Public relations students land Chico Air Museum coverage

By Jennifer Wright

Many nonprofit clients have come to the Chico State public relations program seeking help with media coverage that will help them become successful in the community.

The Chico Air Museum was featured on the June 2006 cover of North State Parent, as well as in the article “Four Adventures For Dads From Dads,” as a result of the public relations students’ ideas.

As part of their “Public Relations Strategy” work, student teams suggested that coverage in a local magazine would help the museum get more visitors, and contacted North State Parent magazine to pitch a story. In response to the efforts of the strategy students, the magazine then contacted museum board member Noel Wheeler, who helped schedule a photo shoot at the museum.

The magazine article mentioned the museum’s many features, including an outdoor aircraft display as well as an indoor display of historic aviation artifacts, and described it as a fun place for dads to take their children for a day out.

The museum board members came to the strategy class in 2006 with a request for the students to create an awareness campaign to let the community know about the museum, which opened in May 2005. The students then created plan books with several strategies on how the museum could make itself more prominent in the Chico community.

“There were five or six teams that gave presentations, and I got to pick and choose what I wanted to use,” Wheeler said.

Conducting surveys on public knowledge of the museum was one of the most helpful things the students did, Wheeler said.
 

“They had to target different demographics, and it was really valuable to benchmark how much we were known,” he said.

The class also helped the museum develop ideas for its Summer Takeoff first anniversary event, which was also mentioned in the North State Parent article.

To view examples of work interns have done for the Chico Air Museum, view the link below:

North State Parent Magazine

Photos by: Cory Burns

PR in the Community Home Page