From 367 pairs of jeans to a 630am start full of raw treats...never a dull moment!

A BTS photo taken by myself of the raw goodies made for the Channel 9 segment

I have now officially been at my internship with Detail for 6 weeks. Not too sure where the time has gone but I am happy to say that it has been a wonderful experience thus far. I am assigned to one project, the Garage Sale Trail. A fantastic, not-for-profit event that occurs simultaneously across Australia. The aim of Garage Sale Trail is to encourage reuse, recycling while having fun, socialising and meeting the neighbours. This year, the event occurs on Saturday 24th October and the Detail team are assigned as the WA PR Team as well as overseeing all other state PR's and looking after media and PR opportunities on a national scale.

I have been assisting with a variety of public relations strategies and tools for the Garage Sale Trail event, and we recently worked on a pitch to the Community Newspaper Group in relation to a story on factoids about reusing and recycling. The factoid related to the recycling of jeans, being: if people recycled 367 pairs of jeans rather than throwing them out, it would effectively save enough water to fill an Olympic swimming pool. My Account Manager had the idea of creating a story around the factoid, involving a Garage Sale Trail ambassador, the Waste Authority WA Chairman, an Olympic sized swimming pool and 367 pairs of jeans. Community Newspaper loved the idea and we were set to run the story. We had locked in Beatty Park for the use of their swimming pool, as well as the Waste Authority Chairman and our ambassador, however the challenge was in sourcing 367 pairs of jeans for the photo opportunity. We approached a variety of op-shops in Fremantle, all who were willing to help but did not have a large enough capacity of jeans to assist us. 5pm the day before the shoot, we managed to get Good Sammy's head office on board. It was then my task to go to Good Sammy's the following morning, bag up 367 pairs of jeans, fit said jeans into my Yaris and transport them to the shoot at Beatty Park. Safe to say that was my exercise for the day! We had a beautiful day and the shot ended up looking great, definitely proving it is worth the extra effort and persistence to make for a great story and piece of publicity for the client. To view the final article, click the link below:

http://www.communitynews.com.au/news/Garage-Sale-Trail-open-for-business/7673885

Two days later, we had a media opportunity for a client with the Today Show for Perth Channel 9. This involved being at the location at 6:30am for a 7am live filming start. The client was re-branding and also launching a new product - a Vitamix. Our story involved a lady by the name of Chriswho runs her own raw, health food company 'RawbyChris'. Chris uses the vitamix to make delicious raw treats, so she was the perfect ambassador for the launch of the new Vitamix. While it was an early start, I managed to snap a great pic for Instagram and had way too many raw treats for breakfast (albeit healthy so it makes it okay)! Getting a first hand encounter of behind the scenes of a live TV cross was a fantastic experience and certainly gave me an insight into the many different hats a PR practitioner is required to wear!

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