On 6th of May 2014, Subaru launched their all-new
WRX and WRX STI cars. The launch was held at Vivocity’s atrium in the evening.
It was both a media and customer launch, and boy, was I excited to be part of the
team! This was my very first media launch that I helped out and attended and I
personally love cars.
Subaru is one of my agency’s clients where we handle their PR
and we were involved in helping out during this launch. Our main objective of
this launch was to handle the media while Subaru’s own sales and marketing team
handled the customers.
Before the launch, there were several things that were needed
to be done. First item on the agenda was inviting the media. Inviting the media
was handle by my colleague who contacted and sent out invitations to various
targeted media. Secondly, I was in-charge of the RSVP of the event and had to
do call downs to media who hasn’t responded to confirm on their attendance.
Lastly, as in learnt in school, media kits are items given
out during a launch or an event to provide information to the media, and this
was the item that my colleague and I had to prepare. This was also my first
time preparing a real media kit that was going to be given to the media. The
week before the launch, my colleague and I headed down to Subaru to collect the
specification sheets of the cars and the folders for distribution.
After the finalization of the press release, I printed copies
of the press release to slot them into the media kits. Items in the media kit
for the launch include: a press release, specification sheets on the cars.
On the day of the launch, we headed down to the venue an hour
earlier to prepare and set up the registration table. After registration and
giving out of media kits, we mingled around, spoke to the media, and checked
out the cars.
I
was also very lucky to see, interact and get a picture with various celebrities such as Alan Wu, who
was the host of the launch and 2 finalist of Asia’s Next Top Model season 2
Jodily and Natalie who are the ambassadors of the cars. The cast of Ah Boy’s to
Men Musical was also present and did some performance during the launch.
From this launch, I learnt that it is very important to
always interact and keep a good relationship with the media, and always making
them feel special. The negative feedback received from the media was the
location of the launch and not being the only ones around to view the cars.
This was actually brought up by us to the client, however, the client
specifically wanted it to be a media and customer launch.
Besides some negative feedbacks, most of the media were very
pleased with the cars and up to date, we have received quite a number of
coverage on the launch of the cars.
After the medias and customers left, my colleagues and I took a photo with the car before we left.
I feel very honored to be part of this team and attending this launch, as it definitely was an eye opener and something very new to me. It was an enjoyable and definitely a memorable first media launch that I attended.
Till then,
Sheryl
