After Hobbycon 2008 in December, Silverhand's workload wasn't done for the year. Today, I will be talking about what our company did for the remainder of the year.
This first one was a minor job. Our company was outsourced by another event company into contacting journalists and the press to attend an award ceremony organised by Panasonic. It was the award ceremony for the Kid Witness News (KWN) competition in the Asia-Pacific region.
KWN is a video competition whereby kids from a representative primary school produces a video regarding environmental or cultural issues in their respective countries. Participants came from Australia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Vietnam and Indonesia.
Getting and dealing with the press was our job for this event and we planned together with Panasonic on how we should keep the press to stay for the entire event by delaying the results to the end. We offered them press kits that has a press release, a fact sheet, some thrinkets and a DVD of the videos. The results was only given to the individula journalists at the end of the ceremony.
For this event, we contacted all the English, Chinese, English, local and national newspapers along with TV crews from Radio Televisyen Malaysia and TV3. I was placed as an usher to get the press to sign the media guest book so it was also a good chance to get the names of individual journalists. Unfortunately TV3 never showed up but most of the print media came.
As for the event itself, it was also attended by Sabah's Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment, Datuk Masidi Manjun. Thailand was awarded the winner of the regional competition but they could not attend since the Bangkok international airport was being stormed by protesters at the time.
Although there wasn't really much to do during the event itself, it was a great opportunity to get to knew the press on a personal level and collecting their names cards. A longer contact list for our company. After the event, we were in charged of gathering media clippings and it was reported by the national papers (although we couldn't keep the newspaper cuttings because the client wanted them).
Our second job was with Red Bull. They were organising a nation-wide Female Driver Search and one of the location was in Kota Kinabalu (our hometown) so Red Bull hired us for event management and responsible for contacting the press (again).
For this job, this where I learned quite alot of the ropes and tricks behind event management. Although I wasn't directly involved in negotiating the deals and setting the prices but I had to contact other event companies and contractors for quotations of techinical facilities.
On the public relations side, we liased and worked with a public relations consultant for Red Bull all the way from Kuala Lumpur. They provided the press release, we distributed them through our contacts but it was edited by alot because it was probably too long.
On the day of the event itself, I also learned from their consultant, Mr. Aziz on how to follow up with the press afterwards. The resulting media clipping for them turned out quite well in the end. All in all, the news reported that 148 women from Kota Kinabalu turned up for the event and tested their skills to be selected to join Red Bull Rookie Team that will race in Asia's biggest endurance competition; the Merdeka Millenium Endurace (MME) race.
On the event management side of things, there were several problems with our client who made demands that should have informed us much earlier. There was also a miscommunication with the location management but it got sorted out really quickly. From here, I really learn about the hecticness and stress in event management. Murphy's Law really holds true and it was an experience that proves it. Lesson learned;
- the best plan never works once in contact with the enemy
- always have a contigency plan after a contigency plan
- Keep a few numbers that you can call for last minute jobs, you'll never know where you'll need them
Overall, everything turned out fine and there weren't any complaints from our clients at the end of it all. In fact, they seem pretty impressed and satisfied with what our little company arranged for them so I guess we met beyond their expectations a little.
Thus ends the year of 2008 for me and Silverhand. We move on to 2009.
See you all soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment