If you have been following my blog of my internship in London, you will know I have mentioned my work on the lead up to The International Cheese Awards in Nantwich which is located a few hours drive north-west of London. I did not get to attend the show myself unfortunately but the feedback I got back was very helpful indeed.
The show was a great success, it was a busy and fast paced two day show, however like most things in life it needs major evaluating! This years show was the 118th event in the town of Nantwich so it already has a good background and history. The show was run over two days Tuesday the 26th of July and Wednesday the 27th. The first day was Trade Day for businesses looking to sell their products and the 27th was open to the public.
I found that it does seem that the interest in the show is declining by the media and public interest. As I was monitoring the posts on social media, I noticed on the lead up to the event that there were was not that much attention based on comments and likes on posts on a variety of social media platforms, which I thought was strange, as the event is supposed to be huge, plus there are many, many people out there that love cheese. I also think that there is much more communication efforts, techniques and strategies that are needed for the show in that when I contacted bloggers and magazines not many were familiar of when or where the show even was or what it involved (so that definitely lacks in communicative abilities by the event management of the show). However the media that I had contacted and told me they were attending came to the clients stand and got their goodie-bags and got to know the product. My manager also got a potential grocery store interested in the product however after delivering her pitch to them the week after did not go so well. (They were unhappy with pricing and some products etc).
I found that a lot of bloggers and media that did attend the show in previous years couldn't attend the show for reasons beyond control or had other commitments so maybe it was just quieter in terms of other events happening or maybe the event management and PR decided to cut back on event publicity this year overall. So to gain some more online feedback for our client I got in contact with two foodie bloggers (out of like 20 that I had tried). I sent them a cute little sample bag so that they could try them before the show and add to some of their cooking to post on social media.
So check out Taste Today's Instagram as she has produced some recipes from our clients cheese.
And if you're a cheese lover check out the ICA twitter for all the postings from all of the different dairy and cheese brands! It was a pleasure to be working on food brands!
As the work for the Clear Group has been a mixture of intensive non-stop work and also quieter days my experience gained from the company has been extremely eye-opening. Public relations is a really fun, exciting industry to work in, maybe it was just the environment I was working in, I even found the slower, more admin type jobs enjoyable that most others would think are boring, such as looking into mistakes on the clients webpage, as my manager said to me that their page once misspelled cheese, which surprised me, however being from an Eastern European background it was a mistake that could definitely happen. And of course the lots of researching I was required to do, it made the days go really fast but I did enjoy every single one of those days I was working for CG.
On my farewell, I knew that both the directors enjoyed their share of chocolates (as well as tea and coffee) so I went out and purchased some nice chocolates for them all and the directors got me a gift in return for my efforts, they are happy to all be a reference for work purposes for me and are very kind and caring people, I will always look back on this internship as a choice I will never forget.
Thanks for reading!
Jessica Abberton
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