Letting the Creative juices flow!

Hi Everyone!

It's Chloe again, just popping in to let you guys know how my internship with Shelan Creatives is going. I'm almost at the end of my internship, I can't believe how fast this semester has flown by!

This is my last semester and then I will be a Curtin graduate, which is not only exciting but terrifying at the same time. There has been some serious thinking going on about where I want my degree to take me and at this point I'm still uncertain but I definitely know that I would love to continue working within a creative field/company. Shelan Creatives is the kind of place where you can let your imagination come to life and working in that kind of atmosphere has seeped into my own work for not only the company but my everyday life as well.

After the recent success of the Telestra Perth Fashion Festival, Shelan Creatives have been busy creating and adding new prints/products to its online store as well forging new connections with other retailers. As mentioned in my previous blog post we are now being stocked in Hello Parry which was incredibly exciting for us and with the help of social media we have started to make relationships with other local businesses looking to stock Shelan Creatives as well! We have now developed new relationships with several local boutiques in the Perth region and over the upcoming weeks/months Shelan Creatives will have products available for purchase not just on our website but in store as well. This wonderful new chapter is the next step for Shelan Creatives moving forward as we continue to work towards the goal of increasing our brand awareness.

Social media is Shelan Creatives main tool to keep in contact with their customers and when used well as been an effective way to build new relationships with both customers and businesses. Some of my tasks for Shelan Creatives involves their social media pages, ie Facebook and Instagram, monitoring the content that is being uploaded, the comments that are received and replying to inquiries. To ensure that we are utilizing our social media pages to the best of our ability, I have now begun analyzing our page views of the website before and after a new post to both Facebook and Instagram.

This is to gain an understanding of how successful our posts are in directing customers to the website, as well as being able to define what content is more successful in comparison to other posts, what time of day are more people seeing the posts and whether or not these posts are leading to new sales. Through gathering this information we are hoping to be able to use our social media more effectively in gaining not only more brand awareness but also more sales.

I'm really excited about the work I'm currently doing and I can't wait to share with you all about how it goes in my next post. But until then I better I keep writing my PR Internship report while this is all fresh in my head!

I hope everyone is enjoying their final weeks of the semester,

Chloe Walton.

Getting CREATIVE!

Hi Everyone,

My name is Chloe Walton and I am in my final semester of my PR and Marketing degree. These last couple of weeks I have been interning at Shelan Creatives, a bespoke graphic design and stationary company, which to date has been amazing! The company is incredibly creative (pun intended) and hands on with its approach to their clients and their work. Everything is handmade and completely unique to the customer, showcasing their fine eye to detail and also the level of effort they put in to every project. This is something that I find incredibly amazing to watch and a service that I too would like to offer for clients when I graduate.

The last couple of weeks have been busy as the company have been working on several upcoming projects from both the graphic design side in creating logos and slogans for other companies to creating stationary and print designs available for sale on their recently relaunched website. As well as these projects,Shelan Creatives has been working on events with Perth based online boutique Hello Parry on their forthcoming Telestra Perth Fashion Festival Event.

One of my main focuses has been running Shelan Creatives blog, helping create media kits to hand out to influential bloggers and media outlets (we've just had photos featured in The Collective Renegade Magazine!) assisting in tasks concerned with the upcoming events and creating a PR plan to focus on both short and long term goals.


If you are ever in need of some inspiration or want to just view some beautiful pictures, please check out Shelan Creatives Instagram and Website. It really is a site (sorry couldn't help myself) for sore eyes. 



Shelan Creatives website: http://www.shelancreatives.com/
Shelan Creatives Instagram: http://instagram.com/shelancreatives


I'll keep you all up to date over the next couple of weeks, but for now I have to go write a blog post about one of Shelan Creatives new projects!

Yours sincerely,

Chloe Walton.

You may leave the office, but you don’t leave work.

I think every Public Relations student has a fondness for events management - feel free to comment the contrary I’d love to hear what everyone’s favourite aspect of PR is – myself included.

In prior work experience roles I have enjoyed a lengthy amount of time to prepare for an event, and worked in a large team in a consultancy scenario where budgets are previously specified and we have a framework to work with. Even simple boardroom meetings with a couple of email invitations to the attendees and ensuring everything is prepared down to nourishment and ensuring there are pens for people who forget them, have been previously dedicated funds and advance notification. The largest “quick” event was a meeting of 10 people which I was given a few days to prepare for.

Tricia and I both knew a photography exhibit, without any previously arranged grants or sponsorship would be a huge haul. The timeframe wouldn’t allow for us to get quick finance, and we were relying on the profits from the bar and any lucky last minute sponsorship I could ruffle up. Being realistic and level headed was a huge part of my process, I could come up with huge ideas, but they could never come to fruitation. So SIMPLE was the theme. I would peg up some photos on yarn , I would have a bar (our main profit source), and I would find a way to get people through the door. All throughout the process I would dream of what I could do if time constraints weren’t an issue, but again I needed to be realistic.

Firstly I had to prioritise what we needed to hold the event:

1.     A location – without that we couldn’t even hang up photos

2.     Licencing

3.     Funding

4.     Photographers – of all types.

5.     Everything else

The location was my biggest concern, without this there could be no event. After a day of walking around with a overview-handout to try and encourage local business, cafes, and bars to take in our exhibition for one night this was far to short notice. Days of phone calls, spread sheets to ensure I could approach people in the most organised manner. Galleries were out of the question, requiring invitation or to be booked seasons in advance. One place would allow it for free though did require some sort of bond which we weren’t in the financial situation to hand over. On the way back into the office we had a stroke of genius, asking Tricia if the café downstairs held events being a new venue, answering with a no we ventured in to talk to the gentlemen who own the Industria Café. That was it, they were happy to help seeing it as a way for them to dabble in the idea of being as a hireable venue. We agreed on the day to hold the event on the spot, Friday Oct 11^th 6-9pm, hours the café is usually closed.

Funding was a gruelling and disappointing process, it felt like a million unreturned emails, and seemed like the word sorry had become the only word in the English language. Fortunately we had a location, and I could spare a few dollars for pegs and string. We could rely on the bar to pay for itself as long as I could generate enough interest to get people to attend.

While Colosoul has a photography department, Greta’s aim of helping photographers to gain exposure motivated me to find the talent locally with the help of facebook to ensure it would be people who are looking for just this opportunity who would be exhibited. With a little persistence and a couple of brochure runs I received an influx of email after email, totalling 32 applicants! Within the 5-day deadline we had set to allow preparations for the exhibition, and to guarantee applicants wouldn’t find out with too little notice before the exhibit, as it would appear unprofessional. With the overwhelming amount of applicants I ensured how many photo’s I could fit into the character-brimming, but petite café. Ten incredibly talented photographers of all levels would be lining the walls of Industria. I just had to choose who, and for that I would need a little help not comfortable judging photography work myself based on the technicalities of some photographs, which I lack knowledge of – but am learning!

Mentioning to Trish (the CEO) that I had approached the photography department for a keen eye to help, I was given the news that the Colosoul director’s younger sister India had come to town. A photographer with time to spare, who was interested in helping with the exhibition. I was starting to have a team, and an enthusiastic mind-set. We chose our photographers and it was almost time to let the contestants know. Preparations where put in place before emailing out the good and not-so-good news. Drafting and finalising acceptance and rejection letters, the emails to accompany the letters, a questionnaire for the winners as well as a release form to ensure there would be no legal problems.

Within these days we had also enlisted Allira, a DJ for was happy to help set the atmosphere for our event free of charge! It does seem when people aren’t restricted by the company rules (such as other sponsors I approached) about how many not-for-profits they will sponsor or help, or a budget that is allocated early in the year for the “charitable” component of their corporate social responsibility, they can actually be rather happy to help out however possible.

After organising a graphic designer, and asking on of the exhibitors permission to use an image for promotional material (both via a facebook post which was enthusiastically approached) we quickly whipped up a poster/flyer for the event!

The moment we had all the ‘requirements’ I considered integral for the exhibition I was able to start promoting with flyer drops, a facebook event (which was strongly advertised on every Colosoul facebook). Time-wise media releases to newspapers, even local papers had deadlines from before the exhibition was considered so that was not a likely option. We had to think outside the box – where better to advertise then the blogosphere – establishing a media release regarding the event I sent a copy to any lifestyle/photography/fashion/culture blog I could source out, while on a nearly daily basis being blocked from the Greta email by the server and having to fix that, which made it a tad tricky. Computers are amazing, but when your email is too full, drop box brimming with large format TIFF files, and facebook messages are being swamped by eager exhibitors unable to send their content through it can be a little overwhelming. If it wasn’t for a saviour in the form of the IT guy this would have been the end of the event.

https://www.facebook.com/events/431500423626629/

I thought a image of the flyer we distributed is a nice summary of the work that went into the event, in that it shows a large amount of the work required in organising it.

-       Sourcing original photography from local talent

-       Sourcing a graphic designer

-       Sourcing bar staff/alcohol

-       Arranging a very last minute occasional liquor license

-       Finding a DJ

-       Finding a location which is suitable and free

This is nowhere near everything required but just a little example.

At this point I have a small crew consisting of India, who is in charge of having the “photography eye”, and taking photo’s of the event; a fellow Colosoul RSA holder who is willing to forfeit his night in a paid position to help out; Tricia who is happy to help however she could, though with her busy position in the company I try and take as much initiative without asking for help; and myself.

With such a short time to organise the event, being restricted to office hours is not an option for me. Every afternoon, morning, night and dream is Greta.

That’s the trick to finding a job you love though, you aren’t just going to work, you are getting paid to do a hobby!

Next update will be on the exhibition!
Until then,

Imogen Clark

Curtin Bentley Campus