Kicking it off at the Department of Sport and Recreation

Two weeks ago, I started my internship at the Department of Sport and Recreation (DSR). Before I started, I was feeling kind of anxious as I had no idea what to expect. But my anxieties were laid to rest on my first day, as everyone I met in the Department were so friendly and welcoming. The communications team (where I will be placed with over the coming weeks) is quite small, but they are all especially friendly, close and funny.

The past few weeks have been crazy, and I am learning so much. Amazingly, half of the stuff I have learnt is about filming and photography, which perfectly complements PR. This is due to the fact that my table is right next to the filming crew, so they sometimes take me to different events that they are filming at, such as the NAIDOC Netball Carnival, and I get to see what goes on behind-the-scenes in making a video. 

I have participated in the following PR-related tasks so far: media monitoring, writing a media release, proof-reading the reports about their different programs (which gave me a good insight into what the DSR does), and attending their event planning meetings, one of their media events and one of their media ops.

The media event I went to was about the announcement of DSR's new online planning tool for sports clubs. Not a lot of media attended this, as I believe that it had little news value to them. But it was interesting to note that the media, who did attend the event, were only interested in asking questions about the new Sports Stadium at Burswood-this was a completely different topic to what the media event was for. As my boss told me later on, this kind of thing happens quite often. 

The media op contrasted to the media event. The media op was about the State government injecting $7.2 million into 47 State sporting associations. It focused on inviting the media to the NIB sports stadium, where around 10 young athletes from local sporting clubs and the Sport and Recreation minister, Terry Waldron, would be there for the media to take photos and ask questions. Unlike the media event, the media op was more focused on the topic. The West Australian published the resulting story: https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/24468553/7-2m-kicked-in-to-sports-clubs/

(Behind the scenes of getting the right photo)

Every week, the DSR has a performance review meeting with all the different divisions within the department. What I found really refreshing was that, instead of using technology, they used an old-fashion pinboard, pieces of paper and coloured markers to keep track of what each division was up to. I really enjoyed the performance review meetings, as I got to see how the communications team contributed to the overall success of the Department.  

I look forward to seeing what else the DSR experience will bring me in the next few weeks.

Social media at Craigie Leisure Centre

Today I completed my final day of work experience at Craigie Leisure Centre and now only have one week remaining at the City of Joondalup before I finish my entire work placement experience for the semester. Helping out over the last couple of weeks at Craigie has been a great experience. The marketing and public relations activities are all based around promoting sports and leisure so there are always plenty of exciting things happening. I have also come in at a great time as Craigie is in the middle of implementing a lot of new changes to their branding and are updating the ways they use certain communication channels to reach the public.

Craigie has decided to update their website and develop more of an online presence in order to increase awareness about the centre as well as to build up their brand image in the eyes of the public.

In order to do this they are undertaking a large amount of research to see how customers are currently receiving information about the sports programs and classes offered by the center as well as how customers wish to receive such information. Craigie was able to collate this information by including the two questions at the top of enrolment forms that customers filled out to enrol in any group fitness class, to enrol in swimming school as well as booking forms for children’s swimming pool parties.

I spent a large portion of the day tallying up responses, entering them into an excel chart and creating graphs to view results.

Results showed that a majority of people had heard about programs through flyers in the center, the website and through friends (word of mouth). People said that their preferred method of hearing about upcoming events and new classes was through email or SMS.

After this I had a discussion with Rochelle, the head of the marketing team at Craigie who told me about their plans to revamp the company website so that it is more interactive and informative.

Craigie also uses Facebook to reach the public that they are aiming to update more often with photographs, status updates and information about upcoming events. While working on research into the publics preferred communication methods, they achieved one of their key performance indicators relating to the number of interactions they received on their Facebook page. It was interesting to hear key performance indicators being discussed within the context of a real company and realising that people working in public relations and marketing actually apply them to their day to day work. It was great to see that choosing key performance indicators to measure the success of strategies is not just a university exercise but something that we will actually be using in the workforce.

Overall I really enjoyed my time at Craigie. I spent most of my time working on analysing ways that Craigie can improve communication with their current customers and how they can improve their online profile to gain new customers. The leisure centre put a lot of effort into background research before making any changes and it was very interesting to be a part of this.

Next week will be my last post, after I complete my last day back at City of Joondalup on Monday, where I will summarise everything I learnt there.