The relationship between PR and Events

 The relationship between PR and Events

From an outsiders perspective, it would appear once the efforts of Public Relations (PR) have identified the relevant publics and attracted them to an event, their involvement would be effectively over. I myself somewhat thought this before my internship at Perth Heat, until I realised the opportunity and valuable information available to a PR department throughout the event they created. From ticketing sales (e.g. the types of tickets sold - demographics) right through to the preferred caterer at the event (venue in this case).

In particular the ticket sales of each game displayed a demographic trend that allowed me to identify which age bracket was most attending games. I was then able to target the age in this case 18 -24 year olds who were least attending the event. From this I was able to identify ways of attracting this age group, I contacted student magazines (offered editors free entry), contacted universities to sell tickets simular to the way cinema tickets are sold (e.g. the spot - Curtin university), to even promoting the prices of alcohol sold at the venue - rather cheap to most other venues ($5  pints of beer). All of this was identified and used to the advantage of PR tactics and strategies, just from ticket sales.

Catering was also an important factor to not only the success of games, but to the reputation of the organisation and venue. Unfortunately a few games saw miscommunication and last minute pull outs from vendors that cause high dissatisfaction from attendees. This in turn saw particularly our Facebook page flooded with messages and comments on our wall. An event issue, now a PR issue. We were able to thankfully address the issues by reassuring attendees concerned they would not be inconvenienced again. This effectively displayed like ticketing sales how an event can affect the organisations PR efforts.

It is important to understand that while the efforts of PR effectively attracts the relevant publics to events that their efforts are not done, but monitoring and evaluating an event is critical to the success of the organisations PR department moving forward that both reputation and organisational goals are achieved.