An Anxious First Day

Hi all,

I started my my internship in the Central TAFE marketing team late last December but I wanted a few days under my belt before I did my first blog. The Central marketing team is in control of all the communications internal and external for the college and it ranges from press releases to events to social media and advertising. I was looking forward to my internship at Central because it has such a broad range disciplines I could try my hand at.

I was feeling very nervous before the start of my first day, as i rode the bus I remember thinking, "am i prepared for this?", "what if I'm just no good?" and "how big of a shock am I in for?". Soon after I arrived however I was feeling better, I was introduced to the rest of the team and their specialty roles and then my supervisor Mike told me i was in for a treat. My first day would be out in Subiaco for the Central design exhibition.

On the drive over Mike explained to me the importance of having a number of skills in a PR or marketing role. Photos for instance have become a much larger part of Mike's job than he ever thought and being able to take a good photo is vitally important, especially with social media. He explained that today he would lead the discussions with the designers while he taught me both how to take a good photo and how to conduct an interview.

I was very grateful for the gentle first couple of hours to allow me to settle in and feel a bit more at ease. The advice and tutoring given to me by Mike was invaluable and soon I was out by myself taking photographs at the creative industries students exhibition for the Central blog. This was a little daunting but my confidence soon grew and I was enjoying trying to use the skills and strategies Mike taught me with the artists and their pieces.

Before I went home Mike gave me some advice on writing to bear in mind for the next time I came in. His advice was to always, in any professional writing ask yourself whether the word adds anything, whether it is necessary? Good writing is succinct, easy to read and becoming a less and less common skill. Advice I think I can use for all my writing.

For me the most exciting thing about my first day was seeing the photos I took be uploaded onto the blog and contribute. I was so pleased and excited I couldn't wait to do more and learn more the next time I tried my hand being a PR person.

Until next time,

Steaf

Research Reseach Research

Hi Everyone, 

I’m Emily from Curtin Bentley Campus. In June I was able to get the opportunity to do my internship it PPR. For those that haven’t heard about this PR firm, PPR (Professional Public Relations) is one of the largest consultancy's in WA and has multiple houses all over Australia and America. PPR handles the PR accounts of hundreds of high profiled clients including McDonalds Australia, Bunning’s, Rio Tine, Cedar Woods and the Cancer Council. 

For my blog entries I’ve decided to do discuss the different projects that I had the privilege to have worked during my working experience. For this blog entry I will be discussing the project I started on my first day at the PPR house in Subi (later move to West Perth) for the client for Cedar Woods. 

The Situation

The Point Peron / Mangles Bay project has been in the spotlight for years and there has always been huge community outcry on their opinions for this development. In general there has been huge negative backlash but Cedar Woods would like to establish a development to revamp the Rockingham area similar to what had been done in Hillaries.

Cedar Woods had an upcoming case with the council on this matter and needed to get some support material for their case.

My Job

My job was to develop material that could be useful for the case to combat the opposition group’s points.

Firstly I needed to go through all the media clippings that had been collected on this matter over the last couple of years to get a good understanding of the project and the project problems that had arisen thus far. From this I needed to read all the letters to the editor from a variety of media outlets such as community newspapers and magazines, and make a list of the pros and cons including their opinions and location.

In protest to this development, a group put together a signature list consisting of over 8000 people's support to suppress this development. I then had to go through these signatures, find out where they were coming 

 from (suburbs) and state whether they were for/against and it was a real signature or a fake one.

From all of this information, I was asked to make graphs and visual aids to demonstrate this research so that Cedar Woods could use in their case.

I had started this project on my first day PPR and I finished it off on the last week I was there. It just goes to show how many hours have been put in for proper research and development of material. From the past three years studying I have been taught different techniques for research and development, but I didn’t actually realize how important this stage is for the project brief as a whole as it ultimately lays down the foundation.

My next couple of blogs will focus on the MoMa art series at the Art Gallery, Stakeholder Engagement and other smaller projects I have been able to work on.

Until next time,

Emily

One Day of Positivity

Hi everyone, I’m Jaimie and I will be completing my internship at the Australian Education and Leadership Centre apart of the One Day of Positivity Campaign Team.

My first day was very exciting and I loved dressing up in a corporate outfit.

To start of the day we met the other interns and got to know everyone around the office, we set up our own email accounts as well as learning how to use the photo copier and binding and laminating machines, which will come in handy later on in life.

As this was the first year of the campaign on the first day it was already our job to start spreading the word and we were linked to the Facebook page and began inviting everyone to like our page that was filled with interesting facts about positivity, inspirational quotes, details about the campaign and a percentage of the news that week that was negative or positive.

Our campaign manager Jess knew that a part of the campaign was going to be a family friendly treasure hunt, so we call began googling some ideas and found out that a catching treasure hunt was temporarily in place and one clue was near the office, so we set off to the east Perth train station and as a team looked for this clue but were unable to find it.

The next couple of days were also exciting as me and my team member Kristal began to write out events plan and everything that we needed to be aware of to make this campaign a success also focusing on crisis management.

I then interviewed Tracey about what the campaign was all about and wrote a feature article for the FIFO magazine about the one day of positivity.

Thrown in the Deep End

My internship at Perth Fashion Festival began very quickly when I saw the position advertised on the PR Internship blackboard page. As soon as I saw Perth Fashion Festival (PFF), I knew i had found an internship and an organisation which I would enjoy working in. There were two different positions offered; one a paid position as gift bad co-ordinator for the events and a two-week internship in the sponsorship department, both jobs started ASAP. Originally I was torn between which job I should apply for, but after considering what I wanted to get out of the internship I decided to apply for the sponsorship internship. After quickly writing a resume I sent off and email, and spent a very long night waiting for a reply. The next morning I received an email asking me to come in for an interview as soon as possible. Instead of being excited about the opportunity, i was so nervous because i had no idea what to wear, or what to say in an interview.

As you might have guessed the interview went well and I was asked to start two days later.  Walking into that office on Monday, I was so anxious because I had no idea of what was expected from me, all I knew was a that i was filling in for the sponsorship manage on leave.

For those of you who don’t know much about PFF I will elaborate for you:

Perth Fashion Festival is an annual fashion festival with over 30 runway, retail and offside events. The festival runs for 11^th- 16^th of September and has a range of free to public and ticketed events.  Founded in 1999, PFF’s mission is to celebrate, nurture and be an advocate for all aspects of the WA fashion industry. This year is PFF “Crystal” 15^th festival, that promises to be the most dynamic and inspirational yet.

During that first two weeks I was thrown into the deep end with proposal writing for potential sponsorships. As this was something I have never done before I found the marketing style of writing hard to master as I am used to factual PR writing. However, after many hours spent writing proposals for wineries, corporates and airlines (and everything inbetween), I picked up the skill of writing sponsorship proposals.  Other jobs included liasing with sponsors to ensure we were meeting there needs. Unfortunately, another job was to cold call wineries and entice them to sponsor PFF's runway and small events. Cold calling is something that I have absolutely loathed in the past so I was very nervous about doing it. However I found once I had a script and knew what I was talking about, I felt a bit more comfortable.

At the end of the two weeks I was so glad to have opportunity to experience public relations and business development at PFF. Even from the small jobs to the daunting, such as writing up contracts, I was relieved to see that all the theory and knowledge gained from uni has finally come into place. As it turned out my supervisor could do with some extra help so she offered for me to continue the internship until the festival!

First steps into the real world

Third year, half way through semester one.. The panic set in. I had no placement to complete my Public Relationships Internship in semester two. Luckily Marie-Louise Malkin was willing and able to help me out. Some emails were sent out but sadly no response. Another hope and a bulk email was sent and I started losing hope, until I finally received an email back. Chantelle from Bauxite Alumina Joint Ventures was one of the only ones out of about 20 applications responded and I finally got my interview. The interview consisted of coffee and an explanation of what I would be doing, so I knew I was in.  

My first day arrived, I was nervous and didn’t know what to expect. Bound for Osborne Park, a 45 to 60 minutes drive, depending on traffic, I arrived at my internship. My first day was a bit of a blur, I was very nervous, I didn’t really know how office jobs worked and soon found out it was nothing like school or university. I found you didn’t exactly have to be busy all the time as I was stuck doing odd jobs to keep busy. Meeting everyone in the office I was overloaded with names to remember but I knew that everyone was so nice and welcoming and were all willing to help if and when I lost my way. Not understanding or knowing what to do, Lia and Chantelle are the ones that take care of me. Both are really nice and between the two of them manage to keep me busy. Lia is the communications officer and Chantelle is the managers external and public affairs person, she is my main supervisor, although she seems to be out of the office quite a bit, Lia is there as a back up if needed.

As the weeks go by I’m slowly finding my place and becoming more confortable within the office. I’ve moved from odd jobs like photo copying newspaper articles, to updating their media contact list, editing documents as well as their website and making spread sheets to show the layout for their agriculture shows. My recent activities have included creating, working on and promoting their facebook page as well as helping to organising and understanding what’s required at agriculture shows as well as working on documents that include business goals, objectives and strategies.

I’m really enjoying this as it’s different from anything I’ve done before, I wasn’t sure how I would go, despite the slow start. I’m really looking forward to working on some media releases and talking to journalists about promoting their business as well as participate in their agricultural shows to see different ways they promote their company and deal with local communities they need support from.  

Stay tuned to see how I fair in the real world!