Press Conference with Jessica Watson

A very exciting second week in my placement! We were holding a press conference in Borders Bookshop to announce that teen sailor Jessica Watson (who sailed around the world solo earlier this year) would become the new ambassador for the ISAF Sailing World Championships which are being herld in Fremantle in November 2011 here in Fremantle! With over 1500 competitors from 80 different countries this event is the qualifying event for the 2012 LOndon Olympicsand will be 3 times bigger than America's Cup, generating an at least $41 million for Perth over the 16 days taht it is being held.

The press conference was on the Friday and all day Thursday was very vgery busy. My job was to call up the various media and make sure that they had a) recieved the media alert and b) were coming to the press conference. This proved to be harder than it sounds. First of all the major media (Channel 7, 10 & 9, West Australian ect) claimed that they had not rercieved the media alert so I had to resend them and explian what the press conference was about without letting too much on. And then getting them to confirm was like pullling teeth most of them said maybe, but then nearly all showed up at the last minute.

We had some great support from the online media and community newspapers, the Fremantle Herald is following everything to do with the event very closely as it is happeneing in their backyard. But in the end we had a fair few confirm and then we hoped the others would show up.

On the day everything run pretty smoothly we had to got to the office in Freo and then drive into the city with all the equipment. That day I learnt the importance of lists. My supervisor said anything you can possibly think of that you might need- write it on the list! you can always cross it off later if you don't need it. When we got to the bookshop we had to set up out banners to have in the background, the lecturn and check that there were enough chair and media kits for all of the media.

Once Jessica arrived with her publicist everything started to happen at once, we were just about to start when chennel 10 rang to say they were 5 minutes away. I was sent upstairs to wait for channel 10 but after the 5 minutes the conference had to start as Jessica was due for a book signing in the shop half an hour later. Channel ten arrived a few minutes late but they didnt seem to mind too much.

Once the conference was up and going it went fairly smoothly, the journalists asked some interesting questions. My only thought for Jessica was that maybe she could do with some more media training? she spoke very quietly and often looked down. But apart from that she was great. The only problem we really had was when some random in th bookshop came and sat near the conference and was yelling out answers to questions that were directed to Jessica, he was obviously a sailing enthusiast and was politely told to leave.

After the conference there were a few more photos and then jessica's publicist insisted that she go upstairs and get on with the book signing. My supervisor explianed to me that we have to keep publicists happy as they ultimately control their client's proffessional relationships. So that was the end of it for up we packed up and headed back to the office.

Over all it was a busy couple of days but a great learning experience for me as to what press conferences are all about and how even though everything went well this time, things could have every easily turned bad.