The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Well not really, the title was purely to grab your attention. My internship experience was nothing but fulfilling, challenging (in a good way) and beneficial.

Not only did I experience having my media releases sent out to the West Australian, being apart of a major social event, participating in Perth Fashion Festival alongside a designer. 

I never walked into my internship carrying any expectations, but having a whole lot to learn and give. 

Working in-house is one of the elements I really enjoyed. I definitely think whatever industry I go into that I would want to stay in-house. I liked the idea of collaborating as a team and mapping out what we were aimed to complete in a four month period for Steph Audino. Going forward I think that my strengths lie within in-house PR work. 

After all the work put into my internship, I definitely think this whole experience was worth it. I learnt so many invaluable tools to the trade and I know that I am willing to keep learning as much as I can in the industry. 

Participating in this internship has allowed me to evaluate whether I really wanted to be apart of the PR industry and I know it's an industry I love and want to be apart of. I look forward to seeing how I will be able to use the skills and knowledge that I've learnt from the PR units completed whilst at uni and implementing them into my future endeavours in  PR. 

What environment do you think best suited to you in the future? Consultancy or In-house?

TPFF 15

It doesn’t get much bigger than this event for the fashion industry in Perth. The Telstra Perth Fashion Festival 2015 (TPFF) was one of the many highlights I experienced through my internship.

Having never participated in TPFF before or worked with a designer, I was extremely intimidated leading up to the event, but eager to learn as much as I could.

While my role with Steph Audino for TPFF 2015 wasn’t revolved around Public Relations (although leading up to the event there was media liaising in regards to photo shoots and news articles), it was to help Steph in anyway I could and learn as much about the fashion industry as I could to see if it is an industry I wanted to be apart of.

The lead up to the night was all about organising the event as best we could.

As a team we:

• ·      Went to model castings
• ·      Decided the line up for the outfits
• ·      Went to model fittings
• ·      Finalised shoes, steaming etc.
• ·      Dressed the models for dress rehearsal 

On the night of the show I was apart of the back of house (BOH) team for the Steph Audino show on closing night. And BOH was chaotic, stinking hot and confined, yet it was exhilarating, fast paced and so much fun.

Words cannot describe the atmosphere backstage, it was electrifying and adrenaline pumping. Dressing models is by far an extremely stressful job; trying to zip, button, add belts, lace up shoes and make sure everything is 110% correct before they step foot on the runway.

Although no matter how stressful, it was an amazing experience and a success that I wouldn’t have been able to be apart of if I hadn’t undertaken this internship at Steph Audino. I couldn’t be more grateful or lucky to be apart of it. 

This event definitely re-ignited my feelings towards wanting to be apart of the fashion industry through public relations.

*note; photos of the runway can be found on the Steph Audino Instagram page: @stephaudinolabel 

Did you feel that your internship help you decide whether or not you wanted to pursue a role in the public relations industry? Why/why not?

First Big Event: Website Launch Party

Half way through my internship and myself and the two other interns I was working with, had the daunting task of putting together a website launch party for the Steph Audino brand (talk about nerve-racking).  Everything from booking a venue to organising catering, choosing a guest list to creating invitations and everything in between. Although all the prep work for the event was super stressful, yet thoroughly exciting (am I right?) the most intimidating part of the whole event was making sure we upheld the Steph Audino reputation.

Steph Audino (the person) has the most radiant and positive personality, which is reflected in the Steph Audino brand. She has built strong relationships with the media, the Perth fashion industry, ‘perthonalities,’ bloggers, hair and make up artists and clients. Therefore we had to make sure that her reputation was not tainted by any means pre, during and post the Steph Audino website launch event.

Fast forward to the night of the event. Everything that needed to be taken care of was and now was the patient wait for guests to arrive; kind of like the calm before the storm. My only expectation for the night was to expect the unexpected. For the most part everything ran smoothly (surprisingly, however I’m not complaining), there were some minor hiccups behind the scenes, with running orders of the evenings schedule but nothing the guests would ever have any clues about (winning).

Overall I thought the event was extremely successful (and completely different to writing an event strategy in a PR plan).  The event was featured in the STM, The West Australian, on Perth blogger’s sites. Photos of the event were posted all over social media, particularly Instagram, which we know is extremely important for any brand in the new age media market.  

Post event, when we were re-capping on the night in the studio. Steph gave me a piece of advice that I could not only implement in the running of an event, but in all aspects of PR.

“It’s not about what goes wrong that defines the night, it’s how you handle it that decides if it was a success or not” – Steph Audino

Attached are some photos of the event:

Expectations: Coffee Runs; Reality: Irreplaceable Experience

Going into the Inglewood studio of Perth based designer Steph Audino, was the most nerve racking moment I've experienced in a long time. I walked in having few expectations and a whole lot of enthusiasm. 

The expectations I did have included going for coffee runs, helping out on smaller part of bigger tasks where I could and generally just being told to help out in anyway I could. The reality however, was that I would be given a PR role that I could have only hoped for. 

I was doing tasks like...

• Communicating with major newspaper outlets
• Writing media releases
• Organising major events (website launch party, VIP styling night)
• Media liaising
• Contributing to social media (Facebook and Instagram)
• Reaching out to bloggers and prominent Instagram fashionistas 

...and so much more

This position was once in a lifetime, and something I could have only wished for! I can't wait for everything I'm going to continue learning and putting into practice during this internship at Steph Audino.