Position Paper 4: Wild Card

World Wrestling Entertainment and Why They Still Succeed.

World Wrestling Entertainment, or the WWE, is a media and entertainment company most noted for the sport of professional wrestling. If you haven't really paid attention for the better part of 20 years, you may recognize them as the WWF, or the World Wrestling Federation (but they couldn't keep that name because the World Wildlife Fund sued).

I was once a fan of wrestling and the WWE, back in the early 2000's. Post attitude-era and in the thick of the ruthless aggression era, wrestling was very popular at my school and many of us would gather at lunch to talk about the most recent episode of Monday Night Raw. If you liked Friday Night SmackDown, you probably sat at a different table than us.

Recently I've taken an interest in watching 'WWE Top 10' videos from WhatCulture Wrestling. I haven't really watched the programming since around 2009, but I like to watch the videos and almost relive the time when life was much more simple and all I really worried about was whether John Cena was going to win the WWE Championship or not.

Watching these videos made me think about the WWE as a product and how they reach their consumers. How do they stay popular when their product is dangerous and impressionable on children? I remember the promos the wrestlers would 'cut' with swears and risque clothing on female wrestlers, so how do they do it?

The first big step in maintaining their popularity for the future was to make the switch from TV-14 to PG in 2008. I actually remember when this switch occurred as I was still a fan of the programming. I never personally felt the effects of the PG switch as I was very young and shortly after stopped watching WWE altogether but the fanbase was largely affected (check out the WWE forums in 2009, post PG change). This was a big change from the attitude-era of the mid-90's, but the biggest consumer of WWE media were (and still are) children under 14. Linda McMahon (the wife of WWE CEO and Chairman Vince McMahon) was also making a push for the U.S. Senate in 2010, which resulted in all programming pre-PG era being censored.

WWE also lacks competition in the wrestling market. Before 2019, there were no major wrestling programs or promotions that could compete with the WWE. World Championship Wrestling, or WCW, was a major competitor in the 90's until Vince McMahon acquired the company and turned it into a storyline, dubbed the Monday Night Wars. The show would eventually go defunct. Currently, there are two major competitors to WWE: All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and Impact! Wrestling (formerly TNA). The former was founded on January 1st, 2019 by Shahid Khan, the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Despite there being no real competition to the WWE and their major audience being catered to via the parental guidance rating changed, the WWE's ratings continue to fall each year. In fact, they've been falling since the early 2000's, and I can't really explain that. However, the big twist lies in the revenues of the company in which has been increasing every year. In 2017, the revenue of the WWE increased by 10% to nearly $900 million, a record high for the company.

All of Vince McMahon's controversies

So WWE maintains it's popularity with some sort of magic that I can't really explain, but how do they deal with PR disasters? Every company or celebrity is bound to have one at some point, so how did they bounce back? Well, they almost didn't a few times. Let's go over some.

How about when Hulk Hogan's sex tape and racist comments were leaked? WWE dropped Hulkamania from their hall of fame almost immediately. Everyone, including all of the Hulkster's sponsorships dropped him and WWE was no different. However, you may not have known that Hogan was reinstated to the hall of fame in 2018 after a 3-year suspension.

One of the most controversial PR incidents in WWE history occurred in 1999 at the Over the Edge pay-per-view. Superstar Owen Hart (brother of Bret "The Hitman" Hart) was killed in the middle of the PPV, and announcer Jim Ross informed the audience at home of the situation. The crisis occurs when the show continues to go on, even after Hart's death was announced.

Perhaps the biggest PR disaster in WWE history concerns the death of wrestler Chris Benoit. I'd like to take a moment and share a quick story about this one as this occurred when I was a fan of the WWE. John Cena was set to defend his WWE Championship on Monday Night Raw and just a week prior, Mr. McMahon was killed when his limousine exploded. Imagine the surprise of an eight year old Colby when Vince McMahon comes on the screen at the beginning of the episode and announces a tribute show for Chris Benoit, who had died a day earlier. I was saddened that I wouldn't see my favorite wrestler defend his title, but I remember watching every match of the tribute show. It's one of my clearest memories in-fact. Now fast forward a few days when news breaks that Chris Benoit had killed his wife and child before committing suicide. Now was the time for the WWE to switch sides. The tribute show is never mentioned and Benoit has been scrubbed from the history of the WWE. His death was not taken advantage of by the WWE, unlike Eddie Guerrero or Paul Bearer.

Despite these PR incidents, and many more that I have not listed, the WWE continues to turn a profit. Vince McMahon is set to launch the XFL in just two short months, and despite the ratings, the WWE is more popular than ever. How they pulled it off? I couldn't tell you.

Sometimes I miss the good ole' days of wrestling with my step-brothers.

Position Paper 3: Higher Education

More Than Just a Moment: Appalachian State

"Appalachian State"

There are only a few things that may come to mind when thinking about this school from North Carolina, the most prominent being quite possibly the biggest upset of all time in a sporting event. Perhaps you know them from flicking through the channels and getting an ad for the university (but that's only likely if you live in the area). Moreover, you may recognize the university for when they placed a tenured Sociology professor on leave after showing an anti-pornography film in their class. Perhaps you don't recognize the university, and if you don't, let's correct that.

Appalachian State University is a four-year public university located in Boone, North Carolina. In 1899, brothers D.D. and B.B. Dougherty founded the school (for reference, 28 years after the University of Arkansas was founded and 10 years before Southern Arkansas University was founded). In 1971, Appalachian State joined the University of North Carolina's academic system and currently has about 20,000 enrolled students, offering 176 undergraduate degrees, 42 graduate degrees, and one doctoral degree in educational leadership.

Let's get to the point of this paper then. How does Appalachian State market themselves to enroll students?

The first thing that pops up on the Appalachian State website  a link to their internship programs, which they have a lot of. They don't specifically list where exactly each of the internship programs can take you, but it looks like (according to the image on their website) there are numerous places in the United States to go, as well as overseas including England, France, Spain, India, and China? Or maybe that's Russia, but my money's on China. At the bottom of the internship page, they have 'profiles' of unique internship experiences which is seemingly updated every year.

The rest of the front page of the website lists the basic information you'd want to find about a university, but it also links to all of their departments on-campus including Arts, Diversity and Inclusion, Global Learning, and Sustainability, which appears to be a big part of their marketing as the home page markets the school as a place to 'Find Your Sustainability'.

The Mountaineer athletic program is also heavily marketed on their web page, as they brag about their graduation rate of student-athletes. The Mountaineer Football squad can also boast making the NCAA Top-25 last year, coming in at #25 in the middle of the 2018 campaign.

The bottom of the website lists all of the events going on around campus and from what I can tell, also lists any events going on at the main University of North Carolina campus about three hours away.

The Twitter account for Appalachian State University (which got really lucky with such a simple username: @appstate) is very active, updated almost daily, except for on the weekends where they usually just retweet whatever is going on with their athletics program. They have a lot of blog posts that go around on the account, including some similar to what we do here. Like most major university, Appalachian State has numerous Twitter accounts for their different departments, including the Office of Alumni Affairs and the Athletics account.

Appalachian State also has a Facebook page, but you would think it was more of a photography blog with how often they post pictures of the scenery around the campus. I'm not going to lie though, it looks like one of the most beautiful campuses I've ever seen, situated in the middle a valley surrounded by trees. I could only wonder what it looks like in the Fall, which I'm sure is a major marketing point. I fear for cell service though.

The university's social media department also has a very unique page called the 'social media cheat sheet', which is quite possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen and I plan on saving for future reference. In short, it's a page with almost every social media platform listed and a graphic displaying what kind of font and imaging should be used for the best looking page possible, as well as encountering as few difficulties as possible. It's actually awesome.

Appalachian State uploads videos periodically on their YouTube channel, including podcasts and award videos. I did manage to track down this video, which went viral online. However, the video is no longer used to market the university after student protests, which I think is sad.

Appalachian State stays out of the news, which is a good thing most of the time. However, I think it's a unique and beautiful university that deserves more recognition, kind of like SAU.

Position Paper 2: Breaches of Ethics

Fallout over Fallout: Bethesda's Deceptive Marketing

Video games are a very important part of society today. 65% of American adults play video games daily while 75% of American households have at least one gamer in the household (per theesa). I know most of, if not all all of, my friends play video games in some form or fashion. In fact, we usually play together, almost every night.

However, the video game market is often heavily scrutinized, and not from outside consumers like you would think. The biggest critic of the video game industry is gamers and the people who regularly digest video game products and culture. With the introduction of the internet to the video game scene and video game companies being more connected to their consumers than ever, it was only going to be so long before they started taking advantage of it.

Microtransactions are a very hot-topic among the video game community. If you're unaware, microtransactions are purchases that a consumer can make in a video game after purchasing the video game. For example, Fortnite, a very popular multiplayer shooter game, has microtransactions in which players can spend real money on 'V-bucks,' which they can use to purchase costumes, weapons, and 'battle passes', which allow for the player to earn additional in-game rewards for playing the game (per Epic Games).

The big-debate about microtransactions has multiple fronts. First, many believe that when you purchase a game for $60, you should receive all of the content made for the game for the base price tag. This is a big issue, as many consumers believe that video game companies create content specifically for an additional cost after the base-game price. Second, many microtransactions are reliant on luck, specifically with lootboxes. Lootboxes in video games are a physical appearence for a random number generator that determines what sort of loot the player receives for purchasing the lootbox. This has been a hot-topic issue for many years, as many consider this to be gambling (purchasing a loot box for a set price, then receiving a reward that may or may not be worth the money spent).

Nonetheless, microtransactions are a big issue, which leads directly into the topic for my paper: Bethesda Softworks and their deception leading into and following the release of their newest video game, Fallout 76.

Some Quick Background

Fallout 76 is the latest installment in Bethesda's award-winning Fallout series. The game was announced at E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, at Bethesda's press conference. The game received immediate flak as Fallout, a primarily single-player series, was moving online.

The Breach of Trust

The trust began to falter almost immediately after the announcement of Fallout 76 as Todd Howard and Bethesda promised to keep microtransactions out of Fallout 76. This fell through after cosmetic microtransactions were added (microtransactions that do not affect gameplay except for looks, which is vital in an online game to maintain fairness). The company vowed to keep all microtransactions cosmetic and not game-altering. Just recently, last month, they broke this promise and introduced repair kits, a purchasable item in the game that allows players to fix their gear without using in-game items.

With the introduction of repair kits, Bethesda has thrust 'pay-to-win' into the game (allowing players to spend real money to advance in the game, sometimes even further beyond players who play the game without making purchases). This came contrary to VP Pete Hines' statement that pay-to-win would never be introduced to Fallout 76. This is hardly the first time that Bethesda has lied while marketing their game.

When the game was first announced, a canvas bag was promised with the "Power Armor Edition" version of the game, which cost $200. When the game was released, those who purchased the 'Power Armor Edition' did not receive their canvas bags, rather nylon bags. The bag was advertised as canvas, similar to the canvas bag released in 2010's Fallout: New Vegas. The correct bags finally arrived in July 2019, over seven months after the release of the game.

Hardcore fans can pay $80 for a bottle of 'Nuka Rum', an alcoholic version of the popular drink from the Fallout series, Nuka Cola. For $80, one would expect a nice product that tastes good, and is presentable. However, there was a delay following the games release and Nuka Rum was released a month after the initial release of the game. Consumers were outraged when the Nuka Rum finally arrived in a plastic bottle, not glass. Not once did any promotional material ever say that the bottle was made of plastic and not glass, and fans were outraged.

Since the outrage of Fallout 76, Todd Howard, director of Bethesda, has become a meme in advertising products in a mockingly blunt way and using sneaky practices to swindle the consumer.

Here's an appropriate video.

Position Paper 1: Crisis Public Relations

The Facebook Scandal of 2018.

Facebook is a scary company. When I was younger, the platform was just a page on the computer. I didn't know how to use it, and my mom would scroll up and down on. Now and again, she would play games like Bejeweled or Mafia City, but it seemed like the site was just a bunch of nonsense posted by my mom's friends. Now that I'm older, I can see just how much of a waste of time and energy the site is. Yes, you can be 'friends' with your long lost family and see what they're doing, but who cares? Anytime I log on, I get to see estranged political discussion, family disowning family, and worst of all: Dallas Cowboy fans.

Up until recently, however, I never really heard of scandals involving Facebook. When I was younger, I remember everyone being excited about the new platform as they ditched Myspace. I don't ever remember hearing anything bad about Facebook until the mid-2010s, which is probably due to getting older and learning to listen to what's going on. However, no bad news about Facebook has hit harder than the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, which is what I'm going to be talking about.

Background

In 2015, Harry Davies, a reporter for The Guardian, reported on illicit personal data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica through Facebook's apps. He claimed that Cambridge Analytica was working with United States Senator Ted Cruz to build voter profiles through Facebook ahead of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections. Three more reports were published through Das Magazin in December of 2016, The Guardian in February of 2017, and The Intercept in March of 2017. Facebook refused to comment on any of these claims, and the story fell through.

Things were silent until ex-employee of Cambridge Analytica Christopher Wylie emerged as a whistle-blower and confirmed the claims. The scandal erupted in March 2018 and crowded all of social media with trends to #DeleteFacebook. Founder Mark Zuckerberg was ordered by the Federal Communications Commission to testify in-defense of Facebook's activity in data-mining. Facebook stocks plummeted as shareholders attempted to get away from the company as quickly as possible.

Crisis Management

Facebook may have handled this scandal in the worst way possible, but I'm going to save the big-kahuna for last. Let's do a quick rundown of what they could've done better.

1. Faster Response Times - Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg for that matter were very, very slow when responding to the media outcry. Not only did they decline to comment when the story first broke in 2015, but it also took nearly a month for the company to respond to the stories and the FCC.

2. Failure in Transparency - 'Fake News' is a big issue on Facebook as it's easy to spread. During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections, Zuckerberg and Facebook denied the spreading of fake news through the site and said that the company would be taking significant steps to continue to deter the spread of untruthfulness. However, the company was very reluctant to tell how they would be combating fake news or how the stories had begun to spread in the first place.

3. Being Authentic - There are certain companies that just 'feel right.' It's a hard nature to explain, but Facebook is not that. Facebook feels like a backstabbing friend who can turn on you an instant. What do you think about CocaCola? I don't feel like a refreshing Coke Zero would ever betray my trust.

So how did Facebook handle the scandal? The short answer: they didn't. To start, Facebook's PR Firm, Definers Public Affairs, has a PR issue of its own. The firm was found to have done some gossiping about other companies, such as trying to push a story about liberal bias at Apple or a negative article about the scooter company, Bird. To make matters worse, the firm was accused of pushing out fake news through Facebook, which they of course denied. To put the icing on the cake, Zuckerberg, in a conference call with journalists, announced that, "In such a company of over 10,000 people, you don't get to hear everything." In addition to that, Zuckerberg was robotic during the FCC hearing, which quickly became a meme. Nice job, Mark!

The apology letter from Facebook came in the form of full-page front-page ads in nine newspapers in the United States and the United Kingdom apologizing for their breach in trust to their members. The ad made headlines across the world.

Facebook is still feeling the effects of this scandal, and we'll probably all be hearing about it for years to come.