Media Pitch - Scored!

This should most probably be my last post on this blog.

To end it off, I'm gonna post my best (by far) working experience at Ogilvy PR.

I was kind of rambling on about my love-hate relationship with media calls in my previous post. This time round, I got to do a little more than media call downs.

This week, half of my team were on leave. With that, my supervisor and I had to take on some of their job scope, one of which includes media pitching for a client. Although they may sound the same, the difference between media call downs and media pitching was quite big for me. When I did media call downs, all I had to do was to confirm if the media had received the email sent to them earlier.

My supervisor gave me the task to draft the email pitch for the media. Just when I thought the pitch was over, she told me to do the pitch calls for media. You could say I turned blue in the face almost immediately. I think at that point of time, only thing that was running through my head was, "What if I screwed this up?" It was a really important pitch.

So, practice makes perfect. My supervisor got me to draft out what I would say to the media on the phone and had me practice the pitch with her quite a number of times. With much encouragement and practice, I dare say I delivered the media pitching quite well.

Then came the email from a television broadcast station saying they were interesting in interviewing our client for their news program. Boy was I elated!

Okay, to cut the long story short, I became the media liaison between the client and the broadcast station, which was quite an experience for me.

Where does school comes into place in this situation? Media relations 250 definitely!

Apart from learning the importance of maintaining a relationship with the media, what else came in handy was the lessons from the interview assignment where we had to prepare an interview brief for the client as well as the "Do's and Don'ts" during an interview.

The client was invited to do a live television interview and my supervisor had to prepare the briefing documents for him and was asking around for some "Do's and Don'ts". Luckily for her,  I still had some notes from the lesson and could share it with her.

The 4 key things to note during an interview are:




1. Make the Point you want to make
2. Back that point up with a Reason
3. Provide an Example to illustrate your point
4. Restate your main Point again to make it really clear

A very great reminder!

And with that, this post marks the last entry of my PR393 Reflective Blog for internship at Ogilvy PR. The past two months has been eventful, and I hope the blog posts has been insightful and helpful to all of you!

Have an awesome internship everyone!

Promotion, exhaustion and getting closer!

Hi guys,

So Its getting very close to the event we have been working all year to make happen. The process has been enormous and quite a challenge. I was unaware there was this much involved with creating an event that only takes place over one night. I have recently been promoted to the role of Event Manager! This has been an extremely challenging task of which I was not sure I was capable of. The founders trusted my abilities and I felt as though they threw me into the deep end a little. Suddenly I was principally responsible for ensuring tasks were all completed each week, following up on the Dine for Life team and a lot of communication between the enourmity of sponsors involved.

At first I was completely overwhelmed. I had a huge amount of responsibility and large amount of tasks that needed to be completed each week, however I only had one day to do it in. Unfortunately this was the problem I felt. Although the event was only annual, one day a week was very difficult to coordinate or sometimes get anything done. However, I am pushing through and I hope I don't disappoint.

The experience of event manager has been quite practical. Creating several event run sheets, liaising with sponsors, allocating roles and tasks for others. Another thing that has been a shock to me was the amount of emails i now receive and send each day. My inbox is full to the brim with Dine for Life coordination, which can be very stressful and daunting at times. However, little celebrations need to be made when things go well or else you loose sight of why you are doing everything in the first place. Working in non-for-profit is, what I imagine, quite different to a paid position, but at the end of the day the outcome can be immensely rewarding.

Through the all the scramble and stress that is non-for-profit, I am still contributing to fighting human trafficking. A cause that is what is pushing me through this final month at my industry placement.

Hope everyone else is learning and loving!

Siobhan Herne xx

Communicating Around The Globe

Throughout my studies at university I have had many units that cover the topic of cultural differences and some of the challenges of working with organisations worldwide. I recently learnt the truth to this in my internship.

For my internship I have been involved in writing emails, using social media, and posting mail to international organisation members. These are the organisations that operate within Confederation of Meningitis Organisation (CoMO) around the globe.

I have found that social media is an effective tool for communicating worldwide because it is fast compared to mailing a letter in the post. However posting to social media on a global scale can have its challenges. Time differences are something I learnt about in units throughout my degree. When this challenge became a reality it truly was difficult working out what time would be most effective worldwide. Another challenge is that some places around the world do not have the accessibility or knowledge about social media which made things a bit tricky.

When it came to sending packages/mail in the post this proved to be another challenge. I found that time was a big constraint when sending mail around the world. When you only have a few days to get something across the world you therefore need to use express post which can be expensive, especially if you are sending parcels to many places around the world and you are a non-for-profit. I found it also difficult when writing the mailing address onto the packages as many places addresses are different to us here in Perth, WA. Did you know some places postcodes are more than 4 digitis and some do not have postcodes.

Writing emails to organisation members around the world proved to be interesting. I had learnt at university that languages can be a barrier when communicating to someone who speaks a different language. So when I had to write an email to someone who spoke a different language to English I had to use Google translate. This tool is not the best at grammar and based on email responses that had been through Google translate on their end I found often the email did not make sense, and therefore I am sure neither did mine to some extent. When I would send the email I would be sure to put the translated version at the top and then the English version below so I could CC anyone into the email that needed to be, and it would make it easier for them to read rather than again going back to Google translate.

I have learnt a lot about communicating worldwide throughout my time at my internship. It has been a fantastic learning opportunity. All the cultural barriers I had learnt at university where now put into practice.

-Alyce

Nearing the end...but not before a few last tasks

Hi Guys!

So I have come to the last week of my placement, and I am so sad to be finishing up with the public affairs team at INPEX a worldwide oil and gas exploration and production company.

The last two weeks have seen me become involved with organising director discussions with the companies CEO whereby a handful of staff members are chosen to engage in a group discussion with the CEO where the conversation is free flowing and any question goes. The idea of the director discussions was bought about a couple of weeks ago in a team meeting and I was given the task of organising the very first discussion, the aim is to keep the channels of communication open within the company and allow free flowing discussion in an environment which is typically formal.

Having the responsibility of organising the meeting involved coordinating with the CEO's diary which is always full, booking a venue for the meeting, organising catering and from there carefully selecting guests to attend and then inviting them. What I once thought would be an easy task ended up consuming most of my week, it really helped me understand the value placed on even the most mundane of meetings as I began to realise how important open discussions are within large companies. Without the free flow of information between employees and higher ranked directors things go amiss and there are communication breakdowns which can cause future issues which become much more difficult to resolve.

I have never had so many emails in my inbox at once, employees asking questions, what would be discussed? do I need to prepare questions? etc. It seemed that everyone was nervous about this opportunity so it was my job to put them at ease and explain to them that there was no need to be nervous about talking to the CEO in an informal setting and rather that it would hopefully change the way they interacted with higher levels of authority and that lunch would be provided ( I have learnt that catering is always a way to get employees to attend meetings)

The meeting is schedueled to happen a week after my placement finishes but I have made sure that everything is under control and fingers crossed it all goes well!

Until next time,

Hope you are enjoying your placements.

Hayley

The Count Down!

#2 The Count Down

I have been organising Perth Fashion Festival since June and all of a sudden the Opening Night event is tomorrow!

As one would assume, the office is exceptionally frantic today, as it has been for the past week or two.

We have a few people who are more tanned than usual from appointments last night and racks of clothes lined up, not to mention a crazy store room full of volunteer passes, giftbags, posters etc.

My tasks as of now are mostly finalising run sheets, emailing these to the necessary people, organising parking for government members who are attending our events, sorting out my schedule with my manager and lots more 'logistical' things.

The key to keeping sane and organised amongst the maddness is writing and ticking off lists I have discovered. My manager also often emails me with a task in the subject box so she doesn't forget to tell me. I can keep these in my inbox so I am always reminded and don't forget it. We also have a few drop box folders that we share to keep documents in one place we can both access/update/cross reference. Our system seems to work well. 

Needless to say, I am very excited and admittedly a little nervous. I can't wait to see all my hard work unfold and 'watch our industry come to life'. I just hope it unfolds successfully!

I will try to blog during the Festival if I can, otherwise I will recap once its over.

Erin

What I've learnt so far.....

I am now 7 weeks into my internship with Perth Zoo, and still thoroughly enjoying myself! I am just going to warn you all that this blog is going to be a looooong one; I have learnt A LOT over the last few weeks.

A couple of weeks ago I made the daunting transition from completing my internship project from the comfort of home, to joining the Marketing/Business Development Team in the offices at the Zoo.

I have already learnt many valuable lessons from working in an office environment, because it is something I have never done before, this is already one of the clear benefits of completing this unit.

The first valuable lesson I learnt is; bring your own mug! On my first day I really wanted a cup of tea to help me concentrate and to warm me up, and ended up having to borrow one from the kitchen, not knowing who it belonged to. I was worried that someone was going to come looking for their mug and not be able to find it because the obnoxious intern had taken it! From then on, I have been sure to pack my mug in my handbag every week to avoid any possible awkwardness.

The second valuable lesson I have learnt since joining the team at the office is how to stay focused. The Perth Zoo office is a very busy place, there are constantly people coming in and out and meeting various members of the team for different things each day – this sometimes makes it difficult to continue on with my work when people around me are chatting, organising things or making phone calls. I have learnt to try to block out the buzz of the office and carry on with what I am doing and although initially it was difficult, it is definitely becoming easier.

Thirdly, I have learnt just how important it is to stay on top of emails. I was extremely excited when I was given my Perth Zoo email address, which meant I could now communicate with my co-workers much more easily. With this however, comes the task of replying to relevant emails and deleting those that are irrelevant. This week showed me just how time consuming emails can actually be. As I am only in the office once a week, the emails build up over the week until the next time I am there and I found myself spending a solid 45 minutes just sifting through everything I had been sent. I can definitely say that keeping on top of emails when I get out into the ‘real world’ will be a MUST!

My project for Perth Zoo requires me to develop an implantation plan for effective community communications; I have been working tirelessly to research and develop this project, and met up with my supervisor this week to discuss my progress. I was a little bit shocked and scared to find out that I have been a little too ‘academic’ in my approach to this project.

Having spent the last 4 years of my life at Curtin, I have become very accustomed to the way lecturers and tutors expect your assignments and projects to be. It was amazing to find out that I will not (unless I go into academia) have to produce an academic style report once I leave uni. Ceri worked through my project with me, to pull out the parts that were useful and heading in the right direction and helped me to make my project more ‘corporate’ and CEO friendly. Ceri offered invaluable insight into what CEO’s and management will expect of me in the real world, and I am extremely grateful to have had his guidance – otherwise I would not have known that the work I was producing may not have ever been looked at by the CEO and manager’s because it is too ‘fluffy’ (as I was told)!

I am really happy that I have been shown something so useful, something that will benefit me in my career and I would not have been able to learn something like this, without the PR 393 experience. I would seriously struggle to produce something worthwhile in the corporate world, straight out of uni, if I hadn’t had the opportunity to learn and practice the skills I have learnt throughout my degree – as I have had in this internship.

My supervisor also showed me this great website where you can see papers and presentations that people all over the world have done, it’s a great one if you want to gather a broader view on a topic, or you need a starting point for something. The website is called Slideshare (www.slideshare.net) and I have found it to be extremely useful to help brainstorm my project, and help to guide my research.

Overall, the experience so far has been a little daunting, but more than anything, very helpful. Without this unit, and without the opportunity to go into a workplace and see what goes on, and be part of a proper, real life, experienced PR and Marketing team, I think that my experience in my first career job would be a lot more challenging and scary than it will be now. I feel so lucky!

Anyway, I think you have all heard enough from me now.

I’m sure there will be more to report back next week. I hope you’re all enjoying your placements as much as me!

Elle :)