I am well into my internship having completed 12 days now
and loving it!
It is more recently, as I have been handed more ‘proper’
jobs to complete, that I have noticed I am, in fact, putting university theory into
practice. Once I realised this, I began noticing it more and more and the
differences between what we are taught in class to how it is incorporated into ‘the
real world’ is quite surprising to me.
Event Report- Marketing Plan
I was assigned to an Event Report, in which I had to read
over last year’s and adjust accordingly to this year’s event. Of course the
finer details would be different, such as the date, time and venue of the
event, but a large section of the report included a Marketing Plan and
therefore I had to consider the company’s vision and mission and the event’s
goals, objectives, strategies and tactics. As I read over last year’s report, I
noticed some interesting things:
1. Not S.M.A.R.T
The objectives in particular where very general and not S.M.A.R.T. There
wasn’t reference to a specific percentage increase they were aiming for or a
specific time frame in which to achieve any of them. Often, each objective is
quite long, almost a small paragraph. It would seem as though strategies are
kind of being incorporated into the objective perhaps.
2. KPIs
Key Performance Indicators- I haven’t come across KPIs before. In some of
the reports I have worked on, objectives are linked with KPIs, making the lack
of S.M.A.R.T objectives even more confusing. I have found KPIs to be similar to
tactics, however they are usually grouped together with a number of ‘actions’ underneath.
For example, a KPI would be ticket sales and dot points underneath would be:
achieve full capacity as per 2011, ticket revenue neutral, growth in retail
attendance.
Naturally, as an intern, I didn’t want to change the
document to how I think it should be laid out so at the end of the day I raised
this issue with my manager. In a casual way I mentioned the way we are taught to
write such things at uni and without questioning the way her and the company
works, I asked why things are written differently. Having studied the same
degree at Curtin, she laughed and knew exactly what I was talking about. She
replied saying that yes the way we taught is ‘the correct way’ and she appreciated
my understanding of this. They simple do not have a strong marketing department
dedicated to this area nor need to put emphasis on their marketing plans and
other areas within this field as they are a straight event company. Employing an
outsourced PR consultancy and the fact that they are the Perth Fashion
Festival, means most of their marketing is done for them. Interestingly, she
was happy for me to amend the Marketing Plan to make it more academic, as long
as it still tied in with the flow of the document.
It is a good experience putting into practice what we learn
at uni; it makes me feel like all my hard work does and will pay off!
