PR Internship Reflective Blog 2

Welcome to PR Internship - YOUR opportunity to put everything you have learned over the past years at university into practice and to get a thorough insight into what public relations is like "in the real world". This Blog allows you to reflect on your experiences, share insights with other students across campuses and to possibly give advice and support to fellow students. Please also see http://printernship-reflections.blogspot.com.au/ for more reflections

Showing posts with label IronMan. Show all posts

Monday, August 22, 2011

Ironman is coming! But you probably already knew that..

Hi everyone,

As I mentioned in my last post I attended an event launch last week for what was supposed to be a surprise announcement of a new event. But I guess in the PR world not everything goes to plan, as we lost the 'surprise' element of our announcement.

Last Wednesday was the announcement that in 2012 the Kellogg’s Nutri-grain IronMan Series is coming back to Perth and will be accompanied by a new, public participation event called the Indian Ocean Classic (IOC).

We had a stakeholder breakfast bright and early for members of the local surf life saving clubs and surrounding suburbs. I had never heard of anything like this before, and thought it was a great idea to get influential people from each of the affected communities on board with the project. Guy Leech, former IronMan and one of the forces behind the IOC, was one of the speakers who talked to everyone about both the events.

The breakfast was followed by a press conference with the Minister for Tourism Kim Hames.

The announcement of both events was planned to be exclusive on the Wednesday. But it turned out, somehow, The West Australian found out the day before, and ran the story on the Wednesday we were announcing it! Kind of took away the surprise element of our day. Even so, the event was a success. The breakfast ran smoothly, and the press conference, albeit considerably smaller then anticipated, also went well.

I think the main thing I took away from this, which a lot of people in the events areas have been talking about, is that you have to be prepared for the fact that not everything is going to go to plan. Whether it’s in the running of the day, or in the lead up, you need to be aware of everything and learn to be accepting and flexible.

Now that the launch is over, I’m back to working on my two main projects, the Australasian Safari and the Yallingup Surfilm Festival. With the Safari I’m helping to set up newspaper articles in some of the competitors local papers. Once again, a lot of office work, but it’s so nice to receive an email back and be able to set up an interview or an article and know that you’re successful.

That’s all for now, hope everyone’s settled in and working hard!

Lauren.