#CelebratingChampions at the #WAISAwards

The WAIS Annual Dinner was held on Saturday the 15th of October, a special date on the WAIS calendar as it is an event held to recognise the outstanding performances of WAIS and Western Australian athletes throughout the 2015/16 scholarship period. This year it was held at HBF Stadium and encapsulated the theme of ‘Celebrating Champions’. Given this year was an Olympic/Paralympic year, this theme was extremely relevant in recognising all those athletes who had competed in Rio. Within WAIS there is a strong mantra that is reinforced to the athletes; that you do not have to be a winner to be a champion, being a champion is rather a behaviour. This idea is what was celebrated at the dinner.

Planning for this event began many months ago. Throughout this period I have had the opportunity to be involved. Meetings began on a monthly basis and became more frequent as the event drew nearer. Whilst my role in the planning was minor, I was able to witness everything that’s required to make such an event take place. In preparation the key aspects that I was involved with were the creation of video entertainment pieces for the night and writing articles for the WAIS website which informed people of the shortlist for each of the major awards. Additionally, on the night I was responsible for updating the WAIS social media with all the award winners.

The creation of video entertainment pieces was a very lengthy process which could be likened to the formation of any video for a PR campaign. Each video piece had a different message behind it; either informative pieces on the shortlisted athletes for the WAIS Athlete of the Year award, or videos centring around the concept of ‘Celebrating Champions’. The opening ‘Celebrating Champions’ video was the most complex of the videos, involving speaking to camera parts by athletes and coaches and archive footage. Planning for this began with the selection of individuals to be featured in the video, each was chosen as a result of their individual champion story. The athletes who were chosen were;

• Wheelchair basketball athlete Brad Ness, who competed at his fifth Paralympic Games this year.
• Pole vaulter Elizaveta Parnov, who sustained an injury in the lead up to Rio taking her out of contention for Australian team selection.
• Mother daughter duo, Kaylia and Christine Stanton. Christine was an Australian netball and high jump athlete and is now a WAIS Hall of Champions member, whilst Kaylia is the next generation of Australian netball, currently playing in the West Coast Fever after having represented Australia at the Netball World Youth Cup in 2013.
• Andrew Jackson, one of the cycling coaches at WAIS.

The speaking parts completed by these individuals were shot across a two day filming period. I had the opportunity of witnessing Liz Parnov and Brad Ness’ filming on one of these days. It took roughly an hour of filming with each athlete including general training footage and speaking to camera. This process was very interesting to watch, from the setup of equipment, to the collection of footage and the editing to form the eventual production of an exceptional video. When producing professional quality, I believe that it is essential that you employ a highly experienced professional to achieve the desired outcome.

The second part of the process for creating these videos was the collection of archive footage. This is an aspect that I was heavily involved in, spending many hours scrolling through YouTube to find the footage we were after. When using footage off of YouTube I have learnt that you need to be very careful with how you use it. As the videos we were producing were only going to be viewed at the WAIS Annual Dinner and on no other occasion, we could use many clips. Some footage was more difficult to obtain, such as the Olympic and Paralympic footage, as there was restrictions placed on the use of the footage by Channel 7. Once all of the footage was collected for the videos, it was sent off to a video editor who worked through it and produced all the videos that were required on the event night.

I found the experience of being behind the scenes of the production of these videos to be truly insightful. It made me realise just how much work goes into a two minute video and also how many people are required to achieve a professional result. Whilst the creation of video for public relations campaigns is quite costly, there is no question about the value of doing so. If videos are produced to a high quality they can be very successful in conveying the desired message.

The night of the event saw hundreds of invitees arrive and find their seats within a beautifully decorated HBF Stadium arena. Once the night commenced, speeches took place followed by the individual introduction of each Olympian and Paralympian in attendance. These athletes walked through the middle of the crowd and onto the stage where they were celebrated for their achievements with a standing ovation. This aspect of the night was by far my favourite, whilst it was simple, it was very effective in conveying the ‘Celebrating Champions’ theme. It put a smile on my face to see all the people I had been researching about over the last few months standing there, getting the recognition they deserve. The athletes who stood out to me the most were Paralympic sailing gold medallists Russell Boaden and Colin Harrison who paraded their gold medals alongside their Australian Paralympic Team blazers.

As the night continued speeches were made and awards were announced. Directly following each awards announcement I was required to post an infographic which had been supplied to me, with the winners name on it, to both Instagram and Twitter to acknowledge those award winners within the greater WAIS community. All images that were posted in the lead up to and during the WAIS Annual Dinner were accompanied by the hashtags, #CelebratingChampions and #WAISAwards. This strategy was effective in associating the images to that particular event. They also meant that event attendees or anybody posting about the event could use the same hashtags and all social media posts using these hashtags could then be seen in the one place. This was particularly useful the next day when a number of images and posts were shared across the WAIS social media accounts.

Overall I found that the WAIS Annual Dinner ran very smoothly, thanks to the immense amount of planning which took place before the 15th of October. Being future PR professionals it is essential that we gather an understanding of all aspects of public relations and I believe that this event enabled me to learn not only about event management, but also about video production and social media strategies. This insight is also a true reflection that one PR activity may involve many different aspects of public relations whether it is obvious or indirectly.