Jumping for a Cause

Last week was a different kind of experience in the world of Public Relations. One of the Clients PPR look after is the Ronald McDonald House Charity (RMHC) which means being involved in all fundraising events that happen throughout the year. Last week RMHC brought back the Central Park Plunge for the second year after being extremely successful in 2015.

It was the duty for one of the PR consultants to make sure the media was there to capture specific events during the day to be featured on their outlets. One of the main focuses of RMHC this year were to two “Golden Oldies” (two 80-year-old women) who participated in the event to raise money for the Ronald McDonald House. These two ladies, Helen and Gloria have been volunteers for the Ronald McDonald House for over 25 years so it is a charity close to their hearts. The other focus was on the Gummery family, who participated in the cause by organising a team (Spence Patrol) to abseil for their 2-year-old Son Spencer who has been diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour and has been staying at the Ronald McDonald house for his treatment. Both the grannies and the “Spence Patrol” were to abseil 220 metres down the Central Park building on St George’s Terrace on Friday September 2^nd.

Fortunately, myself and the other intern were allowed to go with the PR Consultant and help her manage the media by making sure the event ran smoothly and all relevant information was captured. One of the most important media outlets that we had to manage was GWN7 as they were on a short time frame and had to capture, edit and post everything in a frame of 2 hours before it went live. The pressure for us as a PR team was to make sure the journalist didn’t leave due to time limitations and to make she wasn’t feeling stressed otherwise the story wouldn’t have run.

This was a different type of experience in the PR world for me. I had always known that making relationships with journalists and news outlets were important, however I had never experienced firsthand how to deal with the media in stressful situation and how to make sure they stayed calm during stressful times.

Coming in on the Monday morning after the event to hear stories were run on both Channel 9 and 10 and GWN7 as well as radio interviews on 6PR and 94.5.

While we were managing the media on sight, the team back at the office were creating a video to distribute online which managed to feature on WA today, The Age Online, Sydney Morning Herald, Mandurah mail and 2 national outlets; Canberra Times and Brisbane Times! As you can imagine, everyone in the office was extremely excited as all their hard work had paid off.

Now its time for me to write release regarding the event for GWN7!

Team Abseiling for Spence Patrol

Team abseiling down from level 100