End of a bright twenty days

As off last week I officially finished my twenty days at Bright Communications. It went so fast, yet I feel like I’ve been there for months. Looking back over my time there I've realised it was the most valuable experience I have had in relation to my degree. I learnt so much and exercised so many skills that I feel it has really equipped me for the ‘real world’. A big part of it being such a wonderful experience was the fact I had a wonderful boss, Janine, and got to work in a fun office with the girls from Detail Marketing. When you work with people like that you can’t help but love your time there.

For all those who haven’t finished, or are yet to start their placement, here are a few things I learnt that I think can help you:

• Take a camera – If you’re in events have your camera on hand at all times! You can get some great snaps for the blog, as well as to show off to family and friends that you got to be a part of something great.
• Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone – Whether you are calling a journalist, a client or calling to get a job, the worst they can say is no! So try and be confident and have notes in front of you to help you stay on track with the call.
• Ask questions - If you aren't sure of the details of your task or if you finish up and have nothing to do then don't be afraid to ASK! It will hopefully help you do your job correctly and you may even be given more responsibility.
• Brush up on your writing skills – I think I said this in one of my first blog posts, but it’s so important I’ll say it again, brush up on your skills. Media releases, fact sheets, even your ability to write in a professional tone. It will make a big difference in making a good impression.
• Have an open mind – If you are too focused on only gaining experience in events management you might miss out on a whole word of opportunities. I always thought I wanted to work in-house, but now that I’ve been in a boutique consultancy I know I could definitely work in one. And I will be! My placement turned into some part time work, which I am very happy and excited about.

That’s it for my blog posts. I’m in the process of editing my final draft for my report, can’t wait to hand it in! Good luck to everyone writing and finishing up. I hope your placements turn out as well as mine.

Lauren.

The Fun and Excitement of Safari

The 2011 Australasian Safari has come and gone, and I got to witness the crazy excitement from Safari HQ. It was so exciting to meet people I had only emailed or talked to on the phone, and see such a large-scale event come together.

Safari HQ was based out at Hillarys, so I was out there in our little media centre helping out as much as I could. I was part media liaison, part writer, part phone operator. We had accredited media arriving, and I assisted to help them fill out forms, set up their wi-fi and collect media kits. I updated an event alert I had written previously and sent that out to the relevant media, and I made numerous phone calls for the media call we had. This was my biggest task, and unfortunately wasn't as rewarding as I'd hoped. It’s amazing how many journalists or newsrooms you talk to – once you actually get through to them – that say they will send someone, and then don’t. Unfortunately it’s the nature of the beast, as you never know if something bigger and better is going to happen and steal the medias attention. Even so, our media call went great! We had some of our competitors, such as Craig Lowndes, Cyril Despres and Annie Seel, lined up with their vehicles for the media to take photos and have a chat too.

Me, in front of our media call at Whitfords Nodes.

Event Director Justin Hunt addressing the media with our competitors.

Later in the day we had our ceremonial start, which I had been sending out event listings and media alerts for in the weeks leading up to it.. We had a great turnout, which felt really rewarding. Knowing that the event was only promoted through PR practices such as media releases, event alerts and partnerships is a great thing to be aware of. 

Crowd shot at the Ceremonial Start at Hillarys Boat Harbour.

The final car takes off amidst the crowd.

There were no major incidents throughout the two days except for a small problem with our run sheet (we were missing a page). It just enforced the idea that you need to double check everything, as in the rush and confusion of events things can be overlooked or lost. But we adapted and the show went on without a worry.

Over the two days it was great to be involved and see how much effort went into the entire event. After the start at Hillarys the competitors and crew took off on the 8-day adventure and finished up just last Friday. It’s a shame I couldn’t tag along (I blame uni work), so hopefully in the years to come I get to be more involved with the events I work on.

Hope the report writing is coming along well, we're so close to the end now!

Lauren.

Important PR Skills

Hi everyone,

Time has flown by since my last post, and as I went to write this one I thought I would struggle to find something to talk about, but looking back it turns out I have done quite a bit of work!

The main focus for the past four or so weeks has been the Australasian Safari. Kick off is less than two weeks away, so things are starting to get hectic. My main role was to try and get competitors featured in their local newspapers all over Australia to increase awareness of the Safari. This involved sending mass emails and becoming best friends with my excel spreadsheet. Initially I only got back a couple of replies, which lead to me calling competitors, interviewing them and writing media releases which got sent back to the newspaper. But what really got the ball rolling was making phone calls. It’s something that was never really emphasised in any of my units, but the importance of making a call is something that should not be disregarded. By calling the editors I got more than five papers involved, papers that otherwise would likely not have printed anything relating to the Safari. Not only is it great to get the articles printed, but also having a positive outcome from making calls is a big confidence boost.

A large part of my past few weeks, and something that is becoming quite common in my daily work at Bright Communications, is writing. Writing is something that always intimidated me a little bit. I can write a 2500 word literary essay comparing journal articles with no worries, but media releases scared me. Or they used to. I think I’ve lost count of the number I’ve written now, and not just for Australasian Safari, for the Yallingup Surfilm Festival and a couple of other clients too. After I wrote a few I gained confidence, and even wrote four in one day once! The biggest thing I’ve had to be aware of, particularly with the competitor media releases that I sent to the newspapers, is the use of quotes. Janine, my boss at Bright Communications, posted a link that I found helpful, and I think you should all check it out. From the wonderful PR Daily website the article is titled ‘4 Ways to Improve Quotes in Press Releases’. It looks at paraphrasing as opposed to massive chunks of quotes in your media releases and  keeping the tone conversational, as ‘conversational quotes are more believable’. There are also a couple of interviewing tips, the best one of all being to ask follow-up questions if you haven’t got a quote you can use.

Even though I’ve been in the office since the Indian Ocean Classic launch I’m really enjoying it and staying busy. My next outing is on 22 September down to Hillarys Boat Harbour for the Official Start of the Australasian Safari. It’s a free, public event from 4 – 7pm, so if you’re keen you should come down and check it out! More information is available here. Hopefully I see some of you there!

Lauren.

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.

Office Work.

Hello everyone,

I’ve just finished up my third week at Bright Communications, bringing me up to six days of work. I have two main projects that I’m working on, the Australasian Safari and Yallingup Surfilm Festival, as well as doing small, random tasks for other clients.

The Australasian Safari is Australia’s toughest motorsport challenge with 4WD’s, motorbikes and quad bikes racing mainly off-road from Perth, through Geraldton and the northern goldfields, to the finish line in Kalgoorlie, all in just seven days (check out the Australasian Safari Website for more information). As the event itself is run on its own, Bright Communications is responsible for the media relations. This includes sending out media releases, event alerts and setting up interviews with the competitors. I had the task of emailing out event alerts for both the ceremonial start at Hillary’s Boat Harbour and the official finish in Kalgoorlie. I also started to go through the competitor list and match up competitors with local newspapers in the hopes of setting up interviews. The Safari is not something I would normally be interested in, but it’s nice to work on something different and broaden my horizons. Plus, when I do recognise a name I feel like I’m learning quick, does the name Craig Lowndes ring a bell for anyone?

My second event is the Yallingup Surfilm Festival, which I refer to as YSF as it can be a bit of a mouthful. This is a 3-day festival in the south west of WA that showcases films, music, art and workshops all inspired by surfing culture (check out the YSF Website for more information). This event isn’t until January, and again it is run on its own, so at Bright we are doing media relations. The highlight of my placement so far has to come from YSF. I got to interview Courtney Potter, the only southwest film finalist in the 2010 Festival, and write up a media release for local papers. I wrote the release, had it approved by Janine and then sent it to the director of YSF, Jesca, who sent it back with the only change being that I had written the wrong year in the date. I was so happy to see something I’d written was up to a high standard. And I also learnt to double check all my dates and start times on everything I write.

Other then exercising my writing skills (I swear I can hear the tapping of my keyboard in my sleep) I’ve been compiling media lists and trying to make sure I’m on top of every task I get given. This week in particular I felt a bit like I was starting one task and forgetting about another. I've found that keeping a list of what I'm working on next to me has helped keep track.

Doing mainly office work is new to me, I’m not used to eight hours at a computer, so I'm really excited to attend an event launch on Wednesday. But I can’t give away any details on that just yet, so you’ll have to stay tuned!

Lauren.

Off to a Bright start.

Hello all,

I only started my placement last week, and I’m currently just two days in. I’m at Bright Communications in Fremantle, which is a small, boutique consultancy that does a range of PR related things including event management and media relations.

When I was looking for my placement, and previously when I’ve looked for work experience, I tried to steer away from consultancies. I was under the impression that all consultancies would be full of money hungry professionals, and the poor PR workers would be trying to juggle projects and clients whilst always making a profit (a view I blame on PR Consultancy 300). So I guess ending up in a consultancy, even a small one, can be seen as a good thing, as it should prove me wrong (or right).

And so far, it has definitely proved me wrong. The two days I’ve done have been really good. I think a big difference to what I think of when I think of a ‘consultancy’ is the atmosphere of the office. Being a small company (there is just the one lady, Janine), and sharing an office with another boutique PR based company, the environment is fun, open and relaxed. This has made it easier to settle in and begin learning about the projects I’ll be working on over the next couple of months.

Another thing that took me by surprise was the amount of work I did straight up. I had talked to a few friends about their placements and work experience in the past, as well as read some of the posts on the blog, and I got the impression the first few weeks would be mainly shadowing, coffee runs and simple tasks. With this in mind I went in a little complacent that I would just be in the background for a while. This was not the case. Within the first day I had drafted an event plan, a fact sheet and a media release, things I hadn’t in nearly a year! Luckily Janine had plenty of examples for me to work off, and I also had my laptop with me so I could search through some old uni work to refresh my mind. So a bit of advice for anyone who hasn’t started their placements yet (or even if you have), brush up on some techniques, because you never know what might be thrown at you…

That’s all for now, hopefully with my next few posts I can get into the projects I’ll be working on.

Lauren.