Could you be the next Intern at Venn?

My time at Venn is nearly up, I will complete my internship on the 29^th of May. This year on top of my university studies I followed a dream of mine to become a qualified Yoga teacher and during my training it became extremely obvious that teaching Yoga is how I want to spend the rest of my life. Because of this I have resigned from my position at Venn in order to put my full heart and soul into teaching Yoga.

I realise that what you have just read isn’t exactly related to Public Relations or to you as Public Relations students and so allow me to make the connection. Because I have given up my position the position is now open to another intern and applications are currently open!

During my time at Venn I was given many responsibilities and allowed far more creative freedom than I ever hoped I could be given as an intern. I completed tasks such as;

• Creating blog posts, Facebook posts, Instagram posts and E-news posts. All of which I was for the most part allowed to come up with my own creative ways of getting a message across through my words. 
• I helped to plan events and the themes behind them, this was really enjoyable. Helping to run the actual events was great experience as well.
•  I was given the responsibility of all the media monitoring and the maintenance of these files.
• I was given the opportunity to create my own promotion ideas in line with the opening of the new Laneway entrance, for this I chose to hold a 2 for 1 coffee deal, which ended up being quite successful. For this I was required to carry out the promotion from start to finish, which saw me handing out coffee coupons to workers one morning.
• I was given the task of creating a media release for many of the events held during my time as intern and compiling databases of relevant media publication contacts to approach with the release.

All in all I have had a BLAST to say the least and there is always plenty of opportunities to unwind after events and have more of a social time with the other Venn staff members. The other office staff are a wonderful bunch of people, all very passionate about Venn which makes it a lively office culture to be a part of.

If you wish to apply follow this link

http://www.venn.net/marketing_intern_opportunity_at_venn

Good luck to you all for finishing up your internships and completing your reports!

Amy Taylor

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Organising a ‘soft opening’ 101

Venn’s laneway is now open! Coming up to the opening Desi and Jade made it clear that they wanted to have a soft opening for the lane way. I was unfamiliar with this term and what it meant and so after learning about it I thought I’d share it with all of you.

Basically had Venn strongly publicised the laneway opening they would have attracted large crowds to the café for the day of opening and possible subsequent days afterwards, they would have been unable to handle the extra business with the current capacity of staff.

So it was decided by Desi and Jade that we should have a soft opening, meaning we didn’t publicise a specific date of opening. This way we spread the larger amount of interest out over a longer period of time as opposed to having everyone bombard the new area on its first day of opening (especially when teething problems are sure to occur).

It also means we can have an opening promotion a week or so after the lane way has been running so we know how many extra staff may be needed to handle the extra coffees being sold during the promotion.

I have still created a media release and it is being sent off to different publications and blogs this week, having a soft opening means that these publications can still feature Venn’s new laneway weeks from now and it won’t be ‘old news’ so to speak because there was never a date publicised for when laneway opened. Also there will still be people unaware of the new area.

On top of this Venn is waiting on gaining permission for people to drink alcohol in the new area, so there will be a second more official opening once this liquor license has passed.

It initially seemed odd to me to not tell anyone when the lane way would be opening , but in hindsight it was definitely a smart thing to do considering the situation!

Amy Taylor

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Big Responsibilities

Venn is in the midst of exciting times. On the 16th of April Venn's new laneway entrance is opening and available for use. The entrance opens right into Raine Square outside the new Bank west building and will include more seating for the café to use. Currently the public has to walk down Queen Street in order to find Venn, this new entrance is going to mean that many people currently unaware of Venn are going to stumble across it.

I have been given the responsibility of creating the publicity plan for the lane way opening. This will involve me creating the plan but also putting it into action including: creating a media release with appropriate angles, approaching certain media outlets with the plan, creating a blog post, Facebook post and Instagram post about the lane way opening and coming up with a promotion on coffee or food to celebrate the opening.

At university we gain a huge amount of experience in creating PR plans, but the plan is completely useless until it’s put into action. We don’t just finish the plan and then file it away (or drop it in our unit coordinators pigeon hole) we have to then follow it and put it into action. It will be a huge learning curve to actually have to approach these media outlets but I'm looking forward to going through the motions with it all.

I’ve already come up with a few good publicity ideas but I’ll save explaining them until I actually know they are going to go through.

Amy Taylor
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Instagram, the trials and tribulations.

Venn is new to Instagram. The idea behind joining was very much to give an inside sight into the day to day running of Venn and everything that is going on. It was decided that the Instagram should not just be reserved for the marketing manager or the PR intern, we should allow all employees to access it and post things.

This was a really cool concept, the owners of Venn (Desi and Jade) are very much into the idea that the staff should be able to post pictures of new products/drinks as well as pictures of themselves having fun at work. However we found everyone was a little Instagram shy and largely short on time, so we found that the Venn instagram was being flooded with pictures of new shop products and little else. Also the posts were not equal and all were very different in style, some people embraced hash tags and captions, others would just post a photo.

This lead to me being given the task of preparing 'the Instragram Guidelines'. This document will make it clear what employees have to do to make a post, for example; everyone must use the tag #vennperth and write an appropriate caption explaining the picture.

Also i put forward the idea of a each department having a certain day to make a post. This idea was to avoid too many posts being made on one day and none on others.

I'm currently drafting up the guidelines and I'll be finalizing them next week, until then the Venn Instagram is still a bit unorganized but if you are interested you can follow it @vennperth.

Amy
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Perth: The new Melbourne!

Perth is currently under going a bit of a face lift. The surgery involves a bit of a nip and tuck and an injection in the form of fun. By this I mean (and I'm sure many of you have seen for yourselves) small, kooky, fun and stylish new bars and restaurants are popping up everywhere. For example; The Mechanics Institute, El Publico, The Cheeky Sparrow ,Canton lounge and bar and Venn.

This semester I have the absolute pleasure of completing my PR work experience unit at Venn Gallery Perth. Venn much like the name suggests is a combination of overlapping concepts like a Venn diagram. There is a bar+cafe, art gallery and a cute design shop (http://www.venn.net/), if you haven't checked it out yet and you are into art and good coffee I highly recommend you pop in!

I have been completing an internship at Venn since September 2012 and during this time I've completing many tasks including; media release writing, blog writing, Facebook post writing, planning and running events, taking photos at events and of things for the blog, creating competitions and promotions and handling all the media monitoring.

Here are some past examples of blog posts I have written;
http://venn.net/morning_quickie
http://venn.net/burger_appreciation
http://venn.net/a_venn_summer
http://venn.net/patrick_doherty_-_new_works_available_in_stockroom
http://venn.net/new_years_garden_party
http://venn.net/open_house_has_hit_perth
http://venn.net/creative_chef_chris_featured_in_the_west
http://venn.net/saturday_brekky

This week on Thursday night Venn is having a gallery exhibition opening, gallery opening events are not only a rewarding experience opportunity but massive amounts of fun! Before the event the planning and setting up is a lot of work, but once the guests and artists arrive it’s time to relax and have a couple of drinks (and in my case take some photos of the event).

Amy Taylor
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