Hey all
I officially finished my internship requirements with the Perth Heat Baseball club last week. This has been a great experience for me, allowing me to do something I love in an industry that I am passionate about. Whilst I have completed my 20 days, I have decided that I will still assist the Perth Heat when I can during the season. I enjoyed my time in the office, and am committed towards ensuring that the communication plan that I drafted in place see's its way through a full implementation. It has been nice already seeing some of my suggestions included into regular operations.
It was also useful to work with other interns at the Perth Heat. We were all new to the organisation so we fed off each others confidence to create work that was of a high standard.
Here are some of the key things that I took out of my internship experience
1. Not all organisations are the same - I was lucky that I found myself in a very relaxed environment. On my first day I showed up in dress pants and a business shirt, only to find that everyone at the organisation dressed casually in shorts and t-shirts. I also found on my first day that there were no direct working hours. I would get there at approximately 10am (as that is when most staff seemed to arrive) and was encouraged to finish when I felt as though I had completed enough work for the day. A lot of the time this meant submitting work to my supervisor at 3-4pm and then going home. Eventually I adjusted to the nature of the office, and enjoyed the relaxed environment.
2. Communications is really a jack of all trades - I found that throughout my time at the Perth Heat I was completing work for a variety of departments, not just marketing and communications. Often I would do work relating to membership, sponsorship and even IT. I believe that the strong communication skills enabled me to complete these tasks head on and not be afraid about heading into unknown territory.
3. Sporting organisations are often hectic and detail focused - I know this may seem like a bit of a contradiction with my first point, but despite the relaxed nature of the office it was still a busy place, especially in the last few weeks leading up to the season. At times the office was more of a revolving door for meetings and briefings with clients. There were a number of occasions where I was the only one in the office, and had to handle phone calls and deliveries, and this was simply another new experience that I enjoyed. There is also a high attention to detail in the communication that is put out by sporting organisations.
(There was meant to be a photo here of me with the team, but there was an issue with the camera. I will still endeavour to get this photo for my own sake.)
So now that my internship is over with, and my final semester almost over too, I feel as though I am ready for the workplace. Sure I will miss the relative ease of university life, but am very excited about the challenges ahead and the opportunities that will present themselves.
For the last time
Simon
Showing posts with label Sport. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sport. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
A Night out at the Ballpark
Hey Everyone
I only have a few more days left at my internship with the Perth Heat. I have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunities presented and am excited about seeing what impact my actions have on the brand visibility of the Perth Heat.
The season is only 10 days away now, and so a lot of my recent work has gone into game day initiatives and the various communication elements involved in preparing for a game night with the Perth Heat. For this post, I want to just give you guys a quick insight into the planning and implementation of game nights, and what exactly goes on. The following is a list (in order) of the tasks undertaken by communication staff prior to the Perth Heats first pre season game last Thursday night.
1. Confirm and allocate sponsor attendance
The Perth Heat have over 50 corporate partners, many of whom will regularly attend games at the "diamond lounge" (equivalent to a corporate box at the footy). It is the job of the commercial manager to organise which sponsors will be in attendance (mainly via phone communication), and begin allocating space in the diamond lounge, as well as prior transport for corporate partners.
2. Create social media and PA announcment schedule
One of the unique experiences of a baseball game is the degree to which PA announcements are used. As well as updating the play and score, PA announcements and video boards are able to be used by sponsors to promote their product to fans in attendance. Each sponsor has a policy regarding PA announcements written into their agreement with Perth Heat. A lot of the food trucks at the game for example, expect at least 1 social media mention during the game(https://twitter.com/PerthHeat/status/522724507622973440).
A few of the sponsors also sponsor game events such as Home Run's and Foul Ball's so it has to be ensured that these are conveyed over the PA announcment
3. Confirm first pitch, and 7th inning stretch entertainment
This was not included in pre-season matches, but is still an important part of the game night event operations. The right to throw out the first pitch is usually given to corporate sponsors to raffle off, whilst little league junior players are given an opportunity to run out onto the field during the middle of the 7th inning (much like what is done at AFL and Cricket matches). It is important there is a clear understanding of who is doing what, and having a strict schedule of when it will occur.
4. Finalizing Media Attendance
There is a press section allocated at the Barbagallo Ballpark. All games are streamed online, and broadcast through Sport FM radio station, so it is important to ensure that all equipment and facilities are set up and ready prior to the gates opening. Any journalists attending the game should have access to Wifi, and broadcast staff with the necessary equipment.
5. Finalise other arrangements with ground staff and team operations
The final step involved is to check that ground staff have completed their tasks, and the ballpark is in perfect condition to host game night. This step is really a means of checking off that all elements of the organization are ready for game night, not just communications
Then finally the lights are on, and the game begins. Luckily most of the hard work is done, so most staff can sit back and enjoy the game. However from a communications point of view, there are still a few things involved in game night opperations.
1. Ensuring all stakeholders are satisfied
This is really a job for all members of the Perth Heat organisation. Generally speaking the commercial manager will spend the game night in the Diamond Lounge with the corporate partners with the General Manager. Other non-event staff will hang out at the members bar, talking to Perth Heat members to ensure everyone is enjoying themselves. Communication staff are encouraged to do this also, but with more of a focus towards the press section of the stadium, ensuring that the media have everything they need to cover the game.
2. Live Social Media updating
One of the main aspects of game day for communications staff is to live tweet matches. The rule of thumb is usually to update the score at the end of each inning, or when a run is scored by either team. https://twitter.com/PerthHeat/status/523106417289338881
An effort should also be made to see if anyone else is using social media at the ground, and to retweet and engage with them using the official account.
3. Run Game-Day competitions and initatives
Usually there will be a few competitions run for fans attending the game. Prize packs are often given to fans who catch foul balls. One new competition that was trialled during the pre season game was a "find the mascot" competition. It was posted on twitter that the first fan to get a photo with the Perth Heat mascot (who was hidden somewhere in the ballpark) would win a prize. A lot of the time sponsors (such as monster ball or Hog's breath) will bring their own mascot to games to run similar competitions, and these are all outlined in the individual sponsor agreements.
So that is just a bit of insight into what goes into game nights at the Perth Heat. I found there was a lot of stuff that I had learnt in units such as PR Techniques and PR Media that I was able to apply to this situation. I hope that some of you found this post interesting, and may even check out a Perth Heat game sometime this summer.
Till next time
Simon
Oh, and for your information the Perth Heat won the game 9-2
I only have a few more days left at my internship with the Perth Heat. I have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunities presented and am excited about seeing what impact my actions have on the brand visibility of the Perth Heat.
The season is only 10 days away now, and so a lot of my recent work has gone into game day initiatives and the various communication elements involved in preparing for a game night with the Perth Heat. For this post, I want to just give you guys a quick insight into the planning and implementation of game nights, and what exactly goes on. The following is a list (in order) of the tasks undertaken by communication staff prior to the Perth Heats first pre season game last Thursday night.
(The Calm Before the Storm.......Which turned into an actual storm on Saturday Night)
The Perth Heat have over 50 corporate partners, many of whom will regularly attend games at the "diamond lounge" (equivalent to a corporate box at the footy). It is the job of the commercial manager to organise which sponsors will be in attendance (mainly via phone communication), and begin allocating space in the diamond lounge, as well as prior transport for corporate partners.
2. Create social media and PA announcment schedule
One of the unique experiences of a baseball game is the degree to which PA announcements are used. As well as updating the play and score, PA announcements and video boards are able to be used by sponsors to promote their product to fans in attendance. Each sponsor has a policy regarding PA announcements written into their agreement with Perth Heat. A lot of the food trucks at the game for example, expect at least 1 social media mention during the game(https://twitter.com/PerthHeat/status/522724507622973440).
A few of the sponsors also sponsor game events such as Home Run's and Foul Ball's so it has to be ensured that these are conveyed over the PA announcment
3. Confirm first pitch, and 7th inning stretch entertainment
This was not included in pre-season matches, but is still an important part of the game night event operations. The right to throw out the first pitch is usually given to corporate sponsors to raffle off, whilst little league junior players are given an opportunity to run out onto the field during the middle of the 7th inning (much like what is done at AFL and Cricket matches). It is important there is a clear understanding of who is doing what, and having a strict schedule of when it will occur.
4. Finalizing Media Attendance
There is a press section allocated at the Barbagallo Ballpark. All games are streamed online, and broadcast through Sport FM radio station, so it is important to ensure that all equipment and facilities are set up and ready prior to the gates opening. Any journalists attending the game should have access to Wifi, and broadcast staff with the necessary equipment.
5. Finalise other arrangements with ground staff and team operations
The final step involved is to check that ground staff have completed their tasks, and the ballpark is in perfect condition to host game night. This step is really a means of checking off that all elements of the organization are ready for game night, not just communications
Then finally the lights are on, and the game begins. Luckily most of the hard work is done, so most staff can sit back and enjoy the game. However from a communications point of view, there are still a few things involved in game night opperations.
1. Ensuring all stakeholders are satisfied
This is really a job for all members of the Perth Heat organisation. Generally speaking the commercial manager will spend the game night in the Diamond Lounge with the corporate partners with the General Manager. Other non-event staff will hang out at the members bar, talking to Perth Heat members to ensure everyone is enjoying themselves. Communication staff are encouraged to do this also, but with more of a focus towards the press section of the stadium, ensuring that the media have everything they need to cover the game.
2. Live Social Media updating
One of the main aspects of game day for communications staff is to live tweet matches. The rule of thumb is usually to update the score at the end of each inning, or when a run is scored by either team. https://twitter.com/PerthHeat/status/523106417289338881
An effort should also be made to see if anyone else is using social media at the ground, and to retweet and engage with them using the official account.
(Guess the question correctly, and win a photo with a man in a dog suit!!!!)
3. Run Game-Day competitions and initatives
Usually there will be a few competitions run for fans attending the game. Prize packs are often given to fans who catch foul balls. One new competition that was trialled during the pre season game was a "find the mascot" competition. It was posted on twitter that the first fan to get a photo with the Perth Heat mascot (who was hidden somewhere in the ballpark) would win a prize. A lot of the time sponsors (such as monster ball or Hog's breath) will bring their own mascot to games to run similar competitions, and these are all outlined in the individual sponsor agreements.
So that is just a bit of insight into what goes into game nights at the Perth Heat. I found there was a lot of stuff that I had learnt in units such as PR Techniques and PR Media that I was able to apply to this situation. I hope that some of you found this post interesting, and may even check out a Perth Heat game sometime this summer.
Till next time
Simon
Oh, and for your information the Perth Heat won the game 9-2
Monday, October 6, 2014
Competing in Perth's Sporting Market
Hi all
Over half way through my internship with the Perth Heat, and really enjoying the wide array of opportunities it has presented me with. Things are starting to heat up (pun intended) in the office as well, with the official season launch a mere 4 weeks away.
My primary task during my internship has been to draft, and implement a full scale communication policy for the Perth Heat, as they did not have a current policy. For this blog post I want to talk about what I consider to be the main obstacles and opportunities for developing sporting brands in Western Australia. To do this, I have categorised the Perth Heats main competition into 3 categories (team based sports only).
1. Dominant Perth Sporting Brands
- West Coast Eagles (AFL)
- Fremantle Dockers (AFL)
- Perth Scorchers/Western Warriors (Cricket)
2. Emerging Perth Sporting Brands
- Perth Wildcats (Basketball)
- Perth Glory (Soccer)
- Western Force (Rugby Union)
- West Coast Fever (Netball)
3. Niche Perth Sporting Brands
- Perth Heat (Baseball)
- Perth Thunder (Ice Hockey)
- WA Reds (Rugby League)
Obviously the long term goal would be to become a dominant brand, but realistically that would take at least 10-20 years of solid following. The goal therefore is to become an emerging sporting brand, and build on that. Possible obstacles towards this goal include.
Obstacles
1. Lack of Funding - Perth Heat have a limited budget, and do not allocate a lot of this towards media and communication. This means that traditional advertising (print, radio, tv) is not really an option. With the rise of social media this is not as much of an obstacle as it was 10 years ago, but it still places a limitation on the degree of brand success you can achieve
2. Concentration of Media Availability - If you ever watch the nightly mainstream media news, you will notice a pattern in its reporting of sports based stories. AFL gets first billing, followed by Cricket and then summaries of all the Golf, Tennis, Motorsport and Soccer news are jammed into the remaining 2 minutes of the segment. The last piece of Baseball news that was reported on mainstream news, was the Perth Heats 2013 Premiership Win..........which was in March.
It is not all doom and gloom however, especially given Perth's recent history of adopting and re-invigorating a number of key sports (I recommend people look at the history of the Perth Glory and Perth Wildcats during the mid 2000's). A number of opportunities do exist for the Perth Heat to develop a strong local brand.
Oppurtunities
1. Get Involved in the Perth Community - Any brand wanting to gain acceptance in the Perth market, should be actively involved in Perths Event community. This week the Perth Heat have been set up at the Perth Royal Show, and have seen a steady increase in ticket sales and membership as a result
Over half way through my internship with the Perth Heat, and really enjoying the wide array of opportunities it has presented me with. Things are starting to heat up (pun intended) in the office as well, with the official season launch a mere 4 weeks away.
My primary task during my internship has been to draft, and implement a full scale communication policy for the Perth Heat, as they did not have a current policy. For this blog post I want to talk about what I consider to be the main obstacles and opportunities for developing sporting brands in Western Australia. To do this, I have categorised the Perth Heats main competition into 3 categories (team based sports only).
1. Dominant Perth Sporting Brands
- West Coast Eagles (AFL)
- Fremantle Dockers (AFL)
- Perth Scorchers/Western Warriors (Cricket)
2. Emerging Perth Sporting Brands
- Perth Wildcats (Basketball)
- Perth Glory (Soccer)
- Western Force (Rugby Union)
- West Coast Fever (Netball)
3. Niche Perth Sporting Brands
- Perth Heat (Baseball)
- Perth Thunder (Ice Hockey)
- WA Reds (Rugby League)
Obviously the long term goal would be to become a dominant brand, but realistically that would take at least 10-20 years of solid following. The goal therefore is to become an emerging sporting brand, and build on that. Possible obstacles towards this goal include.
Obstacles
1. Lack of Funding - Perth Heat have a limited budget, and do not allocate a lot of this towards media and communication. This means that traditional advertising (print, radio, tv) is not really an option. With the rise of social media this is not as much of an obstacle as it was 10 years ago, but it still places a limitation on the degree of brand success you can achieve
2. Concentration of Media Availability - If you ever watch the nightly mainstream media news, you will notice a pattern in its reporting of sports based stories. AFL gets first billing, followed by Cricket and then summaries of all the Golf, Tennis, Motorsport and Soccer news are jammed into the remaining 2 minutes of the segment. The last piece of Baseball news that was reported on mainstream news, was the Perth Heats 2013 Premiership Win..........which was in March.
It is not all doom and gloom however, especially given Perth's recent history of adopting and re-invigorating a number of key sports (I recommend people look at the history of the Perth Glory and Perth Wildcats during the mid 2000's). A number of opportunities do exist for the Perth Heat to develop a strong local brand.
Oppurtunities
1. Get Involved in the Perth Community - Any brand wanting to gain acceptance in the Perth market, should be actively involved in Perths Event community. This week the Perth Heat have been set up at the Perth Royal Show, and have seen a steady increase in ticket sales and membership as a result
(This Photo was taken during one of the quieter parts of the day...)
2. Utilise Online Communication - This has been at the forefront of Perth Heat's communication efforts, in order to boost the awareness of the brand. In 2012, one of our rival teams the Melbourne Aces created a viral video (through the help of an advertising agency) that sparked a huge increase in Baseball in Melbourne, and resulted in International News Coverage.
(I will let you guys decide whether or not you think this video is real or not)
Without giving too much away, there are similar plans in motion to create a video for the Perth Heat in order to create viral interest in Baseball in Perth.
The Perth Heat have their first preseason game in around 4 weeks at the Barbagallo Ballpark. It is a great time to be in the office, given the players will regularly come into the office to talk with everyone, and there is a general sense of excitement. Having never attended a Baseball game in my life, there is also a personal sense of excitement about the launch of the 2014/2015 season.
Till next time
Simon Kerrigan
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Take me out to the...........ball game?
I figure I should probably start my first blog off by introducing myself. My name is Simon Kerrigan, I study Marketing and Public Relations at Curtin University, and like most here I am in my final semester of what has felt like much more than your standard 3 year degree. I think every PR student has their own field or industry in which they are passionate about, and for me that industry is sport. It is therefore no great surprise that I jumped at the opportunity offered to intern for Perth Heat Baseball Club.
Yes that's right Perth has a Baseball club, and a very successful one at that. There is a noticeable lack of awareness about Baseball in Australia, which explains why the Perth Heat were hiring communication interns, ideally to correct this fault. A lot of younger people (myself included) may not be aware that there was a period in time where Baseball was very popular in Australia, and during the 1990's, the Perth Heat would regularly sell out its 5,000 seat venue at the no longer existent Parry Fields. Perth Heat are currently in their 25th Year of operation, and a lot of the PR efforts are related to emphasizing this history.
Nowadays the Perth Heat compete in the Australian Baseball League (ABL) which runs during the Australian summer from November-February. The games are played out at Thornlies Barbagallo Ballpark, where the Perth Heat have won 3 of the past 4 championships. On top of this, the Perth Heat play host to a number of internationally renowned players who use the league as pre-season training for the American Major League Baseball Season (MLB) which starts up at the conclusion of the Australian Season in March.
(Not a bad place to eat your lunch on a nice day)
I strongly believe there is great potential for a re-ignited interest in Baseball in Perth, and Australia. The largest reason I have for this belief is the Perth population, and how this sports crazy city is willing to adopt any team or cause it believes represents Perth well. The recent resurgence of Basketball and the Perth Wildcats I believe provides a solid framework for new sporting brands to develop.
The business side of the club is run on-site at Barbagallo Ballpark, in an often crowded back-office behind the pitch. At times the Office can feel like a revolving door, with staff constantly going to and from meetings with various sponsors, players and coaches. The Perth Heat are also in control of "Baseball WA" which organises and manages the wide array of local competitions and little league Baseball in Perth. A majority of the staff working at the club are from American Colleges, so it has been interesting working with them, and figuring more out about their culture.
The first task that I was given in my role was to draft a Communications Plan for the Perth Heat, seeing as they did not currently have one. I will go into more specifics about the role of communication and PR at the Perth Heat in later posts. This post was more or less an introduction into who the Perth Heat are as an organisation, and what it is like working in the office initially. (Please note there is a slight delay between when this post was written, and when I have posted it).
Feel free to leave a comment asking me about my experience thus far, and I will endeavor to get back as soon as possible.
Till next time
Simon
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Being a good sport Part 4
So this is it! My last day of work experience was finally here, but I still had a few things that needed to be finished. The Vice Chancellor's shield presentation is this Friday and I had to make sure that everything for the event was finalised and triple checked!
VIPs had responded to their invitations, gourmet food platters have been orded, trophy has been polished... Now for the hard part.. the run sheet and the speach notes! Every minute of this event has to count, my boss Stuart carefully informed me. We have an olympian hockey roo presenting the award and a highly acclaimed professor opening the event... haha no pressure right?
On the up side this event has been run every year for a long time, so let's have a big hooray for templates! But still my margin for error was ridiculously small if that. The hardest part, like writing anything was simply getting started, then the next task was making sure that every minute of this event had been planned and nothing had been missed. I think I have read my run sheet about 50 times so far, going over it with a fine tooth comb each time.
When I was done, Stuart then went over everything while I sat there and stressed. But luckily for me he seemed quite impressed and did not find any errors. YAY!
My last task to finalise was much more relaxing, I had to teach Stuart about the 'insights' section of our facebook pages. Or the 'weird swiggly graphs' that have no meaning according to him. I explained that when a status or an event is posted we can monitor how many people engaged with our post and what our reach was. He sat there and looked extremely lost. It took a while for him to understand that it is a great way to guage the successfulness of the facebook page. When he did finally get it, he was like ooooooh so that's what you have been doing every morning, I thought you were playing some kind of game. *sigh*
One thing I have definately noticed is that although he knew social media was vital when communicating with his target publics he really had no idea how to monitor and evaluate whether it's actually working. To me this seems crazy but it makes me wonder how many business out there are doing much the same thing...
I hope you all had as much fun as I did!
Bye for now
Jade
VIPs had responded to their invitations, gourmet food platters have been orded, trophy has been polished... Now for the hard part.. the run sheet and the speach notes! Every minute of this event has to count, my boss Stuart carefully informed me. We have an olympian hockey roo presenting the award and a highly acclaimed professor opening the event... haha no pressure right?
On the up side this event has been run every year for a long time, so let's have a big hooray for templates! But still my margin for error was ridiculously small if that. The hardest part, like writing anything was simply getting started, then the next task was making sure that every minute of this event had been planned and nothing had been missed. I think I have read my run sheet about 50 times so far, going over it with a fine tooth comb each time.
When I was done, Stuart then went over everything while I sat there and stressed. But luckily for me he seemed quite impressed and did not find any errors. YAY!
My last task to finalise was much more relaxing, I had to teach Stuart about the 'insights' section of our facebook pages. Or the 'weird swiggly graphs' that have no meaning according to him. I explained that when a status or an event is posted we can monitor how many people engaged with our post and what our reach was. He sat there and looked extremely lost. It took a while for him to understand that it is a great way to guage the successfulness of the facebook page. When he did finally get it, he was like ooooooh so that's what you have been doing every morning, I thought you were playing some kind of game. *sigh*
One thing I have definately noticed is that although he knew social media was vital when communicating with his target publics he really had no idea how to monitor and evaluate whether it's actually working. To me this seems crazy but it makes me wonder how many business out there are doing much the same thing...
I hope you all had as much fun as I did!
Bye for now
Jade
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Being a good sport Part 3
In the lead up to the University Games coming events most of my job has been data entry and a lot of it. We need to know who tried out, who qualified for a team, who is coming to uni games etc. I was vaguely familiar with excel before I started my internship, but now I know it up-side down and side-ways so I guess that it has been a valuable learning experience.
I think, we forget sometimes that although an integral part of our jobs will be developing and implementing public relations strategies, most of our day-to-day tasks will be all the leg work done behind the scenes. And much to my dismay most of that will be data-entry. I do have some exciting news though, so far I have 152 people attending our University Games Information Session! I am quite impressed considering I only put up the posters and facebook event last week.
That's another thing I wish I had practised before I commenced this internship, poster making! Who knew it could be so challenging? Especially when I can "only use colours that use the least amount of ink" and I have to use the black and gold colours to match our branding... Not as easy as I thought it would be! The first few I tried to make looked like something right out of primary school. But practise makes perfect and I found the best thing was to look at other organisations' posters and get a rough idea of how they are supposed to look.
Getting the word around campus that Uni Games is back again was not as hard as I first thought. I did the usual run-around with posters, fliers, facebook events, website updates but I found the best tool by far was word-of-mouth! Most students seemed pretty keen to spread the word and get their friends involved also. The only problem I am having is weeding out the students who simply want to come along to Uni Games just to party and have no real interest in playing sport, but we are monitoring that pretty well by getting teams to meet up and practice. So we can monitor who is putting in the effort.
I would definitely say a big lesson I have learned is once you have spread the word as much as you can it is really important to wait and see how well it worked and where it can be improved for next time. Good observation and evaluation is really important and can teach you a great deal.
Bye for now!
Jade
I think, we forget sometimes that although an integral part of our jobs will be developing and implementing public relations strategies, most of our day-to-day tasks will be all the leg work done behind the scenes. And much to my dismay most of that will be data-entry. I do have some exciting news though, so far I have 152 people attending our University Games Information Session! I am quite impressed considering I only put up the posters and facebook event last week.
That's another thing I wish I had practised before I commenced this internship, poster making! Who knew it could be so challenging? Especially when I can "only use colours that use the least amount of ink" and I have to use the black and gold colours to match our branding... Not as easy as I thought it would be! The first few I tried to make looked like something right out of primary school. But practise makes perfect and I found the best thing was to look at other organisations' posters and get a rough idea of how they are supposed to look.
Getting the word around campus that Uni Games is back again was not as hard as I first thought. I did the usual run-around with posters, fliers, facebook events, website updates but I found the best tool by far was word-of-mouth! Most students seemed pretty keen to spread the word and get their friends involved also. The only problem I am having is weeding out the students who simply want to come along to Uni Games just to party and have no real interest in playing sport, but we are monitoring that pretty well by getting teams to meet up and practice. So we can monitor who is putting in the effort.
I would definitely say a big lesson I have learned is once you have spread the word as much as you can it is really important to wait and see how well it worked and where it can be improved for next time. Good observation and evaluation is really important and can teach you a great deal.
Bye for now!
Jade
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Being a good sport - Part 2
After all the data entry, photocopying, lecture drops and flyer runs the best part of my job has come along! Planning events for University Games, I am so excited! Uni Games as they are more commonly referred to are held each year in a capital city in Australia where each of the major universities compete in various sports and disciplines.
This year the games are in Adelaide, South Australia from the 23rd to the 28th of September. After doing lots of the nitty-gritty stuff the last few days, my next task includes planning an information session, planning a fundraiser event at a nightclub, promoting these events and making sure they run smoothly. I am thrilled because it is the first time during this experience I will be able to have a bigger role in the decision making about these events.
Honestly the biggest challenge I have had so far is learning how to make a good poster! It sounds really easy but to get it looking like a proper poster and not a primary school finger-painting is not as easy as I thought it would be. Other than that the response has been quite good so far, luckily for me Uni Games has quite a reputation in itself so I have not really had to try too hard to get our publics interested. The only hard part about the reputation is most students see it as a cheap holiday with their mates, to drink party and be merry. Essentially that is a part of it, but we also want to win some sporting events as well.
My next challenge will be to curb the reputation a bit, make it more about quality sporting than just partying. I will be working with the Elite Sporting Manager next week to discuss strategies and see if we can snare any state or national players to give Curtin a fighting chance.
Until next time,
Jade Fairbairn
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Being a good sport
Hello everyone!
A bit about me to start off, my name is Jade Fairbairn I am in my final year at Curtin University
The Curtin Stadium should be familiar to all of you as first and foremost a gym, and where we have our exams. But one of the first things I realised when I began my internship here is it provides the community much more then just that. Curtin Stadium offers inter-faculty sports programs that are free to students, plays host to the TSWA (Tertiary Sports Western Australia) tryouts and games, evening social sports available to the whole community and one program that definitely pulled my heart strings, the Pink Crusaders program.
Little did I know that here in our very own gym, there were two Accredited Exercise Physiologists, known to me as Bec and Paula committed to helping survivors of breast cancer get their strength back. On my first day Mark, ‘one of the big bosses’ as I like to refer to them approached me with a dilemma. Curtin Stadium has been offering the program hidden away in the ladies gym for a few years now, one of only five recovery programs available in WA, but not many people are aware it even exists. So Mark faced me with the challenge of preparing my first real media kit to spread the word of this program.
I met with Bec later that day and sat in on one of the classes, so I could meet the women and completely understand the program and how it has benefited them. As a woman myself, it was difficult to learn of their struggles. One lady said because she had a double mastectomy the last thing she wanted to do was go to a gym full of “posers” and “skinny barbie dolls”. After meeting with these women I realised their struggles were not just with self confidence levels but simple day-to-day tasks for example, collecting the washing took hours because they simply didn’t have the strength.
Here I was thinking my internship would be very black and white, planning and promoting sporting events. But I have since realised working in public relations you have to be prepared for those curve balls. We learn a great deal about how to connect with audiences and convey the messages of your client, we know the theory inside and out but putting it into practice is a whole different story.
I am thankful for this unit because now maybe I can shed light on this program so other women can find their inner and outer strength. Who knew public relations could be so rewarding for the soul? One of my first big lessons in this journey is never forget just how faceted your client can be. I will leave you with one of my favourite quotes, “Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality”, Nikos Kazantzakis.
Thanks for reading!
Jade
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)