Alright, yes I have left things extremely to the last minute, and will not longer make any more excuses for my complacency and lack of motivation. Right now, I would like to reflect on how I found my position at Colosoul being altered slightly, I had been doing my internship at Colosoul since April this year and was appointed the coordinator of their fashion show which was later dubbed Make Your Mark (or MYM), due to a series of unfortunate set backs and evident miscommunication the editor of the magazine, Tricia Ray, and I decided it was for the best if we post pone MYM until sometime next year. I feel this was a very good move seeing as at the time of postponement the parade was roughly less than 6 weeks away and there was still a lot of work to do, and when I say a lot I mean I was so far behind schedule and being inundated with uni work and assignments that I was going a little insane.
I was then responsible for notifying all the contacts and participants within MYM, I had to do the calling around to every single designer, the venue manager, hair stylists, make up artists, DJ, lighting and sound technician, etc and hope that when the new date was set they would still be interested to participate. So far so good.
One problem came out of postponing MYM: the concept of the end of my internship. The date of MYM was previously November 26 which meant I was unable to submit my report along with my peers and had to wait until my internship was officially over, but because MYM was now postponed I felt this would definitely have a large impact on my internship, this was remedied by Tricia saying that I could do some work on Colosoul's corporate event being held, coincidentally (and fortunately for me) the next night on November the 27th.
Suddenly, I found myself answering to someone else and I have to say the transition from Coordinator to a lower position came with a sigh of relief. I was delegated the task of ringing around and finding the best Media representatives from print and radio to invite along to expand Colosoul's existing media contacts. I was asked to ring around every media outlet and ask who would be the best person to invite to the event and speak to them directly, compile their details and forward them back onto the person I was working under, where she would send out letters using the details I had provided.
I found having one task that I was responsible for and had a clear outline of what was expected of me was very encouraging in terms of my perception of events management. I suppose in hindsight I was wasn't entirely ready to coordinate such a large scale event as a fashion show and was a lot more comfortable with a smaller role in organising an event. I found ringing around the media outlets to be quite easy, the receptionists were always very friendly and tried to help me as much as they could with what I wanted. The only difficulty I came across was trying to get a hold of the actual person I was looking for on the phone. I was often directed to the website or asked to email them the details so they could look over it, knowing this would be problematic in itself as I assumed their email habits would not create the same effect that speaking to them in person, or directly on the phone, would have in encouraging/persuading them to come to the event.
There is a lot of power in communication, this statement is a fairly large understatement - but I suppose in the PR profession being able to communicate verbally and in a written form is key to success within the industry. It is a necessity to survive in the PR industry, there is no room for being coy and coquettish - you will never be able to achieve the results you want by being passive. I have learnt, especially when working for new and smaller companies that persistence, but also being polite and professional, work a lot in your favour.
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