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

Public Relations & The Arts

This semester I am interning at a boutique Public Relations agency, Muse Bureau. The firm previously specialised in the arts and entertainment industry, working on campaigns including Fringe Festival, Stylaid, Alienation, and Open House Perth, to name a few! 

Working within a niche industry has allowed to company to excel in the field and gain recognition for the fabulous campaigns they have executed. As the team is significantly small, I have been asked to monitor two campaigns with the approval of my supervisor: Rottofest 2013 and Future Landings.

For those of you who do not know, Rottofest is a weekend of comedy, film and music on Rottnest Island. This year, the campaign will attract internationally recognised Australian comedians including Heath Franklin, Greg Fleet and Tahir (Fat Pizza). Working on the campaign has been great, I have pitched to a variety of different outlets, allowing for further coverage on the festival. The highlight of my week was seeing a full page editorial on Heath Franklin in the Sunday Times Entertainment sector, after I organised an interview for the journalist.

My second campaign, Future landings, is a unique initiative designed to bring contemporary dance experiences to regional communities. Having never heard of the project I am intrigued as to what outlets would be interested in covering the project. I have broadened my knowledge of regional media outlets through this campaign as the project originates from outback Australia. 

All in all, I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience so far and hope to continue gaining coverage on both campaigns. My confidence has been boosted seeing sectors of my campaign published and I am extremely delighted to be increasing my knowledge of media outlets throughout the country.

                                                     

                                                     The Rottofest 2013 Campaign

My first day at the Sunset!

It has finally come to the end, the final public relations unit before student life finishes forever! Before commencing my placement I can tell you I had a mixture of feelings. I mainly felt excited and nervous to see what my internship was going to bring, and what I new things I was going to learn.

I was Lucky enough to be accepted by the highly successful events company Sunset Events to complete my internship. Sunset events are a Perth based events management company.  Music, Culture, entertainment, arts and a good environment are the main attributes by such events are developed. Some of the major events executed by Sunset Events are Southbound, Stereosonic, Groovin the Moo, and Blues and Roots festival.  I had the opportunity to complete work experience previously with the company assisting with the event Creamfields, so It wasn’t completely unfamiliar territory I was stepping onto. My first day began at 10am and I met the lovely Angel who showed me around the workplace and introduced me to the small team of employees by which Sunset operates. To start with I was given a confidently agreement by which I needed to sign, something I had no problem with. I was not surprised to sign a document like this given the nature of the industry and the exclusive information that I could be entrusted with. It was then it hit me, this was the real world!

I was allocated my first task, Media Monitoring. To be quite honest I had absolutely no idea what this task entailed, which made me quite nervous and I started to think I was unprepared! However, Janelle put me at ease when she explained to me on what was expected. With Sunset events being responsible for many high profile national events, there would be a large amount of paid and non-paid for advertisements found in different print and online mediums. With scanning and monitoring different media for relevant events, it can give feedback on the publicity and coverage a particular festival or event currently has. PR, marketing and advertising play a huge role in generating ticket sales and overall knowledge of an event, and could be a detrimental effect on whether a event will be successful or not.  

As I have just started my internship I very much look forward to all my internship has to come in the future, and sharing my experiences of the “Real world” environment of the events industry!