Hi everyone,

My name is Lechelle Gerrard and I am at Curtin University in Perth. I have officially completed my first week of my placement which I am doing at Perth Theatre Company(PTC). I am supervised by Ali Martin who coincidentally also went to Curtin and undertook a similar placement unit. PTC is quite a small company it consists of what you could say are five main staff; Ali who operates as the marketing and publicity manager, Tony who is the general business manager, Mel the artistic director, Gemma who really does a bit of everything including marketing and administration and a guy who is in charge of set, costumes and design (next time I blog I will remember his name). PTC is a really exciting place at the moment as their are three shows coming up in March for which I have been organising some interviews for. We have also recently been accepted as a part of the Perth Winter Arts Season for a show we have in July/August.

During the past week I have been quite busy working on a range of different tasks including organising interviews, arranging possible advertising/publicity opportunities, posting information about the upcoming shows on various websites, composing a letter to be sent out to approx 350 potential subscribers, working on forming contact lists (for different audience groups ie; senior citizens, schools, shires of Perth...) and working on bios for members of the casts and crews working with PTC for their 2009 Transformations season.

Undertaking these tasks has led me to see that although entering my placement I was so sure I knew nothing and would falter when asked questions I actually knew how to do more than I gave myself credit for. Working in a company made me realise that although developing contact lists can be quite tedious, when it eventually comes to needing to find people who form a part of a relevant target audience and then contacting them with your media, they are invaluable. It realy is like having a whole individualised specific community and their contact details at your fingertips.

The one thing I have found challenging so far, and it is a very minor thing, is having almost completely grown up in this 'technological era' and relying heavily on emails and computers to communicate with I am very shy and nervous about picking up the telephone and calling people. I do believe that I am getting better though and just keep reminding myself to be polite, professional, confident and friendly...

Today was good because I got to go into the meeting of all of the different Perth companies who are taking part in the Perth Winter Arts Season and listen/contribute to their various marketing and launch ideas.

I have found that working in such a small environment that the office is alot friendlier and a bit more casual. I have also seen the almost merge of PR and marketing which although are very different fields can be meshed together in an organised and practical manner. I believe so far, from what I have seen that PR plays a huge part within PTC getting their message out to the public.

I have seen PTC use various different PR tools including press releases, articles and interviews. I have also seen the use of promotional materials such as brochures, flyer's and posters. What i am looking forward to the most in the next few days is that Ali told me today I could treat one of their shows; The Seed as my baby and start developing my own PR plan, working out what audiences to target, how to target them, what medias to use... I really cant wait to test the waters for the first time in the 'real world of PR'

Chat again soon,
Chelle x