Hi everyone,
As an intern at Platform Communications, my work mainly consists of the marketing and communications efforts for the Toodyay Picnic Race Day 2014, an in-kind project that Platform has taken on board.
On my first day at Platform, another intern and myself had a briefing on the Toodyay Race Day and how we would be involved as a consultancy. We were given a great action plan with all of our tasks and due dates. With so many tasks to perform, I quickly understood how important this detailed checklist was, and that I would often refer to it as my bible.
Objectives
One of my first tasks was to develop the objectives relating to our campaign. It was a really strange, yet wonderful feeling to actually complete something for a real consultancy. In most of our Public Relations units we had been taught how to write objectives over and over again and written these in our Public Relations plans. I left the office that day feeling really excited that what I had studied was about to be put in to place.
The main aims of our campaign include engaging members of the local community whilst attracting visitors from Perth. We are also aiming to showcase the town of Toodyay as a vibrant, livable town in addition to its solid reputation as a tourist destination.
To achieve our goals, a large part of our work is geared towards generating sponsorship, attracting a high caliber of VIP guests to the event and gaining media coverage.
VIP Invitation
A couple of days later I had worked on various other tasks for the Toodyay Race Day including developing a list of VIP guests, a spreadsheet of potential organisations to target for sponsorship, and writing an invitation letter to the Hon. Mia Jane Davies, Minister of Water and Forestry; Deputy Leader of the National Party (WA) to attend the event. Ms Davies has accepted our invitation and is confirmed as the Event Patron. As a widely known and admired figure in the Avon Valley and Perth, we were all very excited that she had accepted our invitation.
Website
A huge task we were involved with on our first two weeks involved developing a website for the Toodyay Race Club. The event has never had any sort of communications or marketing efforts utilised in previous years, and so we were really starting from scratch.
It was definitely a challenge trying to obtain information from different parties to use for the website, as well as finding time with my supervisor and director to edit and approve the copy that we had developed.
After some slight delays, we finally had the website up and running with the help of the design team at Platform. This was a huge step for us as we finally had something that potential sponsors could refer to and a place to direct people to for more information.
You can visit the website here.
We have also updated the Facebook page to reflect the website. If you are interested, make sure you like the page here.
Challenges and Reflection
A major challenge involved with the website was competing deadlines for different departments within Platform. The design team were responsible for setting up the website and all graphic design elements involved. The design team member who was helping us with the website was often required to work on more urgent tasks first. As an in-kind project, this often means that tasks relating to the Toodyay Race Day need to be pushed back in order to finish more urgent, billable tasks first.
I quickly began to understand the fast-paced world of a consultancy. With competing deadlines and managing multiple clients, I cannot begin to imagine a dull moment at Platform Communications. From my experiences so far I can definitely say that a consultancy provides a wonderful environment to learn and develop essential communications skills as well as time management and great inter-personal skills that will assist me in my future career choices.
If you have made it to the end of my long blog post, and have some free time, check out the website for Platform Communications. You might be interested to see some of the clients that Platform work with and some of the projects they have completed to date through the link here.
I hope everyone is finding their internship as stimulating and challenging, yet rewarding as I have so far.
Rebecca.
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