Stop the Olympics

Stop the Olympics!

Hi everyone,

Currently I’m in the third week of my placement at Gymnastics WA, during which time the world has stopped to watch the London Olympics. The Olympics effects GWA as West Australian gymnasts are competing on a world stage, great PR for GWA as we are lucky enough to have three competing WA gymnasts. However, because of certain rules and regulations  GWA is only allowed to use certain photos during the games, as well as refer to the London Olympics in certain wording.

At the moment I’m not yet responsible for putting material up on the GWA Facebook or Website however I am designing a sponsorship package for an event in which the three WA athletes will be involved in. Due to the tight ruling of what photos I can use, how I refer to the Games and the girls competing, the package I’m developing can’t be released until the Olympics are over. Slightly disappointed as I’m eager to see if it attracts some sponsors. Quickly I’ve learnt that in PR it doesn’t matter how prepared you are, sometimes outside circumstances may have a more controlling effect and alter the PR plan.

This again has resonated with my internal relations in the office. GWA runs a very tight ship with the team working hard, with a small budget (you should see the speed of the computers), and a few employees over at the Olympics. You would think that this would mean it would be easy for me to meet up with the Director….. wrong! Having organised to meet with the Director early Tuesday morning my meeting, along with everyone else’s in the office was cancelled. Having all my questions, ideas and concerns written down I was left feeling helpless and a bit confused as to what to do. Realising again that it doesn’t matter how organised you are, things can always come up and you need to have a contingency plan.

It turns out the Director had a much more urgent issue to deal with so I decided I was just brainstorm ideas for media releases. Later in the week I got to meet with the Director and she was pleased with my use of time, a matter of fact I had started my next project in developing a media plan.

This week at my placement I’ve learnt more about gymnastics than I thought possible, from the daily debriefs about how the gymnastics is going at the Olympics to how important gymnastics is to every other sport. Most importantly though that it’s vital to have a backup plan because PR is affected by so many outside variables, you need to be able to respond by having something else to channel your efforts into.

This is what im currently working on, check it out! http://www.gymnasticswa.asn.au/?Page=24210

If you made it this far, thanks for reading!

Kim