Wedding Expo Wrap-up

Last week I spent my final day of work experience at Dynomedia, and consequently this will be my last post. Last weekend I spent two days at the e-bridal wedding expo as a Dynomedia representative. On Saturday, things did not start out as smoothly as hoped. For one thing the booth was not yet properly set-up when I arrived. My manager and his assistant spent the night before setting up the bulky equipment, including the 4 HD TV screens on the trusses, but none of the lights that were hired for the day had been set up. Because there was not much use for them in the end, these stayed at the back of the booth without being used throughout the whole expo. Also, because the brochures and other promotional material that was ordered for the expo only arrived at the end of the day on Friday – none of them had been assembled in the promotional folders yet. As a result, much of Saturday morning and intermittently throughout the quiet periods of the day was spent folding the folders and filling them with all the necessary promotional material including the price list, main flyer, and business cards to present to passers by. I think I must have folded about 700 folders all up.

Basically what myself and the other work experience students did throughout the day was put together the promotional folders, greet guests that passed by our booth, answer questions, approach people who browsed the photo albums we had on display, and accost those who passed our booth to provide them with a folder and ask them if they’d like to enter our competition. It was all pretty straightforward but required we be persistently friendly and attempting to drum up interest from passers by to our booth. Admittedly it got a little tiresome and boring throughout the day because often it was not that busy and secondly it became quite repetitive. The girls and I did our best to keeps our spirits up though and remain focused. It was important that we were professional both in appearance and our mannerisms as we were representing the business and therefore reflected the businesses values and quality of service to prospective customers.

Sadly, the expo was not as busy as we anticipated it would be; it was advertised by organisers and one of the biggest wedding expos in Perth and the last one of the year. There were some factors that may have impacted on attendance, namely the election was held on Saturday, which could have put a damper on peoples plans. There were also some disruptions with public transport on Saturday and Sunday in some train lines. Apparently on the Sunday there was also another wedding expo held that day at the Hyatt Hotel; this was a rumour that was circulating around exhibitors, but I’m unsure how accurate that was. I suspect that it wasn’t an actual expo, but a smaller type wedding display/showcase exclusive to the Hyatt because I vaguely remember stumbling on this information during my wedding expo research a few weeks back. In any case, we did not get as much exposure at the expo as expected and I think this disappointed my manager a fair deal as he was initially quite excited about the idea.

We ended up packing up an hour earlier on Sunday afternoon due to the quietness. After helping out packing up we all set off, with our final day the following week scheduled for Thursday. On Thursday we did our follow-up work including an event evaluation covering the highs and lows of the day. This was to ensure that if Dynomedia attended a future expo the same mistakes would not be repeated. It also allowed us to reflect on and assess what worked well and should be repeated for future expos. Following this, the rest of the afternoon was spent making follow-up calls using the contact information gained from the competition entries. This was really an essential follow up step in renewing interest in the business and reminding the guests what Dynomedia offers. I also contacted the winner of our prize draw for a two night stay at Rendezvous Hotel , who was really pleased, and seemed to be interested in booking with us, which is good news.

I realized later that with an expo like this, you have to be prepared to wait a while before you recoup your expenses, because many of the expected wedding dates were up to 2 years from now and therefore many of the couples that we called weren’t ready to book video or photography yet. I suppose it’s more for the exposure to your target audience and to get the name of your business out there.
Some minor things were overlooked on the day but seem utterly obvious to me now. These I will remember for future events I’m involved with or potentially in charge of planning in a PR role.
• Bring bin bags! – We had no plastic bags to put rubbish in. A real pain when there are no bins nearby
• Always have nice table clothes on hand – they will cover a dirty and ugly tables, making them look presentable.
• If the event is an expo both and you want to encourage people to sit, (as was the case with our photo albums) have nice chairs or a mini couch
• Don’t buy the coffee at expo events – it’s bad. Okay maybe not always, but usually at these events it’s disappointing.

Now it’s time to wrap up and reflect on what I’ve learnt. Hope everyone is enjoying his or her placements and getting a lot out of it. One thing I took away is identify the aspects of PR that I prefer (copy writing, collaborating with marketing people, utilizing social media) and what I I’m not as fond of (event planning, constantly having to put across the PR point of view forward to a boss who often doesn’t see things that same way or doesn’t follow through). Ultimately, this is placement has been another experience of working in a real workplace, with new people in a professional setting, and all the ups and downs that that entails.