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: