Week Two- Reality

Well I am now into my second week of my internship at Telethon Speech and Hearing, working on the Artitude event to be held in June. I was asked to produce a PR Plan for the event, including pre-event, event, and post-event media opportunities and advertising.
No worries I thought to myself, I’ve done these before.
I soon found that creating this PR Plan in reality is not like it is at uni. Oh sure you have to have objectives and strategies and outcome measures etc, but the timeframe, expectations and lack of other group members to bounce ideas off is really quite confronting.

I soon found, however, that despite my initial shock at actually having to do a real PR Plan and put it into action, I was actually quite capable. The research component is the same as what we have put into practise at uni (Margaret Gee’s Media Guide is my friend again!!), and although the plan is shorter than the monstrosities we had to produce for our assignments, the basic concept is that same.

It’s interesting to note the differences in styles that become apparent. I am working off an old Artitude plan and the simplicity in most areas of the plan is hard to comprehend. Why would such a large organisation put so little effort into setting out what needs to be done before hand and concentrate so much on raffles, art pieces etc??

I found the answer in a meeting I had with the Marketing and Fundraising Director, who briefed me on what she was looking for this year. Although TSH have left it too late to really cement worthwhile features in magazines and the like, their main aim is to promote it in the events listings of magazines, websites and newspaper.

I now know all there is to know about the art world in Perth, which really is quite limited.

I also completed a wine sponsor’s mail merge today, wow, what a long winded process. After encountering every problem under the sun with printers and the like, I realize just how much of the day something as seemingly unimportant as printing letters and stuffing them into envelopes is. And it takes so looonggg!!!!

But I must say I am enjoying watching this event come together and look forward to seeing it come to fruition!