Confidentiality, Celebrities and All Things Comic-Con

Blog 3: Confidentiality, Celebrities and All Things Comic-Con

San Diego is not only known for its beautiful weather, beaches and beer but also is known for one of its more famous annual conventions – Comic Con. I was lucky enough that the time I was interning at the Hotel covered the weekend that Comic Con was on.

Comic Con for those of you, who don’t know, is an international convention that celebrates and showcases comics and related art forms. The connection that Hard Rock Hotel has with the convention is that the hotel is located directly across from the center and therefore hosts most of the parties, interviews, TV broadcasts and most excitingly is home to all the celebrities throughout the weekend. This year, 207 which is the lobby bar was bought out by Samsung and Suicide Squad who completely transformed the bar into a mock up set from the film – featuring all different kinds of simulations filled with the latest technology; Samsung did a great job of making you feel like you were a part of the movie. The TV series, The Walking Dead rented all the elevators, which were wrapped with their logo as well as fake blood on the floor. They also had actors walking around the hotel as zombies, which was such a great idea!

Throughout all the Comic Con craziness my job as the intern was to liaise with the celebrity photographer – Hew, making sure he got great shots of all the A-listers. This also included organizing over 10 000 photos of costumes, the hotel and of course all the celebrities. In the process making sure to pick out the best celebrity photos to send to the press. My supervisor Rana, sent Celebuzz the photos I chose which were published on their website. The feature can be seen through this link - https://mailtrack.io/trace/link/3158440d7c7e47c0466c207c43ab27c07977e07c?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.celebuzz.com%2Fphotos%2Fceleb-snaps-hottest-star-sightings-friday-july-22-2016%2Fcelebrity-sightings-photos-3-07222016-01%2F&signature=d60882ce0b000b2a

Ensuring that these photos get to the press is an important part of public relations at the hotel as it allows images to be distributed on online forums that have a large reach, showing viewers that Hard Rock Hotel is the hottest place to be as well as a great place to sight celebrities. 

My second job this weekend as an intern was to ‘man’ the VIP lounge that was used as a waiting area for talent and media for them to have a snack and relax. The spread that was served was supplied by sponsors, therefore my job was to take special note of who was eating what, to then report back to the sponsors.

As I mentioned in my title, throughout Comic Con I was faced with the topic of confidentiality and therefore was my first brush with ethics in real life practice. As part of the marketing department I was given all different types of information on which celebrities were staying at the hotel and where they were going to be, which I had to keep confidential. This ethical issue came into play throughout my Comic Con experience as I met lots of celebrities, including standing about a meter away from Justin Timberlake and as I was a member of staff and in a private lounge I therefore had to engage in a professional manner.

During Comic Con all the local TV broadcasts use Hard Rock Hotel to film their segments on Comic Con. I assisted Rana my supervisor, with the coordination and execution of a live broadcast that promoted Float, the Hotels’ rooftop bar and lounge. The segment featured a bartender from Snake Oil cocktail company who made 3 Comic Con – inspired cocktails that would be available at FLOAT for the duration of the convention.

Once Comic Con was complete I was asked to pick my favorite celebrity photos and write a blog to be shared by the Hotel’s social media sites, the blog I wrote can be seen through the link below. http://www.hardrockhotelsd.com/events/top-celebrity-comic-con-sightings-at-hard-rock-hotel-san-diego/ 

Introduction To My Internship

For my internship I wanted to do something different and get out of my comfort zone as much as I possibly could. This resulted in me landing an amazing opportunity to intern at Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego. Last year when visiting my family in Newport Beach, California I expressed my interest and passion for public relations to my uncle and he said he had a great contact for me. I set up a shadow day at Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego where I spent the day seeing what it would be like working as part of a hotel in the areas of public relations, events and marketing. This day that I had last year is what inspired me to reach out to the hotel and see if they would accept me as an intern for the summer.

Fast forward to now, I have just completed my first two weeks at the hotel and can most definitely already say it is going to be such an amazing experience. At the end of day one I had already learnt so much and it is such a satisfying feeling to put into practice what I had learnt in class as well as realizing how much I truly enjoy the practice.

I thought I would use my first blog post as a chance to introduce my internship as well as some of the projects I took on in the first two weeks before all the Comic-Con craziness begins. My first day at the hotel consisted mostly of orientation; I had to learn my way around the huge hotel as well as get to know all the people I would be working with for the next month. My first two weeks I was given a range of different tasks from creating a "Which Cocktail Are you" quiz for an e-blast to promote a new partnered cocktail company, to creating radio scripts, pitching press releases, to the job I'm sure we've all done plenty of by now - creating media lists.

A project I completed that I really enjoyed was that I was asked to walk around the hotel and surrounding areas and take photos of things I found interesting and draft up some social media posts to be used in the upcoming months. I used this as an opportunity to be creative and as the hotel features music memorabilia, I researched some of the artists who had upcoming birthdays so we could tribute to them on social media. I also researched national days that were relevant to the hotel such as 'National Piano Day' and 'National Romance Day'. Once I had all my content I used a tool called Sprout Social to schedule these posts for Facebook and Twitter for the upcoming months.


As there was a lot going on in San Diego at the time such as the all-star baseball game, pride day and Comic Con; it was not hard finding interesting content for the hotels social media platforms. All of my scheduled posts were published on the hotels Instagram, Twitter and Facebook which was quite an exciting moment for me. I have attached some of the social media posts below that have now been published on the hotels social media.

At Hard Rock Hotel, social media and PR are executed by two different directors, my role in the company was positioned between the director of PR and the digital marketing manager. Through this I learnt that the units I completed throughout my degree had prepared me extremely well for practicing the traditional forms of PR as well as the new media.


I am not sure whether hospitality and hotels is where my future in public relations lies, but most definitely the industry of lifestyle and entertainment. I enjoyed my first two weeks of my internship so much and can't wait to learn and experience so much more.