Hello again,
My main task while I’ve been at the Art Gallery of WA has been creating documents for the media pack of one of their upcoming events, Art in Bloom. All these documents are finally finished, printed and put together ready to send out. It took a bit of work, patience and nerves to get here, but it feels really worthwhile seeing the outcome of the final product.
Whilst creating the media pack I also had to produce a media contact list. This was a little nerve racking and I remember sitting at my desk having a starring competition with the phone before building the courage to pick it up. Studying journalism at uni, I was nervous talking to strangers, as I’ve done that many times to secure interviews for stories. The problem was I wasn’t sure if the media were going to be interested in the idea and if they weren’t, I wasn’t sure how well I knew the event to be able to sell it to them. Luckily, they all seemed pretty happy to give out their contact details and I hardly had to mention what the event was. I suppose they will judge whether it’s interesting once the pack turns up on their desk but for now at least my job was done.
Two things I learnt whilst working on these media packs is how frustrating it can be relying on others and the role attention to detail plays. With the participant bios (mentioned in my previous blog) I was waiting around for participants to send me their bio information. With another document of planned events, I had to wait for those hosting classes at Art in Bloom to send me information on what their classes entailed. We were also waiting on the printing and advertising companies to get back to us with quotes and finalised products/logos. It became very frustrating and I realised just how reliant you become on other people to finish your own tasks. PR really does involve many more people than just the PR consultant. It’s a group effort and without everyone working together things can easily get behind schedule. Luckily the information I needed was sent through in time (all though printing had to be delayed a day while we waited on one of the class hosts to send her information).
Attention to detail is the final thing I wanted to discuss in this blog. There have been countless emails between myself, Susanne and Marianna - each one with a small layout detail changed or piece of information added in a document before it was agreed on as the final copy. We all wanted everything to be perfect and I couldn’t tell you the amount of time spent on the tiny details of each document. It’s amazing how sometimes the most important aspect of PR seems to be making sure a piece of paper looks appealing. In the end that’s what the public sees and that’s what will attract them to your event/company/business, so attention to detail is very necessary.
My most frustrating moment with attention to detail came two days ago. I went into the office with the task of printing all the finalised documents. Not only did I have to print 30 odd copies of 6 different documents with access only to the slowest printer in the world but the next day, when I came in to finish off the job, Susanne had edited the two documents I’d actually managed to print. We needed to redo everything and the day before felt like a complete waste. This time though, we asked the tech-help guys to connect us to fast laser printer. Once that was set up (which took a lot of waiting around and wasted half the day, again) we got through printing everything fairly quickly. It was annoying having to redo something because Susanne had tweaked a few documents without informing me, but I will admit the documents look much better with her adjustments.
It’s quite exciting seeing documents I’ve written and designed being used in a media pack. I’ve never had anything sent to the media in real life and I’m looking forward to seeing which media takes up the story idea and how they present it.
Until next time,
Michelle :)
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