Throwing the bait!!

As a PR student, I did about five PR Plans. For each plan, we had a scenario where an organisation is asking us to come up with a PR plan/ Media strategies or pitch. I took for granted that in real life this is what would happen, companies would come to the PR consultancy and ask for help. I never actually asked myself what would happen if there was no demand from companies. 
In the course of my internship, I am understanding how the consultancy is implementing different strategies to get new clients ; how they are throwing the bait!!

Everything started when the 12 Monkeys’ team got the idea to create a charity sport event to raise fund for two NGOs; Link to Life and Breast Cancer Care. They came up with ‘Les Foulee de l’espoir’ which means ‘the strides of hope’ in French.  Once they found the idea, 12 Monkeys needed the funds and decided to call different companies. They finally had three positive responses from SICOM, Medine and Chantecler.

Before the event:

As SICOM was the main sponsor, it became kind of the client. Every single piece of work done had to be approved by them; we did a radio advert, banners, posters, leaflets and a Facebook page.

I never thought about how people did the ribbons you sometimes have in event, or the personalised bottles of water. We spent Thursday and Friday making 800 ribbons and putting stickers on 1008 bottles!

As to ensure the media coverage, I had to write a Media Kit about the event, the sponsors, the NGOs and the event planner for a press conference. I however had some issues as it was not in the same format I learned. Four days before the event I had to write an invitation to the press and then call every journalist to ensure that they received it.

The phone was constantly ringing as everyone wanted to be a part of the event. We started to be scared as we were expecting about 200 people and it seemed that more were coming, we thus decided to order more bottles of water as well as more bibs.

During the event:

The event was on Sunday 24^th, and it was a great success! We actually had 600 participants, it was kind of crazy! But an intense experience! There were so many people that we had to buy more bottles of water on the spot.

Once the race started, I had some time to think and observe. I was really impressed to see all the branding around me. It was quite incredible to see all the money the sponsors put into branding the event. I then realised that 12 Monkeys had no branding! And I asked my supervisor about it, she told me that ‘yes we created the event, but at the end of the day what we want is to have a client.’ At first I did not understand, but at the end of the event, while doing his speech, the main sponsor seemed very glad of 12 Monkeys. Then I understood that my company just threw the bait!

Indeed, I always thought that we as PR would be asked to ‘create awareness, help for the CSR...etc...’ But I never thought of creating an idea to propose to a client who did not ask for it! I think this is genius! However this also means that we have to be aware of what every company is doing and to always think about a new idea to propose.

After the event:

After the event, comes the most annoying part, the clean-up. Once the price giving ended, we started to pack-up. Part of the team went around the track to ensure that no bottle of water or any kind of waste was left there. Actually leaving bottles in the fields could have been a disaster as the bottles were branded!

On Monday, I had to put all pictures together and select 4 of them to send to the press along with a media release about the event. Indeed, as PR we all know that the more time we take to send the news, the less medias will agree to talk about it!

So basically, it has been quite hectic but I must say that I really enjoyed it! I was really impressed by the power of branding. I was also surprised to understand the strategy used behind the event.

To conclude, I really love my job! I am impressed of how much I can learn in a 15 days internship compared to a 3 years of study. Now I understand why my lecturer was always saying ‘you have to do internship during your holidays, this will help you!!’ I now totally agree and will definitely repeat it to everyone else.

Isabelle