process
• Communicating and collaborating in team settings

Team meeting times: Team meetings will be held at 4:30pm on Tuesday and Thursday.
• Times and dates for team meeting may vary depending on the individual needs of a team
member or the team as a whole.
• Changes to team meeting times/dates will be communicated to the team via the team
leader. Team members are responsible for monitoring email/phone for meeting
notifications/changes
• Each team member can miss no more than three team meetings without having contributed
in some fashion to the objectives for the missed meeting(s).
• If more than three meetings are missed without any contribution from the team member
then the other team members will draft a negative peer review for that member reflecting
the absence and lack of participation.

Division of Work:

• Secondary Research:
1. Sheridan Sands will be responsible for Client and Organization research and the
issue/opportunity research.
2. Diana Petra will be responsible for researching publics, conducting segmentation,
prioritizing, and targeting one public.
3. Nick Acciani will search through Lexis-Nexus for press coverage on the client,
specifically the proposed change in GE requirements.
4. Sheridan Sands will coordinate the compilation of all research findings for both
the summary of secondary data and the situation analysis submitted with the
project proposal.

• Focus Group portion (Primary Research):

1. Diana Petra will be responsible for the focus group and act as moderator.

1
 2. Nick Acciani will act as secondary moderator
3. Tim O'Neill will act as note taker
4. Sarah Cole will ensure the availability of refreshments
5. Jay Osterman will act as secret bouncer.
6. Diana Petra will provide the final written focus group analysis.
7. Sarah Cole will transcribe focus group recordings.

• Public Relations Plan

1. Jay Osterman, Sarah Cole, Ricardo Zapata will be responsible for creating the
public relations plan to include the planning using goal POST as a guide, three
tactical materials using the appropriate medium for the target and message,
implementation steps using TASC and the GANTT chart, and timing and methods
for project evaluation.
2. Nick Acciani will compile the technical and professional elements and the
planning, implementation, and evaluation elements for the written project proposal.

• Team efforts: The following efforts will be undertaken as a team during regularly scheduled
team meetings. Further individual tasking(s) may stem from these efforts either by the
discretion of the team leader or the team member volunteering their services.
1. Identification of SWOT
2. Objective and Project Goal
3. Problem Statement
4. Protocol

• Oral Presentation: Nick Acciani will create the final in-class presentation for the client.

• Miscellaneous efforts:
1. Report writing – Team effort (Tim O'Neill will provide most of this schedule
permitting)
2. Logistics (project specific – team effort)
3. Ricardo Zapata will create and maintain a team Facebook© page
4. Diana Petra will look into the viability of maintaining team documents on Google
DocsTM or another file sharing application.

Deadlines: All assigned work, either listed here in this contract or assigned by other team
members will be completed within the time-lines set per the attached calendar. Missed deadlines
will be dealt with in the following manner:
• First missed deadline: automatic negative peer review
• Second missed deadline: Termination. Due to the short amount of time that the team has
to complete all objectives, a missed deadline can severely impact the success of the team
and service to the customer. Such infractions cannot be tolerated and the group member
will be fired from the team.

Expenses: Team members will keep receipts for all expenses relating to the project and they will
be divided evenly among us. These expenses will be totaled on July 7th and are to be paid in full
by July 9th.