Hi all,
It has been eight days now at the Heart Foundation and it
certainly has been busy. The last few days I have been working alongside the
media and communication manager to help promote the 2012 DoorKnock appeal. You
may be familiar with this campaign; it entails an army of 120,000 volunteers
(nationally) “Door-knocking” in order to raise 5 million dollars to help fund
life saving research and promote community health.
The campaign begins in WA on the 3rd of September
and finishes on the 22nd.
Last week I officially sent my first media release to a
local community newspaper and it was a good experience. (I believe I have sent
three or four now) I am glad I remembered what we were taught all those moons
ago in the PR media techniques classes. It is surprising how your desk phone
becomes an extension of your body, especially when calling journalists and
gathering quotes from volunteers.
The whole process of sending out a media release can be
quite time consuming as detailed below:
1)
Source a volunteer who is willing to interviewed
and photographed for a local paper and has a personal connection with heart
disease. (harder than it sounds)
2)
Interview them over the phone to generate quotes
to incorporate within the release.
3)
Once typed, send the quotes back to the
individual for approval, alongside a media exposure consent form.
4)
Call the local paper and find the appropriate
journalist for the media release.
5)
Wait for the approval forms to come back, and
then input them within the release.
6)
Send the completed media release to the
journalist and hope it will be used to generate a story in the local newspaper.
That is roughly the process, however there is often a
spanner thrown in the works somewhere along the lines.
Recently I was also lucky enough to sit in a PR meeting in
West Perth within a firm named Devahasdin PR, regarding the ‘smarter than
smoking campaign’ running this year. The meeting was conducted with a PR team
who were certainly on the ball and very professional. It was great to escape
the office for a little while and see how professional PR people conduct
business behind closed doors.
If
you anybody is interested in learning more about the DoorKnock Appeal or even
donating!, Visit www.heartfoundation.org.au/doorknock
Thanks for reading, Miles
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