[Светльо]

To be honest, since liking her on facebook I have kinda started to get irritated with her. I mean, most of her 'posts' are so generic and it is clear that someone else is writing them. All that reminiscing about every single tournament she played and how great the people and the country didn't feel genuine, at all. That person from IMG who is in charge of her facebook is quite the bot. Oh well, nothing wrong in the marketing, I guess. It will only help her.

[tennismaster8820]

^^
Yes it's very obvious what you said is true, her facebook statuses are definitely work of some bot...
Often cringe-worthy translations to Croatian.

[Wintermute]

Maybe twitter is a better place to get a sense of Donna's real opinions. I don't do facebook so only see what is posted here.

I commended her not long ago in this thread for her good use of social media compared to some top players. More information is usually better than no information at all. I mean, I want to know what Chaky's plans are for 2013 but it's been radio silence. I'd take a PR bot any day just to find out something.

[ma re]

Originally Posted by Embittered

That sounds far-fetched to me, if for no other reason than that a PR person would get disheartened at how little work paulmara left for them to do.

Bingo! Paulmara is either someone who has no life (no offense), or is somehow connected to the Vekic team - via agency or otherwise. There could be no other reason why he would never post anything in the thread except Donna's PR materials.

Originally Posted by LethalLaura

Besides, there's not much Donna can do now. WTA has restricted her from playing a certain amount of Pro tournaments.

That is true, but she is not restricted by a whole lot. She can play 12 events + fed cup + merited increases between her 16th and 17th birthday, which is more events than what Serena played during 2012 (I know, crazy comparison, but still...).

Originally Posted by Светльо

To be honest, since liking her on facebook I have kinda started to get irritated with her. I mean, most of her 'posts' are so generic and it is clear that someone else is writing them. All that reminiscing about every single tournament she played and how great the people and the country didn't feel genuine, at all. That person from IMG who is in charge of her facebook is quite the bot. Oh well, nothing wrong in the marketing, I guess. It will only help her.

I wouldn't go as far as using the word irritated, but a lot of her PR sounds and feels forced, so it's not my cup of tea.

Anyway, sorry for starting this silly discussion, didn't mean to annoy anyone or start a war


Merry Christmas

[binky-GOAT]

I have always felt the same thing but thought I was alone in this. Whenever I see Donna she doesn't strike me as the most social person. Most of the stuff she posts doesn't seem natural. You can see it in some of her photos, the smiles seem fake, like a photographer asking her to smile rather than her doing it, if that makes any sense...


For a girl this might not be a bad thing though, expose to this stuff might make her feel more confident when she gets on the tour.

[ma re]

Originally Posted by paulmara

I get what you're saying Asadinator, but we have to keep in mind her age in all this. She is 16 and in a situation where she has to adapt to a whole lot of things all the time, traveling so much, constantly meeting new people, doing PR, that's a lot of pressure for a kid her age. I remember when I started highschool what sort of a shock it was for me, because of the need to adapt to new people and surroundings. Well, what she is faced with, is probably a lot more dificult than that.

What I like, however, is how recently she's been uncovering her sense of humor (assuming those are her ideas). The photo above is my favorite so far.

[anthonyqld]

It takes 2 seconds to send a tweet. She can't spend 100% of her time playing tennis. She does have down time. She might enjoy using Twitter, like a large percentage of the general population - and a lot of those tweet more than her. Why should she tweet less just because she's a tennis player?

[ma re]

@ anthonyqld: Seems you got some of us all wrong. I don't consider Twitter a problem (possibly because I don't use it), and no one said she should spend all her time playing tennis. All I'm saying is that she should wait a little with all this marketing and ease down on PR until she reaches (or at least approaches) some truly noteworthy results.

Case in point, recently (to my surprise) she wasn't included on the list of top 10 breakthroughs of 2012 published by WTA - turns out that the reason was because she didn't end the year inside top 100. So eventhough she was so freakishly close, despite all this work and all the PR done during the year, her results -globally speaking- went virtually unnoticed. Therefore putting so much into advertising doesn't make much sense to me, considering she is still very far from the top of the game (currently at around 15% of points held by world's #10).

And let's not even get into her team's chosen method of building the ranking, which might be working against the very advertising efforts into which they pour all those resources. To elaborate - I bet that making one win over a top 20 player would generate more interest in her than reaching quarters and semis in several weak Asian tournaments. So on one side you're funding expensive promotional activities and on the other you're competing in the middle of nowhere.

But anyway, that's what they've chosen to do, just as some of us can choose not to pay so much attention to it all. But let me tell you...it's getting increasingly more difficult

[TimeyWimey]

Originally Posted by ma re

I get what you're saying Asadinator, but we have to keep in mind her age in all this. She is 16 and in a situation where she has to adapt to a whole lot of things all the time, traveling so much, constantly meeting new people, doing PR, that's a lot of pressure for a kid her age. I remember when I started highschool what sort of a shock it was for me, because of the need to adapt to new people and surroundings. Well, what she is faced with, is probably a lot more dificult than that.

What I like, however, is how recently she's been uncovering her sense of humor (assuming those are her ideas). The photo above is my favorite so far.

how about day one night match with Sharapova on Rod Laver as her GS debut?

[ma re]

Originally Posted by TimeyWimey

how about day one night match with Sharapova on Rod Laver as her GS debut?

For her, it would be frightening, for me, it would be...yaaaayyyy!

[chingching]

I think that it would be more of a benefit to Donna for example, to lose Rnd 1 vs a Top 10 Player showing off some of her game (or even beating/losing to an Aussie) then beating someone like Bratchikova and then losing to Svitolina as even though she gets more points money and confidence, she is less known

I don't find her PR annoying, but it's obviously not her as her English is good but some of it on her posts makes me sick

[tennismaster8820]

Originally Posted by ma re

@ anthonyqld: Seems you got some of us all wrong. I don't consider Twitter a problem (possibly because I don't use it), and no one said she should spend all her time playing tennis. All I'm saying is that she should wait a little with all this marketing and ease down on PR until she reaches (or at least approaches) some truly noteworthy results.

Case in point, recently (to my surprise) she wasn't included on the list of top 10 breakthroughs of 2012 published by WTA - turns out that the reason was because she didn't end the year inside top 100. So eventhough she was so freakishly close, despite all this work and all the PR done during the year, her results -globally speaking- went virtually unnoticed. Therefore putting so much into advertising doesn't make much sense to me, considering she is still very far from the top of the game (currently at around 15% of points held by world's #10).

And let's not even get into her team's chosen method of building the ranking, which might be working against the very advertising efforts into which they pour all those resources. To elaborate - I bet that making one win over a top 20 player would generate more interest in her than reaching quarters and semis in several weak Asian tournaments. So on one side you're funding expensive promotional activities and on the other you're competing in the middle of nowhere.

But anyway, that's what they've chosen to do, just as some of us can choose not to pay so much attention to it all. But let me tell you...it's getting increasingly more difficult

You make it sound as if Donna is some veteran playing so long in this level and it's incrisingly getting difficult for you to not pay attention to what tournament she plays.
I think that's a bit over the top.
She jumped up the rankings so fast and only in 2013 we will see if she can hang on to it.
She is only at the start of her career.

[ma re]

Originally Posted by tennismaster8820

You make it sound as if Donna is some veteran playing so long in this level and it's incrisingly getting difficult for you to not pay attention to what tournament she plays.
I think that's a bit over the top.
She jumped up the rankings so fast and only in 2013 we will see if she can hang on to it.
She is only at the start of her career.

I think you missed the joke hon' - I said it's becoming increasingly more difficult to not pay attention to her PR

But anyway, doesn't matter, looks like the folks at the team saw my whining and decided to let us off the hook a little with the promotional stuff

[BlueTrees]

Tbh I like how much promotional stuff she does It shows she cares about her fans, a lot of players couldn't care less

[vladekCRO]

by Donna

Had a meeting with Unicef today and now off to Australiaaaaaaa