Pitch, pitch, pitch!

Hi Guys,

Now that I am well into my internship, I have noticed a change in myself - I am much more confident (and willing) to pitch! It's a scary thought having to phone the media and pitch your story, particularly when they may not be that interested and it was something that I found quite difficult to do for the first 3 to 4 weeks of interning.

However, these last couple of weeks I've noticed that this doesn't phase me too much anymore. I'm happy to pick up the phone and call as many people as I can in order to get our story out there and achieve publicity for the client. I believe that when you love what you do and care about your role, it makes you that more persistent to get the best results. One thing I have learned from my internship is that an email is not enough. Phoning and having a conversation with the journalist is the quickest way to get a response, and yes sometimes you may get shut down, however it is better than constantly harassing someone with emails yet not receiving a response.

Having seen some good results due to my pitching efforts, I believe this has helped build my confidence and made me realise that it is worthwhile to pick up the phone. You must have confidence with what you are pitching because if you don't believe in it, it's likely that the journalist won't either!

As the agency I intern for is boutique, they place a large focus on ensuring that relationships are built and maintained. It is essential to offer journalists as much assistance as possible and to thank them for their time. We aim to be at every photo shoot for any paper, whether it be the West Australian or the Fremantle Herald, nothing is too big or too small that we cannot be there to provide help in any shape or form. I believe this is what makes Detail (agency) so successful. The care and diligence they take with each and every client and the relationships they have formed within the media has certainly been a huge part of forming their reputation. 

The opportunity for me to meet so many people and interact with a variety of media contacts is priceless. This hands' on experience has made me realise how essential it is to build strong relationships with clients, media, bloggers, local community, government, and so on. You never know when you may need their assistance!

What has your internship experience helped you to understand more or realise about the real world of PR that you have not already learnt in Uni?

It's about the journey, not the destination..

The last day of my PR internship was hectic. It was treated as any other day, busy busy busy. I was responsible for sourcing more potential clientele for one of our clients, F45 Fitness. I was also tasked with finding local online media that could potentially be contacted to support our client.

 It seemed like a blur - how quickly those 20 days had passed me by, and I felt like I had learned so much, and yet had so much more to learn about the industry and what the future in PR would hold for me.. It made me realise that business stops for nobody, and it's not like a retail job where you can just go home after a long day and forget about it - no, it is an urgent, full-time lifestyle, and with the amount of responsibility which was placed on my team, I could see how much it permeated into everyone's everyday lives.

This PR Internship really made me think hard about what kind of business or industry I'd like to work for later on in life. I had a great time at The Brand Hierarchy, however, reading through others' experiences in their blog posts has made me realise what a different and unique experience it was in itself. Not many people get to experience working first-hand under a small business, and I was fortunate enough to land myself in that position.

I am grateful to Karlee for taking me on whilst already having a lot going on in terms of business restructuring and expansion, and I will never forget my experience at The Brand Hierarchy.

Wendy
1615 9260

Getting the job & my first week.

Hello! 

This is me, blogging about my first week of internship, which also happens to be my first ever official job. It's all still very new to me, and so is blogging in an academic manner - so please forgive me if I sound too casual. 

First off, since the beginning of the semester, for three consecutive weeks I have been so anxious about getting a placement. I made at least 30 over calls to all kinds of organisations, in hopes they would get back to me before Week 4 comes - which is the deadline for placement approvals as according to the unit outline. 

During the first three weeks, I had never hated the weekend so much in my entire life because that is when companies are not working, which means I cannot make any contact with them at all. Every week I made full use of the weekdays from 8am to 5pm, just making calls, and on the weekends I would mope about not getting a call back. 

I communicated with Lydia, our course coordinator, during the entire time and she was just the kindest soul to help me out with all of my incessant queries - which I am extremely grateful for. I eventually managed to get a few calls back, and finally chose the organisation of my choice - Identitywa. 

The Communications Officer in Identitywa provided me a space right outside her office where she regularly visits and asks how I am coping with the work I've been given. She's nice enough to make sure I am not overloaded with stress, but at the same time makes sure I have been given enough work. She's also very keen with the idea of brainstorming together, and this makes me feel comfortable that I can ask her for help whenever I struggle with a task - whether minor or major.  

My first task at work was to design three flyers in Microsoft Publisher, where one of it needed to be printed out in the next half an hour. It was manageable as I can still recall the in-class practices with the software during PR Techniques, and managed to also apply my experience with digital design from the other units I have taken. 

Besides that, I was also given the task to write several articles. One article was for the in-house newsletter called Identikite, and another for Emmanuel Catholic College's newsletter - regarding a recent event that took place. I also had to write an article on the NDIS and WA NDIS My Way in relation to their latest media release of the Fourth Quarterly Report. I applied my understanding and experience of writing media releases and articles from all the Public Relations units that I have taken in the past semesters. I also applied my knowledge of writing to cater to specific audiences, which is something that the previous PR units and my current Magazine Feature Writing unit taught me. 

I've also been given minor tasks like calling up the house seniors of Identitywa houses (where people with disability under the care of Identitywa are taken care of) to take note of any interesting things the residents are doing, so that I could write an article about it to be included in the monthly in-house newsletter. Those are the things that I have been taught in the previous PR units that I have taken and I am extremely glad that I didn't find any of the tasks a problem. 

And since next week is a tuition free week, I have decided to let my Communications Officer know that I will be coming in on Monday to Friday for work! Hoping everyone is enjoying their internship as well! ☻

Denissa Goh 
15652315

Final days, Trip to the River and Writing for Narelda

I can't believe I've finished my internship at Central. I feel like I have come a long way from when I first started at the end of 2013. My final few days as an intern has seen me do some of the most interesting and fun work I have done. Period.

Starting from the top, I was asked by Mike to take some photos and do a blog story for Central about the Sculpture Walk at Deep Point in Melville. The Sculpture Walk featured former Central student, with some even taking out prizes. I first though great, I get to do another story, but nothing to exciting. Little did I know I would be trusted enough to use a company car a drive down to Melville and take photos and thoroughly sort the story out for myself.

At first I was excited to be given that level of trust by Central and staff not only to do the story completely solo, but also use the company car. Then I felt a lot more anxious as I gave it more thought, what is my photo’s are no good? What if I crash the car? Of course none of what I feared actually happened. I sussed out the car and made it down to the sculpture walk and really enjoyed going around taking photos and formulating the story and the angle in my head.

The trust given to me by the Central staff really made me feel part of the team. The story itself was fun to write, but what meant the most was being accepted and trusted enough to be able to do the story solo and use a company car; certainly not what I expected at the beginning of my internship.

To read the story I wrote Sculpting Success, about the Melville Sculpture Walk please click the link.

The last major project I took part in as part of my internship was the Central Student Awards Night. This night involved all Central department awarding outstanding achievements in their various fields as well as overall student winners. This was a lot of work, like Left of Central but of a very different sort for me.

My task for the awards was to write the student award winners blurbs to be read out on the night. This involved writing individual paragraphs for each winner from a four page document on each. The task sounded easy but condensing all the information down into one paragraph that accurately describe their achievements was more difficult than I gave credit. I didn’t want to simply copy and paste a template filled with clichés and the same slightly re-phrased buzzwords. Eventually I got into a rhythm of writing these blogs and felt more comfortable doing them.

Lisa, supervisor for this task ended up being pleased with what I wrote got me to proof read and add in my part to the MC script for the awards night. I was shocked to get a task of this importance, but I gave it a try and soon got into the swing of it. At first I found changing my style of writing from blogs/ media releases to a speech for an awards night quite difficult. It had to be clear and succinct for the reader and interesting for the listener and was a completely different structure to what I had written before.

Learning that the MC for the Awards night was Channel 10 news presenter Narelda Jacobs gave me a real buzz. Simply knowing that something I had written was going to be read out by a house hold name like Narelda was a great feeling. Seeing it read out at the awards night a week and a half later was even better, especially since it all ran smoothly and my words were a success.

I am glad to report that my time at Central is not over. Kenley the head of the marketing team has offered me a position in the team on a part time basis to help them out and continue to give me experience. This is great news for me; I have had a great time with both the work and more importantly the people at Central. The opportunities they have given me and how welcoming they have been made at Central my time a real pleasure. I’m really excited to keep working with them.

Though this is the end of my internship it’s only the beginning of my time at Central and in PR. I have met great people, learnt new things and got a taste for what the PR industry holds. I can’t believe this is my final blog so from me, thank you Central, especially the marketing team and see you soon.

Writing with Mr Malkovic and whats 'Left of Central'

The three weeks of ‘Left of Central’ have been very busy for me and the Central marketing team. Since the Launch party there have been activities, music, food and events on almost everyday that need to be coordinated by the marketing team.

I have been spending a lot of my time at helping out Leanne the events coordinator, anyway I can with setting up, packing up and any job in between to try and make each day run as smoothly as possible. I have found this part of my work experience fun, rewarding and hard work. The best part of being involved in the events was physically seeing the work you do transform a space into something people really enjoy. Often I found at the end of a day I would watch people use the space or be entertained by an event and think I helped make that happen.

During the ‘Left of Central’ I was also I was given the title of ‘Night Supervisor’ which basically meant packing up the street each day or after each event was finished. Apart from the heavy lifting I really enjoyed this opportunity and the responsibility given to me. It gave me the opportunity to use leadership and organisational skills. I has head of a team of people who packed up the street each evening and I directed them as to what needed to be done and the best way to go about it. I think I did a good job managing this task because the pack up became more and more efficient throughout the three weeks developed a rapport with the people I worked with.

The only time my patience was tested was packing up after the movie night on a Friday. A group of drunks walked through where we were packing up and jumped on all the bean bags, ran off with one of our trolleys and were generally an all around nuisance. I was very irritated by this but soon came to realise this is probably part and parcel of working in events and tried to busy myself in other areas while the drunks got bored and left.

to see what Left of Central was all about click here

It was easy to forget that even though ‘Left of Central’ was on there were still other things for the marketing team to do. In the last week of ‘Left of Central’ the marketing team and I were invited to take part in a writing workshop with former 730 Report journalist Tony Malkovic. I was pretty intimidated going into the workshop; I didn't know what the expectations were for writing and feared I wasn't up to scratch. I was soon put at ease though because the workshop was very inclusive and ended up being probably the best learning experience for writing I have ever done. I was practical, concise and didn’t get caught up in the ‘rules’ of grammar or punctuation but rather focused on ensuring that Central has a consistent style and we communicate as concisely and effectively as possible. The two main things I took out of the workshop were to try and use an active voice and avoid using to many adjectives, instead find a good verb. Although this may sound dry and dull it has helped me to make my writing far more engaging and easy to understand.

It saddens me that there is so few days left of my internship. I have been learning so much about what goes into a PR role and how to improve my skills I fear I'll end up forgetting some of it. I think the challenge now will be deciding what I enjoy most and trying to focus on that one thing. At the moment though I don't have a favorite part but enjoy doing a little bit of everything, from event preparation to writing press releases and blog stories.

Until my next and final Blog

Steaf

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
14268342