The importance of corporate partnerships

Hi All,

This is my third week interning at the Breast Cancer Research Centre WA and I'm really enjoying it!

Being a small charity, the number of staff 'employed' is also quite small. Needless to say, there is no PR department per se, and thus being the only PR person there is quite scary!

The organisation is relatively new and are looking to develop relationships with potential corporate sponsors. This has been my first task to undertake and it is proving more difficult than I first anticipated.

BCRC-WA are hosting an event in October (which I am in charge of) to which these potential partners will be invited, and the guest list is set to include CEO's of large West Australian corporations, such as Fortescue Metals Group, Wesfarmers and Monadelphous to name a few. Getting in touch with the CEOs of these huge corporations is extremely intimidating to say the least, and is also proving quite difficult. There are so many gatekeepers in place to filter the amount of calls received by executives, so making sure your call gets through is obviously important and also timely.

Similarly, the time it takes to determine whether an organisation is likely to partner with BCRC-WA is also lengthy - I never realised there were so many rules and regulations in place for corporate partnerships! For instance, banks will only become involved if they are the only financial institution included; most mining corporations only partner with environmental or outback/indigenous community initiatives, etc.

This said though, I am still loving my internship. The workload is a lot more intensive than I originally anticipated and the responsibility placed on me is far greater than any other internships I've previously undertaken, and it's great. The general manager of BCRC-WA (to whom I am answerable) sees me as a 'real' PR person, given that I am only five weeks away from completing my degree (which still frightens me beyond belief) and it's providing me with so much valuable knowledge and insights into the PR industry.

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Ashni

Wrapping up my internship - consultancy

Hi everyone,

I have now officially finished my internship at Mills Wilson Communication Consultants, and what started out as a stressful experience (I'm a busy girl) ended up as a very enriching one.

I am relieved to now have two days a week free to sleep in and then work on my dreaded report! I have  written a complete framework of my report, and completed the summary of work and organisation background sections. I'm really struggling to incorporate what I learnt at university with what I did during my internship, but I am sure I will get there.

Here is a short summary of the key things I learnt during my time at Mills Wilson:

• Communication materials must be consistent down to the tiniest detail: e.g. the theme listed in the proposal must be carried throughout the event plan and noted in the budget, running order etc.
• Just because you are writing for corporate clients it does not mean your writing should be dry and boring
• Writing for different audiences (in my case, different housing estates under one company) should maintain the company image but also cater to specific needs and demographics of that audience
• Don't let your emails build up!

I also learnt an important thing about myself which is that working in a 9-5 office is perhaps not the place for me (though I kind of knew this already)! That said, I have learnt invaluable skills that I will take with me out of Curtin and into my next big adventure - Melbourne.

Thanks for reading,

Good luck with all your reports!

Darcy Rahn

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Summer Series - The Presets at Hotel Rottnest

The weeks are flying by at Zaccaria Concerts and Touring. We have been incredibly busy in the office lately with the finalisation of Kate Ceberano's WA tour, having sold sell-out shows in Perth, Albany, Bunbury and Mandurah. My last post described how we were experiencing difficulty with selling these shows and there was a chance of cancellation, however we pulled through and all concerts were a success.

Following on from this, we have been busy with the planning stages of The Presets at Hotel Rottnest as part of Rotto Live summer series - a subsidiary of Zaccaria Group and Hotel Rottnest together as partners. We announced The Presets exclusive WA performance last week and are promoting it with the tagline "The ULTIMATE Sunday Session", which my manager Pam and I decided on as a catchy and effective selling point. This particular event is safe in terms of ticket sales - at Zaccaria we know it is going to sell out because of the nature of the performing artist and the location, time of year, weather - so aside from sales, our main aim of this campaign is to raise awareness and hype of our brand Rotto Live and also our main company, Zaccaria Group.

The artwork my manager Pam and I came up with as the official promotional poster of the event

One of the main ways of raising awareness of this event and hence the Rotto Live summer series and Zaccaria Group, is by gaining the support of a significant sponsor. A key way of getting a sponsor on board is to design and develop an effective proposal, with the aim of winning the sponsor company's support because of the exciting content and details revealed in the proposal. Zaccaria's Marketing Manager Pam delegated to me the task of designing and preparing the proposal to send to Telstra Thanks in support of The Presets at Hotel Rottnest. Telstra Thanks is a promotional branch of Telstra, aimed at Telstra customers and poses as a customer loyalty program, much like Virgin's Velocity Rewards system. Telstra Thanks offers their customers the advantage of pre-sale tickets as a way of saying "thanks for being with us", where customers are able to redeem points and benefit from other loyalty-type promotions. For Zaccaria, having Telstra Thanks as the major sponsor of this event is a huge deal - we are having our event and our brand sent to Telstra Thanks WA customer database of over 50,000 people, which for us means a sell-out ULTIMATE Sunday Session at Hotel Rottnest. For Telstra, they invest a significant amount of money into our event which we use to help promote the event. Telstra then gains from the brand association with not only Zaccaria Group, Hotel Rottnest and Rotto Live, but also with The Presets.

So the preparation of this proposal to Telstra Thanks saw me conduct significant research on The Presets to develop a profile for the group, so that Telstra Thanks could identify in one or two paragraphs the significance and prestige of The Presets. I also had to search for recent artwork and photography to use in the proposal for the design and layout, which I developed in Microsoft Powerpoint and saved as a PDF - a very effective way of producing a succinct, professional looking proposal. The proposal also included tourism information on Rottnest Island and the WA market, so as to "paint the picture" for Telstra Thanks and basically outline the environment of the entire event on paper for them, to create an idea that would be as visual as possible.

After finishing the proposal and sending to Pam for review, we sent the proposal to the directors of Zaccaria for final approval, and then e-mailed the final version to the sponsorship and marketing coordinator at Telstra Thanks. Much to my delight, the proposal was successful and we now have Telstra Thanks as the major sponsor of The Presets at Hotel Rottnest. My research and copy on The Presets was also used on the Zaccaria website - check it out here to see a snippet of what I came up with.

With this sponsorship locked in, the next task was to start planning the radio and television campaign. Pam and I considered 92.9 and Nova93.7 as the key radio stations we would use for a radio campaign - however we had to choose one. To choose between the two, we liaise with the sales and production team at both radio stations to describe the event at hand, to which the radio station responds with their own proposal. Their proposal will include types of activities they will utilise to promote our event, timeframe, implementation, description and budget. From these proposals we are able to determine which station to use - in the instance of The Presets at Hotel Rottnest, Pam and I decided on both as we could target a significant share of our desired market. Listen out for our radio and tv campaigns in the next couple of weeks!!

There will be a lot of ticket give aways on both radio stations too, so make sure you tune in. Both proposals from 92.9 and Nova 93.7 were about 15 pages long and detailed some impressive campaign activities - here are a couple of pages from Nova 93.7's proposal.

I have found working on The Presets to be challenging and satisfying as I was only given the morning to come up with the proposal that was submitted to Telstra Thanks. I have found that most tasks in this environment are bound by time constraints and it is extremely important when researching or producing any work for publishing or professional, external submission, that it be correct and written tailored specifically for the target audience.

The hands on experience I have gained at my internship has been invaluable and really reinforces how important public relations, external relations and communications are imperative for business success, particularly in the music and marketing industry. Zaccaria have asked me to stay on after my internship, working for the company until the new year. I am excited to keep learning and gaining practical experience after the last three years of theoretical learning!

Til next time,
Delta

Trouble In Musical Paradise

Hello everyone!

I have been at Zaccaria Group for about 5 weeks now, completing my internship for two days a week. I have learnt so much since my first day about not only public relations but also marketing, advertising and maintaining important professional relationships.

Here at Zaccaria Group, we have recently been having a bit of "trouble in paradise", you might say. I have learned that things do not always run smoothly, as we would hope. What do you do when you are the promoter of a touring musician or act, you've expended your marketing and publicity budget, and tickets are just not selling? I had never considered before that tickets for a well-known show would not sell - as an avid concert-goer myself, I never really think about the logistics and workings behind actually selling a show. As members of the public, we just buy our tickets and attend, that's all there is to it. So I have had my first taste of crisis management in the music marketing industry. The artist at hand is Kate Ceberano - her regional WA shows are selling fantastically but Perth is just not buying it! We have promoted Kate over the past month on television (you can see the television advert in my previous post), radio, print articles and press releases, but still no cigar.

The last two marketing and finance meetings have revolved around strategising ways to improve sales - it has gotten to the point where it is vital to consider all other marketing avenues. The marketing budget has been completely spent, with only 30% of forecasted tickets sold. Not good. As the promoter of this tour, Zaccaria Group takes risks and must put on a show no matter what - cancelling the show is not an option. The worst-case scenario would be cancelling, and this is at the high probability of not only damaging our professional reputation, but also our relationships with the artist's management. Would they sign that deal with us again, knowing we cancelled on them last time? No, probably not. Instead, business would go to our competitors. Not only this, but the artist does not want to be playing a show to a half empty venue. Could you think of anything worse? I have learnt from this that maintaining relationships with important stakeholders is a key skill in public relations practice.

Our outlook in this situation is "SELL TICKETS NO MATTER WHAT!", we will proceed with the show at any cost, because nothing is worth sacrificing a reputation. Our strategy is to bring planned advertising forward a couple of weeks, so tickets start selling earlier rather than in a couple of weeks time. We have also arranged give aways with 96fm radio and changed advertising to different tv networks - we determined this by looking at shows which get the highest ratings, then liaise with that tv network to dedicate a 30 second spot during that prime time tv show. We can also tell that, for example, women over 30 are watching Channel 7 on a Sunday night because of a particular show being broadcast. This is all vital information which helps up strategise ways out of our "crisis".

We have also considered different ticketing strategies. Sometimes it comes into consideration to drop ticket prices so that sales take off, but at times this is not appropriate. Would it be beneficial to focus on selling a more expensive ticket package (such as a meet and greet after the show and a glass of champagne) to entice our audience? Tickets just might not be selling because people do not want to see a cheap show - they want an experience. Again, we need a good relationship with our artist and their talent management for this to occur - there will be no "meet and greet" if we have already hinted chance of cancelling the show.

So that is just one aspect of crisis management in the music PR industry that I have been faced with. I hope to report on my other tasks in my next blog, as I have just realised this has taken up far too much space already! Hope you found it interesting and please feel free to comment below. I also hope you are all enjoying your placements! It seems to be flying by, considering how daunting it seemed at the start!

Until next time,

Delta.

The diverse environment of PR consultancy

Hello bloggers!

My name is Darcy and I am undertaking my placement at Mills Wilson, a relatively large consultancy that employs a number of PR staff. Each is responsible for portfolios of various high profile clients in Perth. From my first day I understood how diverse working in a consultancy is compared to previous work experience I have done for events and smaller organisations.  One of Mills Wilson’s key clients is a major developer of residential communities in Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland.  I was surprised by the amount of work that has to go into managing the PR for such a company. 

The girls are constantly compiling information for newsletters, briefs for photo shoots, press releases for local newspapers (as well as logging the subsequent clippings each day) and a myriad of other activities: it is a constant work flow. Some of the activities I have done so far include logging media clippings, preparing EDM’s (electronic direct mail) for events at the estates and preparing an event plan for the launch of a new estate. The last one in particular was more difficult than I expected - there are lot of different facets to planning a real event than I had learnt in class, including how many bins and fire extinguishers you will need!

The consultancy environment is a diverse one and a lot of work goes into each and every client. I am enjoying my internship so far as it has also been my first experience in a real office environment. I have learnt in recent months that I want to pursue a career in music management and won’t be working in an office like the one I am in now. But I can already see that the skills I have learnt in my degree and am practising now are going to be very useful in the future. I am aware that I need to work on writing more concisely and to the point, as well as working on my tone to properly convey the information. The girls at my placement have been going over my work and giving me helpful feedback that I hope will get me on track. It has been a great experience so far and I hope to leave with a better grasp on my writing. I think I’ll also come out of this with some important time management skills as I’m already struggling with the work load for my other units! I'll keep you posted on how I go with all this, wish me luck!

Darcy Rahn

Rock and Roll - PR in the Music Industry

I am into my second week at my internship for PR 393. I was lucky enough to secure a placement with Zaccaria Group - a Western Australian market leader in the music concerts, touring and event management industry. Zaccaria Group is comprised of Zaccaria Concerts and Touring - the music management branch, and House of Zaccaria - the fashion label, which is great for me because I happen to love music and clothes! Zaccaria also has offices in Hong Kong and Nashville, USA. Zaccaria Group also runs a not-for-profit organisation called Strike A Chord. For my internship, I am primarily involved with the marketing, communications and public relations activity for Zaccaria Concerts and Touring, and so far it has been really exciting! Zaccaria's portfolio of clients to date includes Stevie Wonder, Tina Arena, Duran Duran, Michael Buble, Sting, Kate Ceberano, Santana, KD Lang, "So You Think You Can Dance"and Tears For Fears, to name a few. To see more about Zaccaria Group, check out the website here.

I am completing my internship two days a week for ten weeks, and am currently onto my second Monday. My duties so far have mainly been related to marketing and communication strategy, including updating and evaluating concert marketing budgets - at the moment I am working on Kate Ceberano and her four concerts coming up in October in Perth, Mandurah, Bunbury and Albany. When a concert is in the planning stages, we evaluate and produce marketing and advertising activity suitable for the desired target audience. This includes securing 15 second advert spots on radio (usually Mix 94.5 and 92.9) and 30 second advert spots on television - could be any station, depending on the target demographics. For Kate Ceberano, we are using regional television station WIN (Channel 9 equivalent) and using Mix 94.5. To secure spots with these advertising mediums, we have to liaise with the production team, who will send us a proposal report outlining the potential spots we can secure - for tv it is usually 20 x 30 second spots in a week for the duration of the campaign (usually 2 - 3 weeks), and will occur during peak times. We then compare the proposal to our marketing budget to ensure the forecasted cost is not exceeded by the proposed cost provided by the tv or radio station.

With the production of such television and radio adverts, we have to first secure with the artist's management the materials we are allowed to use. For example, Kate Ceberano is touring to promote her new album, so we were told by her management to use mostly her new songs and one or two of her old songs (which the public would recognise) as well as only the new album artwork, head shots and themes, to align with Kate's new image. We write the copy and scripts for the adverts (what we want the radio stations to say) and prepare the 15 second sound-bed (the music and sound effects in the background) by liaising with a technical producer/graphic designer, get it approved by management and CAD (television governing body that classifies commercials before they are broadcast), then send it off to the radio or television station to confirm the start of the promotional campaign. The idea is to align the start of the advertising campaign with the announcement to the public of the touring artist. We then track ticket sales and determine the correlation between when the adverts air and the spikes and troughs in ticket sales (which we monitor by logging onto a program called InSight, which is linked directly to Ticketek). By doing this, we can determine if the campaigns are effective. See below television advert that has just been approved by CAD and is going to air this Wednesday.

I have also been involved in reviewing the CMS for all recipients of e-mail direct marketing (eDM). Zaccaria has a total database of over 40,000 customers, which is then broken down into different sub-databases so we can target different demographics depending on the type of artist and concert we are promoting.

Zaccaria is currently in the process of reviewing the feasibility of bringing an exciting and well-known artist to WA towards the end of the year. I hope it happens and cannot wait for the announcement - at the moment I am not allowed to say anything! For determining if a project is feasible, management will have to review how much to price tickets at, which venue to use to host the artist (Perth Arena or Sandalford Winery - Zaccaria's competitive advantage over other players in the industry!), which ticketing website to use, which communication and promotional platforms to use, decipher the probability of a sell-out show and if not a sell out then how can we make it one (secure an exciting support act), review how "big" the artist is in Australia compared to the rest of the world, and the list goes on. I have just sat in on a marketing and finance meeting with the directors, which was really interesting to observe. I have realised that finance and marketing in this type of industry go hand in hand - forecasting, budgeting and reporting is so important to continually be working away at and allows the marketing team to plan campaigns according to statistics compiled by the finance team. The meeting reminded me of the unit Business Capstone - think lots of spreadsheets, talk of ROI, graphs, and numbers, numbers, numbers aka my worst nightmare! It is cool to be able to have a real life comparison to the things we learn at uni, and definitely makes all the theory come to life and just click like it usually doesn't in the classroom!

I am excited to be here to keep learning new things. I have realised that public relations is largely a very broad profession and can be applied to almost any job, so I am enjoying the fact that my internship has a strong marketing foundation. I also am well aware of the fact that it's so important to have contacts in an industry if you want to be a leader and succeed. The number and calibre of contacts and talent that Zaccaria has is overwhelming and exciting to be able to experience.

That's all I have time for today, but will keep updating as the weeks go by.

Delta

Finding the key to sponsorship in a charity context

For my internship, I thought the most rewarding experience would be to help out a charity or non for profit group, and I was correct.

Firstly, Second Chance Horse Rescue is a non for profit group dedicated to equine welfare throughout Western Australia. The organisation was established in 2006 and has rehabilitated over 120 horses, whilst improving the lives of countless others. Many of the horses that come into the charity’s care come from abusive or neglectful homes.

 The group rely heavily on the public’s donations and support, many volunteers help at fundraising events and foster the horses in care until they are adopted out. Many of these horses take years of rehabilitation and handling until they can be safely adopted. Gaining knowledgable foster carers is a major problem the organisation faces, this is an area I will be addressing later in the internship.

However organization is holding their annual Beginner’s Horse Show on Sunday the 22^nd of September at the Walangarra Pony Club in Wungong. I was trusted to create a sponsorship proposal and research potential sponsors.

Drafting a sponsorship letter was difficult as I have never done anything life that before, I had never created one throughout my uni life, luckily I found a large degree of examples on the internet to gauge the type of template that was needed.

So I got busy in  drafting up a sponsorship letter, coming up with sponsorship levels and guidelines. After that was set, I brainstormed with the committee in what benefits the organisation could offer to potential sponsors.

We came up with four levels offering a range of benefits from Facebook and website advertisement, printed advertisement in the show guide on the day of the event. Ring sponsorship turned into our largest offering as well as a free stall at the event for businesses.

The final sponsorship proposal was then submitted to the committee and that’s when my research began. Having been in the equestrian industry for most of my life I had a good idea to what businesses I should approach. I sent letters and emails to a range of stock feeds, tack stores, horse studs, vetinaries, riding schools, trainers, horse breakers. The committee agreed to focus on the equestrian industry for the time being.

My next dilemma would be to approach the committee in sending sponsorship proposals to local businesses in the Wungong area, it would mean alerting the sponsorship proposal but it might open up another key market.

We realised by invoking emotion and sympathy into these letter we got a better response by the equestrian community.  One slogan we used was "Help us to help them", we also used a number of before and after photographs depicting successful stories that the organisation has achieved. By creating sympathy for the horses and the conditions they are in, we realised the community was more willing to give. By seeing a photo on an unhealthy horse we received a greater reaction then by writing about it. I guess in this situation a photo does speak a thousand words. This approach was never been used before and we have seen a dramatic increase already in the number of sponsors compared to last year. 

After all it is a fundraising show.

I’ve had a very good response so far with many of the higher sponsorship spots already gone.  It felt great knowing that this proposal and my contribution may save a number of horses in the future. The funds raised will help provide the best medical care, training and general rehabilitation for the horses surrendered into care. It was great to know that the efforts I helped produce will give a horse a second chance at life.

Below is Second Chance's Ebony before and after she was rehabilitated 

Branding: Much more than just a logo

I am now 10 days into my internship at Corporate Sports Australia working on the Chevron City to Surf for Activ and I have very quickly realised the importance of corporate branding.

Branding is defined by the American Marketing Association as a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers. 

In the instance of the Chevron City to Surf for Activ, branding is vital due to partnership and sponsorship agreements made with external parties.

Every piece of documentation including but not limited to; press releases, emails, newsletters, event guides and marketing material needs to have the official Chevron City to Surf for Activ logo on it, as seen below.

Additionally, in written communication such as emails, press releases and published media it is essential that the event name is written in full, being the 'Chevron City to Surf for Activ' not the City to Surf or Chevron City to Surf.

Even when emailing press releases I am required to include a disclaimer note reading:
**Note: Please be sure to refer to the event by the official event name 'Chevron City to Surf for Activ' in all media.

By mentioning the disclaimer in my email I have reiterated the importance of branding and secondly I have covered myself in the instance that the event is not referred to correctly.

Due to Chevron's agreement as the exclusive naming rights sponsor for the event, Chevron must approve all logos and marketing material that is produced. This communication between Corporate Sports Australia and Chevron regarding the branding of the event allows both parties to have a sound understanding of the Chevron City to Surf for Activ brand and what it stands for within the community.

The first press release I produced I had several instances where I referred to the event as the 'City to Surf' but today having produced 15+ press releases it has become second nature to write the event name out in full.

In the instance of events; branding also allows the public to make the connection between the event and social media initiatives. In the case of the Chevron City to Surf for Activ, the hash tag #CTSjourney is being used via social media platforms including Twitter and Instagram. Through the branding efforts made by Corporate Sports Australia and associated parties this hash tag is immediately recognisable to the public to be in relation to the Chevron City to Surf for Activ.

So far I am very much enjoying my internship at Corporate Sports Australia and am looking forward to seeing all the behind the scenes preparation come together on the 25th of August. I look forward to updating you all on my progress and sharing my experiences with you.

Events: Prepare and Plan for Failure

During my time at Colosoul I have been privileged to be able to see and help out at three events. I haven't played a major part in these events, but I am still happy to say quite confidently that I have learnt a lot! I have seen how what sort of preparation goes into events, how they can go right, and of course, like it or not, how they can go wrong. I remember being told in a PR lecture to "plan as if everything would go wrong, because it probably will". Quite startled at this melancholy statement during the lecture, I can actually agree that it is the best advice to give for an event. Because there is nothing like not having a back-up plan in the middle of the night when something does go wrong! At all three events that I've helped out at, at least one thing has gone wrong at each. At least five things went wrong at one! But that's not to say it was poorly organised, just the slightest things had obviously not been considered, or forgotten during the lengthy preparation process. Things that I am lucky to remember for any events I should one day organise.

Friday night I helped out at the latest event by Colosoul. It was a fashion event run at City Farm for the website launch of Colosoul's fashion agency, FoxFeet. It turned out to be a great event, with six runway shows throughout the night, as well as market stalls, and great local bands playing sets in between the runway shows. I am so proud of the girl that organised it, because looking back, the night was so full on and entertaining, she would have just had so much to consider.

When thinking back to my responsibilities for the night, the list is quite long! I didn't have one set job, but was bouncing about here and there filling gaps that were needed throughout the night. I liked it this way. I kept busy and the night went quicker. It was also practically 4 degrees, and the event was entirely outside! I shouldn't be complaining though, because the poor models had to do a swimwear show! My jobs included: unloading car loads of stuff for the night and setting it up (my poor neck is still paying for this two days later), dressing models, minding a stall, driving to get $40 worth of ice, chasing down a spare run sheet, welcoming guests, driving to BP to get extra change, getting ten pizzas at Dominos for the models and staff, taping the soles of shoes, taping models boobs in! Not to mention packing away the remnants of the night at 12.30! I'm pleased to say that my efforts were little but many, and didn't go by unnoticed! Both my supervisor and the Colosoul director noticed my hard work and both made a note of it and thanked me the next day. I was stoked, to say the least.

Helping at events have really been my most valuable experience at Colosoul. While I'm not entirely sure if events are the path I want to take when I graduate, at least I can go into the area with some knowledge of how they work and things to remember. I know I can definitely take the idea to plan for failure... as morbid as that sounds! Anyway, here are a few snaps I managed to take from the night!

Bye for now,

Holly

Shake and Sign

World Meningitis Day was held on April 24 2013. It is a global annual event that raises awareness of the disease. This year the Confederation of Meningitis Organisations (CoMO) spent the day at Perth City Murray Street Mall alongside their organisation member the Meningitis Centre, raising awareness of the need to get government recognition worldwide to put prevention vaccines into their National Immunisation Programs (NIP). This was the first time the organisations had held a booth in the city.

The day was a new experience where I had to step out my comfort zone and go up to people and ask them if they knew about meningitis and would they be interested in signing the petition to help prevent meningitis. This proved to be a bit of challenge as some people are against vaccines and some people think you’re trying to sell them some sort of product or take their money and therefore ignored me. Some people were the opposite and were willing to sign the petition and were happy to be provided with information about the disease. I also had to shake the donation tins during the day which also had its challenge as I didn’t want to make people feel like they had to donate. Despite the challenges of shaking tins and signing the petition it was a fun day out of the office and a great opportunity to get the message about meningitis directly into the community.   

Our target on the day was parents and grandparents with young children. Balloons, stickers and brochures where given out on the day. I was surprised by how successful the uses of balloons were to gain attention from children and to draw in parents.

The Meningitis Centres ambassadors Brett Sheehan father of a survivor and survivor of meningitis Adam Selwood attended the event to assist in getting people’s attention and share their experiences with the disease.  Survivors of meningitis and their families and friends also attended the event.  This created a great atmosphere where many parents, grandparents and even young people were provided with plenty of information about meningitis, signed the petition or donated to organisation. It was great that it was school holidays so there were plenty of parent and children around the city.

The event was covered by channel 10 news on the day where they interviewed Adam Selwood and Brett Sheehan. It was great to get to have this media attention.

It was a great opportunity to see how a non for profit organisation engaged with the community and raised awareness.  I would say it was a successful shake and sign event.

-Alyce

Not Quite Text Book PR!

The hours go by so fast during my days on prac! I always worried about whether full time work would drag on, but I'm generally busy doing so many different tasks during the day, that the full day actually goes by pretty fast! It wasn't however, until yesterday at the Colosoul office, did I truly experienced a busy day! A day when you feel stressed, and completely disregard the clock, then finally notice that you have missed your lunch break and will still have to stay back late to get something done. But I felt it was all worth it, because I am starting to get more responsibility, and feel like I'm actually contributing to something.

Yesterday, I had the responsibility of helping with the production of a novel that was written by the Colosoul director and would be sold to raise money for the charity, Child Wise. I had been working with her from the beginning on this project, everything from; editing the chapters as she emailed them to me (all 14,000 words!), kindly, but sternly reminding her keep up to date with her writing and send me a chapter every week or so as well as keeping the corresponding blog up-to-date. My job yesterday was to work to create an aesthetically pleasing novel, so I worked with a Colosoul designer and illustrator to compile the illustrations and text together on Adobe InDesign. Trish, the director, very willingly put her trust in me working on this with the two girls while she stepped out of the office for the day. She hoped to have the book almost complete and ready to send to print, right down to choosing what goes on each page and using the right attributions, and corresponding illustration for each part of the story.

While a lot of these tasks aren't exactly what one would list as a duty for a PR practitioner, I can definitely say I learnt the values of time management, communication and a professional employer-employee and colleague relationship. It may be something that I DIDN'T specifically learn in one of my PR units, but know I will most definitely need.

I am so proud this project is nearly complete, it's been great to see the progress and be involved with it it from start to finish, how she was inspired through her blogging, to writing the chapters, to a complete picture novel with amazing illustrations.

Until next time,

Holly

Making 'mates' in the name of West Mate

When you start out somewhere new there's always that apprehension and panic of meeting new people. 

Starting out at 96FM couldn't have ran smoother with the aid of an office full of the friendliest people! On arrival it's rather intimidating exiting the lift into the reception of a radio statio - music blaring, famous faces plastered on the walls. But all fear faded as I became acquainted with the busy flow of radio station life. 

On my second day we were given the new West Mate Magazine as The West Australian is working with 96FM to promote this new mens mag that comes out weekly in Fridays paper! So after having a chuckle at some of the articles we wrote up a script to play over the radio to make sure everyone was aware of this new liftout. 

After reading it about 15 times and realising that West Mate Magazine in The West was almost impossible to say without stuffing it up we laughed it off and set off in the 96FM car to take the paper to the people (with bribery of course). Stocked with over 50 Brownes products in varying flavours and degrees of caffeinated goodness we called the station to record the cross amongst Perth's busy Friday morning traffic (hands free of course). 

Setting up in Bunnings Innaloo, cause that's where all the men are apparently, we listened out for the cross and  and within seconds of it playing people came running. I never realised people actually do this, but lucky for us they do! I was given the task of making sure we had enough photos for the social media and unfortunately ended up in half a dozen photos with the overly friendly tradies of Innaloo, one very hairy man in a hippie van who clearly just wanted free iced coffee and a grumpy little kid who didn't like the flash on my camera! 

After another few stops and a busy morning of handing out newspapers we hopefully made Perth aware of this new mens liftout and made some peoples day with some free tickets. Then it was back to the office to upload all the photos and make sure the clients were happy with our promoting skills. But not without me accidentally standing in the way of James Hird and the Perth paparazzi chasing him down the street. I had no idea who he was even though i'd been looking at his face on the paper all morning, oops! 

Loving the fast paced and exciting atmosphere of this great station and more adventures and incidents to tell in upcoming blogs.

Tumblr: my new best friend

By now it's been drilled into all of our brains that social media is the foundations of a successful organisation, and a particularly effective tool for institutions or organisations in the not-for-profit sector. Across my degree in PR, I have learnt about the restrictions that the not-for-profit industry faces regarding financial resources, and now I am seeing this first hand. Just recently, Colosoul is implementing a strong focus on social media to create a stronger brand image of Colosoul and all the departments under Colosoul. Each publication or brand under the Colosoul Group will be getting a PR person to manage this, which I think is a very successful move for a not-for-profit, youth group. Because we all know how important and effective social media is, and are quite good at using it, being Gen Y, this blog will be about my role at Colosoul over the last week or so. 

My task is to create a consistent social media presence for the brand under Colosoul, called Bird On A Wire. BOW was created by Tricia with the aim to bring awareness about the illegal sex trafficking of women all over the world, in a somewhat interesting and quirky way. From this brand comes artwork, songs, poetry and events to raise money for other organisations that support awareness of illegal sex trafficking. I literally got shovelled all the information about this brand on my very first day of prac, and told I was to be in charge of the whole social media plan and maintenance of it.

It was easy to pick up straight away that there was not a lot of consistency across the different platforms that BOW already existed on, and this was definitely a weakness. Nor were there very recent updates (the latest blog post was 6 months old!). Tricia also mentioned to me that she was thinking of changing her blog format to something more up-to-date and easy to maintain. It was currently using the Blogger format (which we use here!). I did my research and found that Tumblr. offers a very 'user-friendly' way to blog, and found many advantages in using this format. For example; utilising tags to connect with the stakeholders interested in the same areas, more suited to the younger target audience, the ability to reblog or be reblogged etc. I have never used Tumblr before, so I did my research on it to become familiar with how it works. I moved everything from the old blog page it's 'new home' on Tumblr which was an excruciating task as there were 76 blog posts to move, some which included more than one image as well as the text! Although this is complete, my job will never be finished. I will need to continually update and check everything that is going on across all platforms, to keep the social media presence for BOW relevant and appealing. 

Check out the blog if you have a spare minute! 

Bird On A Wire Tumblr

That's all for now, 

Holly 

Competitor Analysis? Check!

I’m well over half way through my 20 day internship with The Hub Marketing Communications and have so far loved every minute! I have been given many different responsibilities, and each day brings new tasks and exciting projects! 

Just recently I was asked to construct a competitor analysis for a client who is looking at opening several food and beverage places in one location of the city. The client requested that we consult other food and beverage organisations operating within the CBD to see what they had to offer. This would then be the basis for the PR plan behind the unveiling of this new food and beverage destination. 

I looked at restaurants, including Cocos, The Royal, The Red Herring and The Old Brewery, as well as eating/drinking/entertainment destinations such as The Hyatt Hotel, Crown Perth and Elizabeth Quay. I selected 13 attributes to analyse, including whether they were fine dining restaurants, whether they offered entertainment and whether or not they opened on Sunday’s and/or served breakfast. 

The results indicated that only 6 of 23 restaurants did not offer that fine dining experience. 10 did not serve breakfast and nine did not open to the public on Sundays. The restaurants and drink destinations that provided entertainment were listed as ‘restaurant bars’ and included The Apple Daily, Print Hall and Crown Perth. All three of these destinations were offered the ‘complete experience’, rather than just a food and drinks menu. All results were fairly consistent with what I had assumed, and showed that each restaurant/bar had it’s own uniqueness and attribute that separated it from the rest. 

This assignment was very rewarding in that I was well educated on what the new client was hoping to achieve. I also learnt about the importance of ‘getting to know your competitors’ in order to stay a step ahead of the game and provide equal or better offerings. My research would aid the client’s plan objectives, and contribute to the development of the project (e.g. give them more direction on what to offer). 

I enjoyed this task as it was interesting researching into what Perth restaurants and eating locations have to offer. It gave me valuable knowledge that I would not have gained without conducting the specific research I did. I felt it was an area I excelled in as I am fairly tech-savvy and new exactly where to look for specific information. The task was also very ‘mouth-watering’ as I spent my day looking at the various menus on offer… It made me very hungry! 

I will definitely be putting my hand up to conduct any more competitor analysis’ in the future and I would be interested to know if any of my unit peers conducted a similar analysis and what they thought of the assignment.  

The 'hands-on' side to Public Relations

Hi all,

For those who don't know me, my name is Elliott Telfer, I'm in my final year final semester of my Public Relations/Marketing degree with this practical component being the final hurdle. For my placement I managed to secure a place at RugbyWA (Emirates Western Force) as an Events Intern. Now on paper I know this isn't a PR internship as such, but there are a lot of similarities between these fields that I have experienced in my short time at the club.

For starters, due to the importance of budget at RugbyWA there isn't a PR department, rather the duties are split between the Events, Branding, Partnerships and Media/Communications Departments which as some of you may have found is a rather common occurrence. How this all flows is that the Branding team (Brand positioning and image) work together with the partnerships team (Attracting and maintaining sponsors and key stakeholders) and come up with a direction that best fits the direction of the club, which is then passed on to the media and communications team to promote, publish and inform the ideal audience, which is in most cases the current and potential members. The final stage is left to the events team, to plan, create and implement everything that the early stages have required.

This is where I have been able to draw my biggest comparisons from my degree to the big stage. Home games are the biggest events put on by RugbyWA, drawing in anywhere from 10,000 - 24,000 fans in what we refer to as the 'Sea of Blue'. The first game v The Cheetahs was such an amazing experience, and despite the agonising final minutes loss, I was in solid state of euphoria of the planing and preparation that goes into a seemingly simple event. I couldn't believe how stupid I had been in my assignments, using my main 'pitch' as a big event of some description with little thought into the 'minor' details.

In the weeks leading up to the game I was told to use Murphy's Law (Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong) as my motto. I had to make a plan to fix the probable errors in the plans of a plan. It was 'Planception'. Such planing included inventory of decorative banners and signs, replacing those of retired or traded past greats of the team (oh the complaints you get from the passionate fans for getting this wrong) and organising alternate parking passes for high-end stakeholders because their original parking spots hadn't finished being reconstructed. The day before the game, the truck usually used to transport our signage container to and from the ground broke down so I had to find and hire an alternate on short notice, not easy. On game day at 12pm we were allowed into the ground for the first time, only to realise that none of the new LED signage was working properly and as a result we had to explain to the sponsors why they had paid for something that just isn't going to be there. We had to set up the function rooms, player change rooms, replace light globes in the medical rooms, ensure the ball boys had five bottles of water and five sandwiches, not six as was demanded. Provide Foxsports, Game announcers, photographers and security with copies of the team sheets. When the game started we have to suit up, and no matter how much was going wrong or how urgent a task was, we had to smile and walk calmly, because if the supporters see us running and panicking, so will they.

The amount of stuff I would have never ever thought to have put in place in planing an event for PR is insane, had I gone out into the real world and put on a PR event like I had previously suggested in some of my assignments I would have been the record holder for worst event planner in the history of man. There is so much beyond the theory associated with this field that it has me constantly thinking and excited about how much of this field am I yet to fully experience.

Sorry, this blog post was a bit longwinded, but there was no easy way to describe what I have fully experienced in the first six days of my internship, my image of PR has completely changed in the last few weeks!

Thanks for reading!

Elliott Telfer

(Also just so you know, the events team isn't as large as you may think, it consists of the two people, The events manager (my supervisor) Mrs Mary Petrie and her seasonal intern yours truly. now how big does the workload seem?)

Confessions Of A 'Volly'

So these first few weeks at Colosoul have absolutely flown by; I can't believe how quickly things happen at this organisation. The work place at Colosoul is such a fast paced environment, thanks to all the hard working vollies (volunteers). Already, I have helped at an event, begun planning a social media strategy, transformed a pre-existing blog and made it more current and appealing, and helped in discussions of another upcoming event. All in the life of a volly I say!

For those of you not familiar with Colosoul; it is a not-for-profit media and arts organisation which aims to support and enhance the experience of youth and to bring Perth communities together so everyone is involved. Tricia Ray is the founder of this fantastic organisation, and I believe it is thanks to her that there are so many opportunities for Perth youth to kick-start their careers by offering them first-hard experience in their industry of expertise. Not only in the area of public relations, but also from across all other areas such as fashion, graphic design, event management, music, writing, photography and many more.

What I have found in the office is a real team environnment, which contributes to the many successful projects running under the Colosoul organisation. Everyone in the office, including Tricia Ray, are unpaid and volunteering for the organisation, which really creates this non-competitive environment. Being a volunteer for Colosoul, and any other organisation, is about everyone pitching in. I learnt this at the Lights Out Arts Festival event held at The Bakery last weekend. While it was the assigned project of only a few of the Colosoul team members, a great number more attended to help out in any way they could, to ensure the event was a smooth-running success. This is important to understand for any organisation; be it not-for-profit or not, as it is about creating or maintaining a positive awareness of the brand name.

All in all; my first few days at Colosoul have run smoothly (so far!) and I am excited to getting deep into my first project assigned to me; updating and creating a social media strategy/presence for Bird On A Wire (a project underneath the Colosoul name). Updates to come in my next blog.

Signing out,
Holly Broockmann
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Instagram, the trials and tribulations.

Venn is new to Instagram. The idea behind joining was very much to give an inside sight into the day to day running of Venn and everything that is going on. It was decided that the Instagram should not just be reserved for the marketing manager or the PR intern, we should allow all employees to access it and post things.

This was a really cool concept, the owners of Venn (Desi and Jade) are very much into the idea that the staff should be able to post pictures of new products/drinks as well as pictures of themselves having fun at work. However we found everyone was a little Instagram shy and largely short on time, so we found that the Venn instagram was being flooded with pictures of new shop products and little else. Also the posts were not equal and all were very different in style, some people embraced hash tags and captions, others would just post a photo.

This lead to me being given the task of preparing 'the Instragram Guidelines'. This document will make it clear what employees have to do to make a post, for example; everyone must use the tag #vennperth and write an appropriate caption explaining the picture.

Also i put forward the idea of a each department having a certain day to make a post. This idea was to avoid too many posts being made on one day and none on others.

I'm currently drafting up the guidelines and I'll be finalizing them next week, until then the Venn Instagram is still a bit unorganized but if you are interested you can follow it @vennperth.

Amy
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Perth: The new Melbourne!

Perth is currently under going a bit of a face lift. The surgery involves a bit of a nip and tuck and an injection in the form of fun. By this I mean (and I'm sure many of you have seen for yourselves) small, kooky, fun and stylish new bars and restaurants are popping up everywhere. For example; The Mechanics Institute, El Publico, The Cheeky Sparrow ,Canton lounge and bar and Venn.

This semester I have the absolute pleasure of completing my PR work experience unit at Venn Gallery Perth. Venn much like the name suggests is a combination of overlapping concepts like a Venn diagram. There is a bar+cafe, art gallery and a cute design shop (http://www.venn.net/), if you haven't checked it out yet and you are into art and good coffee I highly recommend you pop in!

I have been completing an internship at Venn since September 2012 and during this time I've completing many tasks including; media release writing, blog writing, Facebook post writing, planning and running events, taking photos at events and of things for the blog, creating competitions and promotions and handling all the media monitoring.

Here are some past examples of blog posts I have written;
http://venn.net/morning_quickie
http://venn.net/burger_appreciation
http://venn.net/a_venn_summer
http://venn.net/patrick_doherty_-_new_works_available_in_stockroom
http://venn.net/new_years_garden_party
http://venn.net/open_house_has_hit_perth
http://venn.net/creative_chef_chris_featured_in_the_west
http://venn.net/saturday_brekky

This week on Thursday night Venn is having a gallery exhibition opening, gallery opening events are not only a rewarding experience opportunity but massive amounts of fun! Before the event the planning and setting up is a lot of work, but once the guests and artists arrive it’s time to relax and have a couple of drinks (and in my case take some photos of the event).

Amy Taylor
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Traditional Public Relations - So much more satisfying!

Over the course of my internship at Corporate Sports Australia i've spent a significant amount of time completing tasks generally thought of as 'traditional public relations' - such as media release production and distribution.

After writing a number or media releases on the city to surf, i am a firm believer that tradtional PR tools still have a place in today digitalised society.

Of the last four media releases i've produced, two have generated some excellent free publicity in The Sunday Times! yay! and some were also featured on the City to Surf website. In my opionion seeing some recognition of your hard work in print in the newspaper is so much more exciting and satisfying that simply maintaining a presence of Facebook.

Except when i told my mum and she couldn't understand why name wasn't on the article. 'No mum, i didn't actually write the article, i wrote the media release. Which the journalist then decided to write an article based on.' She definitely did not share my excitement.

Corporate sports are very into championing the notions of 'tragedy and triumph' within media release content. As interns we were pushed to seek proactive stories that will connect with the wider Perth community, tapping into emotions through, inspiring stories of everyday people - like them! And then hopefully encouraging them to get off the couch and run a marathon!

Earlier in my placement i wrote a media release on the cutest couple ever. Now in their 70's they have run every single City to Surf to date! And they were probabaly the nicest people i've ever met, they even sent me loads of old photos and media clippings from marathons they've competed in around the world.It was nice to be able to recognise their acheievement and give them something back through getting the story published.

Writing media releases at my internship gave me an opportunity to showcase some of the skills i've picked up over the last three years of studying and i now have some great pieces of work to include with my CV.

Public Relations and I

Note: I apologise that this is a little out-of-date, I've been writing my blogs without posting them.

 

I can honestly say I’ve never considered myself a Public Relations student. Whenever I’m asked whether I’d like to pursue the PR or journalism aspect of my degree I invariably respond by saying; “Journalism. The PR is sort of a back-up.” Journalism is what I’ve wanted to pursue since primary school and as a result I’ve always somewhat coasted through my PR units. However, my view on PR is slowly beginning to change.

My view of public relations first started to change when I was looking at where I could get a placement. As I was using regular employment sites, such as Seek, I was coming across real job listings and it was hard not to imagine myself in those jobs. I couldn’t help but think things like; “That sounds like a decent job”, or “I could do that.” Maybe it was all that time focused on journalism, but I’d never understood how many different avenues there are when you go down the public relations path. Being able to dedicate a career to working in social media was something that continues to stick with me, I can’t help but think that would be a great job. It also helps that starting salaries in public relations tend to be a lot higher than in journalism.

I have a full semester of PR units ahead of me so I think I’ll definitively be able to say if I’d like to pursue PR by the end of the year. If I can stand basically studying PR full-time for the next few months than I think I’ll really be able to pursue a career in Public Relations.

Oh by the way, I’ve secured my placement at Perth Glory so if I can’t stand doing PR there, I don’t think I’ll be able to cop doing it anywhere.