Challenges of competition

In every business, there are always going to be strong competitors unless you provide a highly specialised service. There is no exception for Nightclubs in Perth.

At Metro City, they had made the decision to relaunch a couple of rooms within the 
I've been compiling my report as I've been doing my placement and it has been really useful in terms of making valid contributions to the business. As you all probably know, Metro City has a predominantly Asian crowd. There are nightclubs which hold monthly events which directly affect the amount of patrons we would get on our Saturday nights.

Perhaps the biggest competition for Metro City Saturday nights is Dragonfly:

Dragonfly:
Held on the first weekend of every month (Friday and Saturday night alternatively, Dragonfly boasts “the most decadent night complete with champagne showers” (Facebook, 2012)It has been running for little over a year now and already has a dedicated following. Their online presence is limited, with a small amount of information available, they rely purely on word of mouth promotion and each month, but do a short lead up campaign to increase the amount of hype surrounding the event. 



Our Saturday night just gone was exceptionally quiet, it didn't help that the night before had been Asian Students In Australia's cocktail party - already bringing regular clientèle to Metros on a different night. The PR for the R&B lounge had mainly been controlled by Ken who is head of promotions. He posted using most of the social media that Metros is involved in but that was about it. I took the initiative to write a media release but our General Manager wasn't around to approve it and no-one else felt that they were in the right position to OK anything to do with media.
There's been a recent increase in the amount of Asian targeted events as well - more recently K-Holic which was a highly successful Korean Pop themed night. I think it is a good PR move to play on the perceived weakness and to embrace the asian presence. It is what it is, why try to fight it when it is working. It's probably the biggest image "problem" that Metro City suffers from, just like Metropolis Fremantle is where all the white kids go (no offence meant). If Metros embraced this a little bit more and maybe ran with a theme, who knows what could happen!

But it just goes to show that sometimes no matter how hard you work on your public relations plans, things just aren't always going to work out and you need to be prepared to accept that. The R&B lounge is a perfect example. The best thing to do is to acknowledge what went wrong and why and try to find a worthy solution to that.

And sometimes you really just can't battle the weather, Saturday night was bitterly cold!

Hope you are all keeping well. Not long now!

Nicole

"Social media is also like throwing spaghetti at a wall — we’re still trying to see what sticks"

 In today's world, social media is becoming more and more intergrated with who we are, what we do and how we express that. This is no different for companies, corporations and not-for-profits. In fact, they have more of an online presence and social responsibility than most indivuduals ever will.

Most organisations will have the basic social media tools; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. But a new era of social media is arriving, especially for small businesses and more relevantly, night clubs.

As part of my internship, I have been working closely with the Promo and Communications manager, Ken. It has been our responsibility to fully implement an application for the club. It took a lot of convincing to get the Chief Finicial Officer to approve the funding for this, because it is a new and untested medium for social media. For all we know it could be high cost, low profit.
The idea is simple; an interactive application which has all the events and details that patrons may want to know as well as an incentive and reward program.

Ken and I launched the application last week, but without little fanfare so we could do a limited release to work out some of the kinks. One of the biggest issues was the fact that point system didn't seem to have the lock out once you had accrued the maximum amount of points, so we called the developers only to be told that it was only uploading photos that had the point limit. This meant we had to change our reward scheme.

Who knows if this will work, but it will be interesting to see how it develops and how many other clubs get on board with this. Already in Perth: Metro Freo, Amplifier, Air Nightclub, The Deen and many other competitors are on board; though few seem to have a rewards system.

Here are some details available on the Metro City website.

Another issue to contend with is how we increase the amount of NEW patrons into the club. The application is most likely to be downloaded by regular visitors and though I pointed out that this might not be a bad thing (it seems like a reward system to a regulars) the Chief Executive Officer said that the main idea of the application was to increase the variety in the crowds and pack out our club nights.

I found a link which is useful for my own placement and involvement with their social media and thought it is specified to nightclubs it may also be useful for others who are taking placements in small businesses or even not-for-profit. You can find it here. It has an interesting few points, one of which I used for the title of this blog post - which is think is witty and highly relevant but it also points out a few things that some of us might forget whilst entering the real world.

Whilst I think the progession of social media is a good idea and that following the app trend is a good idea, without substantial proof that it is a worthy investment...I doubt the mangement will be happy to continue forking out $400/month of something which yields little to no returns.

We'll just have to see what happens in the future! (It seems to be catching on - here is a link about a US company giving it a go)

Crisis management

Hi all,

This is my first post for the semester as I went overseas during the break and only just recently started my internship.

I'm doing my placement at Metro City, the biggest club venue in Perth. Although I'm not working with a "public relations department", I am taking on roles which would be expected of a PR graduate.

I had my first real collision with crisis management the other day when the "Wild West Comedy Festival" had to cancel their event with Metro City. They had failed to sell enough tickets to cover the cost of staffing the event and though the contract stated that they were to forfeit the deposit should such a thing occur, they came over to talk to our Venue Manager.

Kim Westwood (Venue Manager), Jacquie Kelly (Events Manager) and I entered into a meeting with the organizers to find another arrangement. They came to the conclusion that the deposit would be returned to the company and that the Wild West organisers would be responsible for finding a replacement venue. From there I was asked to create a release, detailing the event cancellation and to give details of the new venue once they were passed on. This was then to be posted on the Metro City website and to be distributed through all our social media platforms.

It made me think about how crisis management can differ between types of organizations and though it may not have seemed like a big crisis for the club it was pertinent to practice good public relations should they choose to hold an event in the future. It was interesting to have noted and reinforced in a real world situation that for businesses, making a profit and good PR don't always go hand in hand.

In the same sense, it made me appreciate that a "crisis" is relative, it really depends on what your business does and what kind of social responsibility it has. For example, this "crisis" cannot be compared to something like the Exxon Valdez spill, but it could in fact influence their reputation and possible business for the future.

Hope you are all enjoying your placements!

Nicole