The livALIVE Media Launch – My Experience in the Up’s and Down’s of Event Planning

While the picture above is perhaps more relevant to wedding planners it rings true in a sense for a media launch because when you’re planning an event you have to think of EVERYTHING. The pressure to do this is tenfold when it is a media launch – your job is to secure coverage and that is determined entirely by the success of the event you hold.

My second week at Linc centred on the launch of the livALIVE campaign. The process was undoubtedly an interesting one. It began with documents – a lot of them – that needed to be written, proofed and then proofed again. I was responsible in large part for the action plan along with proofing and fact checking - an undervalued part of the process I feel. If the media were to come across an untrue statistic or statement, the brand might have been in the paper for all the wrong reasons and as we savvy PR folk know, it is an absolute fallacy that ‘all publicity is good publicity’.

Just ask any of the cast members of Jersey Shore. They may be very public.. But their reputations aren’t exactly favourable!

As with every event, what could go wrong did go wrong – the most notable instance of this being when the key speaker pulled out the day before. It was a mad rush to find a replacement and update everything according to the last minute change, but we got there.

The event itself was hectic but enjoyable and produced a reasonable result. Unfortunately, a breaking news story involving an 80km police chase dominated the news that night. As a direct result, the camera crews that the PR girls had spent several hours talking to that morning, who had promised coverage, did not show up. This is the dilemma of every PR launch – the news for the day can turn at any moment from ‘slow’ to ‘breaking’. However, coverage was received in The West (online and print) and on Perthnow along with several Community News stories.

Another important lesson learnt that day for me was the difficulty of dealing with clients. Despite the immense effort the team put into the event, the client felt it was not enough and that the event had been an expensive failure. To combat this, I was asked to prepare a document detailing the outcomes of the launch (part of which can be seen below).

PR Valuing is a point of contention for many PR pro’s. Most resent the practise as it reduces the value of PR to a monetary figure which can’t ever be accurately recorded. A reputation is a collection of societal impressions; not a number. Yet sometimes we resort to a table with dollars in it to show a client who might not be able to grasp it any other way. It is another one of the unfortunate quandaries that each PR person will encounter at some point. It is worth remembering that the true value is far greater than what any bean counter might think. Having a good reputation means much more – I read recently that 51 percent of people punish or reward a company based on their perception of that company’s corporate personality. Ask an accountant to put a dollar figure to that..

Well that’s me for the week – hope everyone is having fun at their placements still!

Beth Caniglia

Do you take sugar and milk with that?

Hi all, I hope everything is going well for all of you with your placements and/or report writing.

It's been a while but the other week I made a trip into Subiaco to help out at the media launch for the annual MS Musical (Les Miserables). The launch was held at Perth Modern School and was a great opportunity to work outside of the office and away from the desk and computer and to see a bit more about this dimension of public relations.

It was a pretty interesting and eye opening experience, I was basically doing little things such as carrying things to the kitchen (I finally found out what the copious amount of alcohol in the office storeroom was for!), running around campus sticking up posters indicating where to go from the parking lots, sticking up posters of the musical around the venue and making coffee and tea. It might not have been very exciting sort of stuff that I got to do but hey I thought it was a great experience and doing these sort of things is still part of working in events management and in the PR industry. There were some speeches by the MS Society CEO and the musicals director, lots of cast and crew photos taken and generally a really fun, positive, almost celebratory sort of atmosphere.

Is it just me or does it seem like it takes so much more time to organise and prepare an event such as this but when the day comes, it flies by so fast just like that and it's over?

I've also discovered that no matter how much you plan and organise there are still forces outside of your control and things don't always turn out the way you were expecting, for example unforeseen, uncontrollable circumstances (such as, I don't know, a shark attack?) will most definitely steal some media focus from your event/media launch. Nevertheless I did spot a few very professional and expensive looking cameras floating around during the launch.

I reckon the media launch is one of the highlights of my work placement at the MS Society so far. To cap it all off I had a lot of fun, got to try some yummy treats and as soon as I got home dropped into bed for a nap.

Ok, until the next time I post again, stay well!