A day in the office with emails, meetings and karaoke

A day in the office with emails, meetings and karaoke…

A typical day in the Channel 9 offices is never like the day before, they all start out the same with emails to check and reply to, meetings to attend and KPI’s to discuss, but no two days ever take the same course or structure and it is this unknown excitement I enjoy the most.

This week we were preparing for a community awareness activation that we will be running in the city at the end of the week. The activation, which is the first of four, is to create more awareness and in turn a greater viewership for The Voice, a Channel 9 reality show. For the activation we will be setting up a Voice branded marquee with a television and Ps4 set up inside with Sing Star; the idea is to encourage people to come have a sing, battle their friends and potentially have the chance to win the Ps4 at the end of the day!

In order for this kind of event to run smoothly there is a lot of coordinating that has to go into place, weeks in advance, such as booking the space in the CBD to put up a marquee, organising related signage and also talent as some of the Perth Voice contestants will be in attendance. In order to ensure all of our equipment is working perfectly it was absolutely vital that we also set the Ps4 up in the office and have various battles throughout the day, drawing the attention of different departments around the station, with everyone having a go. This was not only fun and entertaining but also demonstrated to me how important it is to be a part of a company that appreciates the friendliness of staff and values the cohesion socialising in the office creates, as long as work is still getting completed of course.

This particular office day also showed me what it was like when a planned event goes wrong, due to things beyond your control. On this occasion a competition was run through Channel 9 but supplied by a third party who is holding the event. The particular company has altered the dates of the event twice with little notice to Channel 9 and therefore competition winners. This became a bit of a headache due to having to rearrange all attendees, ensuring they were informed and that they could attend on the revised date. Unfortunately these changes were beyond Channel 9’s control, yet to the competition winners it is understandable it does not reflect well on the brand with constant changes, seemingly disorganised.

The best way to handle this, although quite time consuming is to ensure that all competition winners were contacted by phone, rather than just a mass email, adding care and a more human touch, softening the disappointment of another date setback. There was also the preparedness of an alternative, so if the winners then could not attend the revised date the department made sure to have tickets on hand to another show or event as a way of compensation and apology. I think this really helped turn a bad situation around without creating a negative image in the minds of those involved. Hopefully the event doesn’t get moved for the third time and all winners can enjoy the day!

Essentially every day seems to be different, buzzing with the possibility of what will happen next! With so many things on the go 24/7 Channel 9 never stops, allowing for the marketing and PR department to be a place of new ideas, communication and now the new karaoke bar (minus the alcohol) in town!

Stay tuned!

- Maddi

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!

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