Organising a ‘soft opening’ 101

Venn’s laneway is now open! Coming up to the opening Desi and Jade made it clear that they wanted to have a soft opening for the lane way. I was unfamiliar with this term and what it meant and so after learning about it I thought I’d share it with all of you.

Basically had Venn strongly publicised the laneway opening they would have attracted large crowds to the café for the day of opening and possible subsequent days afterwards, they would have been unable to handle the extra business with the current capacity of staff.

So it was decided by Desi and Jade that we should have a soft opening, meaning we didn’t publicise a specific date of opening. This way we spread the larger amount of interest out over a longer period of time as opposed to having everyone bombard the new area on its first day of opening (especially when teething problems are sure to occur).

It also means we can have an opening promotion a week or so after the lane way has been running so we know how many extra staff may be needed to handle the extra coffees being sold during the promotion.

I have still created a media release and it is being sent off to different publications and blogs this week, having a soft opening means that these publications can still feature Venn’s new laneway weeks from now and it won’t be ‘old news’ so to speak because there was never a date publicised for when laneway opened. Also there will still be people unaware of the new area.

On top of this Venn is waiting on gaining permission for people to drink alcohol in the new area, so there will be a second more official opening once this liquor license has passed.

It initially seemed odd to me to not tell anyone when the lane way would be opening , but in hindsight it was definitely a smart thing to do considering the situation!

Amy Taylor

14268342

Big Responsibilities

Venn is in the midst of exciting times. On the 16th of April Venn's new laneway entrance is opening and available for use. The entrance opens right into Raine Square outside the new Bank west building and will include more seating for the café to use. Currently the public has to walk down Queen Street in order to find Venn, this new entrance is going to mean that many people currently unaware of Venn are going to stumble across it.

I have been given the responsibility of creating the publicity plan for the lane way opening. This will involve me creating the plan but also putting it into action including: creating a media release with appropriate angles, approaching certain media outlets with the plan, creating a blog post, Facebook post and Instagram post about the lane way opening and coming up with a promotion on coffee or food to celebrate the opening.

At university we gain a huge amount of experience in creating PR plans, but the plan is completely useless until it’s put into action. We don’t just finish the plan and then file it away (or drop it in our unit coordinators pigeon hole) we have to then follow it and put it into action. It will be a huge learning curve to actually have to approach these media outlets but I'm looking forward to going through the motions with it all.

I’ve already come up with a few good publicity ideas but I’ll save explaining them until I actually know they are going to go through.

Amy Taylor
14268342