With most of the Expedition's sponsors now secured and the christening of the boat at Royal Perth Yacht Club only around the corner, attention is now turning to maximising national awareness of the Expedition and prostate cancer. If you Google 'Honda Over The Top Expedition', quite a few media releases have already appeared on the websites of marine publications around Australia. These are thanks to Sandman PR, a strategic partner of The Hub operating in the Eastern states and fellow sponsor of the Expedition.
The Hub, however, needed a thoroughly comprehensive and up-to-date WA media contacts so that we could also begin the task of raising awareness on our side of the Nullabor. Naturally, as the intern, the job fell to me!
I had to acquire the contact details of every editor/producer/chief-of-staff of every newspaper, AM and FM radio station program and TV station in WA - metro and regional. Newspapers included The West Australian and Sunday Times, but also every community and regional newspaper around WA.
Given our target audience (men aged 40+/marine enthusiasts), I was also required to determine relevant contacts for every yacht and boating, Royal Life Saving , Rotary and Freemasons club in WA.
Needless to say, the process took a while. While The Hub had previous media lists I could work off, I still needed to ring the media outlets on there to ensure those details were still correct (the lists were 2 to 3 years old, so very often they weren't).
It took a seemingly endless series of phone calls, and A LOT of tedious entering of information, but after two full days I had completed an up-to-date media list to launch our media strategy with in WA.
While the job was certainly far from fun, I have to admit feeling quite proud afterwards. While it was not an exciting contribution to our strategy implementation, it was a vitally important one. I think it is probably a rite of passage of sorts for someone working in the PR industry - something everyone has to experience at least once. Without doubt though, I've since enjoyed the relative liberty of writing media releases and updating websites!
P.S. - shameless promotion here - visit the Honda Over The Top Expedition page on Facebook here and become a Fan!
2 comments:
compelling a media list is not an easy thing dear. In my experiences in Malaysia as a foreigner was a big problem. Language barriers, Chinese, Malay and Indian names are not easy to get.Calling them requesting for editors names was not easy, even my name THATO, i had to say T- for Thailand, H-Hawaii, A-America,T-Thailand, O- Orange.I got used to it, and they were patient with me as they sometimes had t repeat what they said. but in all it has been a great experience
I definitely agree with you about how you feel about media lists - definitely not fun!! But with every number/contact you get, don't you get a sense of self satisfaction? Does help you to get to know more about WA media "personally" in a way. Sadly, every intern has to go through this bit of time consuming work :( I've actually just blogged about this too!
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