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

Almost there and it feels like I've just begun

So I'm three weeks into my placement it feels like the learning has just begun! 
I'm so busy all the time that it feels like my head is about to explode sometimes. 

I was given a bit of a reality check yesterday when I was promptly reminded by one of the stakeholders that one of the trade shows I had been planning was only a month away! STRESSSS! 
I'm not usually one to let things get away from me but this one did in amongst all of the other work I've been doing like copy write and media releases. 

Needless to say I have spend the morning going through all of the forms and planning of what needs to be still done for the event.

I have also been handed another event by my supervisor, as the company is going through an App development at the moment, I have been given the task of planning the App launch for later next month. I'm loving the events planning that's been handed my way all the time as this is the area of PR that I love the most.

Another thing I have been doing this week is assisting with the edit of copy for the new website. Working closely with the Marketing team, a new product launch is been set in place and my job has been to write the copy for the website and assist in working with stakeholders on achieving what they want to be the desired image of the product to the industry.

As Imdex recently bought another company as part of an acquisition I have also been assisting with the communication to other stakeholders, shareholders and industry that this company is now part of the Imdex family.
This task is a lot more extensive than I thought! It involves not only communication the news with shareholders, employees and industry but also other organization such as the Tax Office and Financial institutions. Nevertheless I have been enjoying learning how to word letters and documents differently depending on who they are going to.

I am looking forward to my last week of placement and everything it has to offer and look forward to working closely with the PR team in the future.

Must.....meet.....deadline!!! So much research, so little time!

If there’s one thing I have learnt about working in a consultancy it’s that there is so much research to do and so little time to do it in! If you’re working in a non-for-profit organisation or a particular corporate industry then most often than not you will know your organisation inside and out.

Working in a public relations consultancy on the other hand means you have many clients and many organisations. The negative thing about this is that there is so much research to do especially if you are working with a completely new client!

On Tuesday at my prac placement at Shine Communications, I had the task of creating all the information to go on a website for one our clients. This client was a high end fashion and hair stylist who has a salon in Subiaco called Jas International. Our client wanted to create a website to create more publicity for his clients and give people more information about what he does.

Now I thought this was all very interesting but the only problem was I knew nothing about this client and knew nothing about high-end hairdressers! And I had to send everything to my supervisor to read by that afternoon!

I was given a list of things the client wanted included in his website such as information about the salon, where it’s located, style trends, products they offer and how to buy online.  I only had about 4 hours to do it all so got cracking right away because I didn’t want to let my supervisor down.

I started at 9:30 in the morning and straight away researched high-end salons in Australia, New York, London and Paris to find out how exactly they worded their information and the kind of style of writing they were using. I then had to research lots of different hair products, hair extensions, fashion trends, popular hair colours and styles, you name it - I researched it! I then had to try and take this knowledge and put it into sentences with a posh or luxurious flow to it due to the nature of the high-end salon – very difficult!

I had to use a lot of descriptive and creative language to position the readers of the website into feeling they would be in a high-end fashion and beauty palace if they were to visit the salon. I had to set the scene to give clients the idea that the treatment you’ll receive at this hair salon is like the treatment celebrities would receive if they were in Paris or Milan or New York.  Using descriptive language in everyday sentences is very hard but thankfully having done feature writing in one of my journalism units at university the task was a little bit easier.

Safe to say after those 4-5 long and stressful hours I pretty much knew everything there was to know about the latest fashion and trends in hair and beauty. I sent everything off to my supervisor about 2pm and she was happy with it, which I was stoked about. There were a few things that needed touching up and so I spent the rest of the afternoon chopping and changing bits of information until my supervisor and I were happy with it. I finished everything about 5:30pm and realised how exhausted I was.

My supervisor is a one-man show. She runs her consultancy all by herself with the help of only one other employee who is leaving next week. It just made me think “I don’t know how she does it!”

People that work in a consultancy must be bombarded with copious amounts of research they have to do before they are assigned any work for the clients. I have always wanted to work in a consultancy simply because I think I would get bored working for just one organisation. I like a bit of variation in what I do. However today showed me just how stressful working in a consultancy can be, especially when you are working with brand new clients!

At the same time though, consultancies normally only take on as many clients as they can handle. Receiving a brand new client is stressful at the start trying to find out everything you can about them, but I guess once this is done, and if you do a good job, they can potentially be one of your clients for many more years to come. Overall I guess working in a consultancy is pretty good, but today definitely made me think more about my future career choices!