A Bitter-Sweet End?

My lost blog contribution. My last assignment. My last stressful week until the next one.

I want to say that I am overjoyed, but I am actually emotionally and mentally exhausted. Never-the-less, we made it - just. So to anyone reading this, best of luck. Don't forget your struggles, because without them, overcoming the challenge would not last as sweet. What did I learn from all of this? Well believe it or not, I actually only just learned the basics of PR. Again. 

What is Public Relations? Communication + Engagement + Trust. The best part, was that I got to see what PR looks like in real life - executed by people that come from non-PR backgrounds. I'm telling you, I was mind blown. My only regret from this experience is not having taken more risks. Until we cross paths again, take care and good luck. 

May your hours of sleep be long.

-Michelle

You Won't Always Win

POLICY CHALLENGES

Choose Your Battles.

One of my first tasks as an intern, was to assist with the creation of Public Relations materials. I was very excited because I had been looking forward to testing out my creative skills with a graphic design program, called Canva. I was given two weeks to do the draft but I had it done by the very next week. I met with my Supervisor and presented the e-flyer that I had created. We made more changes to the content and layout, before sending it away for second-level approval. When word came back, we were told that my work was rejected because of a photo that I had used, of our Bentley campus. I had sourced the photo online and initially thought that the photo was owned by Curtin University, because it linked back to Curtin’s website. I hadn’t perceived any issues with using the photo, because I could see that the photo was copyrighted by Curtin. I would have been happy to take my own photo, but I didn’t want to disadvantage the team by taking an ugly photo which could have made our marketing materials look unprofessional.

I soon learned that using photos for anything Curtin-branded, is actually a very complicated process; so I clarified with my supervisor whether or not we should just submit the content to the University’s official marketing team, who could design the e-flyer and present it in the manner which they felt was best. My supervisor asked the question, but the response we received, was that it was our responsibility to create our own marketing materials. The second time around, we had to use Curtin’s logo and select our photo from the cloud-database, Google drive. My Supervisor was given access to a Google drive folder, which was full of photos that were specifically available for our School to use. 

We were allowed to use these photos because they had not expired yet, which is something that had never occurred to me; photographs can have expiry dates!

In an effort to make sure our work was approved this time, I decided that we should take inspiration from the existing handbook. We imitated the colour scheme so that there was consistency between our marketing materials and how Curtin had already branded the school. This time, our final draft looked much warmer and more personable. We used a photo of an elderly woman and a smiling carer. The smiling carer in the photo, was actually one of my Supervisor’s colleagues. It was nice to learn this, because somehow, it softened the experience of having to redo our e-flyer all again. Again we sent it away for approval and again it was rejected. This time, we were told to abide by a template which we could download from the Curtin communications toolkit. I was fairly distraught, but at least now I know that some organisations keep template-toolkits. 

After one final attempt, we sent our content within the exact confines of the template. They sent us back the approved version. Oh, but both our photos had been replaced. One was replaced because of image quality (okay, fair enough). The other one was replaced because I guess they didn't like the one we chose - and didn't realise the damage that they were inflicting on my soul by replacing it unnecessarily.

 In essence, you won't always win - but don't feel defeated, demoralised or like nothing you do is good enough. Choose another battle, and keep going. You can do this.

- Mivalaa

Onward, Noble Steed.

It feels so great to be entering the last week of semester! I finished my internship last Thursday, and now I can finally see the end of the road.

My last day at Cannings Purple was amazing! We had a morning tea with pastries and muffins, followed by a quick speech from one of the managers thanking me for my time there. I followed with my own thank you speech, expressing my gratitude towards all the staff and for the wonderful experience they had given me throughout my placement.

Despite it being my last day, I still worked on projects and fortunately, went out with a bang with a writing task I thoroughly enjoyed. BCG has released their own company Bulletin magazine, designed to share the stories of the company’s projects, events and employees. I was to write three articles that were going to be placed over a two-page spread of short pieces. My first piece was on BCG’s participation in the City to Surf event, followed by a piece on the recent collaboration between BCG and Industry Gold Group. Both pieces were kept to a 60-word limit. The third article I wrote was a 200 word piece about BCG’s Development division, and the new Paradis Apartments that had just been completed at Alkimos Beach. I look forward to seeing these pieces in the Q4 December edition!

Reflecting on the semester, I did find it hard trying to juggle the internship, writing the report, keeping up with my other units, work, and all the other stressors that life throws our way, but I’m glad I did it. I learnt so much from the internship, not only about how PR runs in the corporate world, but also several skills such as working in an office, the importance of developing strong relationships with clients and how to juggle a number of tasks. I am looking forward to working fulltime and earning an income.

Congratulations to everyone for getting through the semester and completing their internships! Judging from all the posts, it sounds like all the students had a wonderful experience and learnt a lot.

The world of public relations is definitely getting a better run for their money these days, as it has become an integral aspect of many businesses. I believe we are all going to do well, there is some amazing talent at Curtin.

To those of you graduating, best of luck for the future, and again, well done for making it this far.

Ciao everyone!

My desk at Cannings Purple

The Beginning, middle...what's the end?

The beginning: Working for a NFP can be increasingly difficult when you do not accept government funding but rather rely on donations and sponsorship from the community. When myself and one of the other interns at ODATWA, Hope, were told we were about to lose our space if we were unable to raise money, we immediately jumped into action! It began with planning low cost fundraising ideas, brainstorming and researching what would be most effective and could be put together quickly...well we chose an event that although did not require too much effort, was a little difficult to organise over the course of a month! We knew if we were going to pull this off that we would need to put in a lot of hard work!

Although I have organised a few events before, Hope was a biomed student who was looking to get into medicine in the next few years, and works part time. Where as I myself have full time uni, work part time, run a small business and volunteer #timepoor. We knew the next month would be a push and that it would be done on a minimal budget.

So what event did we choose? Well  being Gen Y students that watch a lot of Netflix, of course we couldn't resist hosting our very own dodge ball tournament - Dodge For A Cause! We were excited, enthusiastic and it made the hectic month a whole lot more fun throwing doge ball movie puns at one another. For anyone who isn't aware; Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story is what we were relating to. 

The middle: We managed to secure Curtin University Stadium for our event #winning, we set up a Facebook event and October 16th was out event date. We had so much interest in the event, however of course do to limited notice, were unable to secure as many teams as we would have liked but lets save that for the next blog post.

We thought about food to put on and decided putting on our own sausage sizzle would be the most effective way as we had a butcher kind enough to donate sausages for this. The event was all over Facebook and even the Curtin Library toilets thanks to Hope! I targeted Murdoch University and we had a lot of response! Our supervisors barely weighed in on the event as they were so impressed with the approaches we had taken to the event!

We had to submit license applications to the town of Vic Park, create a risk assessment for the event, running sheet and logistics along with tournament details and of course advertise and accept registrations for the event...how did we do it?

Thrown in at the deep end for my first week!

On my first week on the job I thought my days would have been all about observing and learning from others but I was plunged into the deep ocean that the business world is and left to fend for myself. At Imagine Communication they are all about learning from firsthand experiences and mistakes, which at first I saw as a harsh situation to impose on an inexperienced intern but in the hand it shaped me into a strong and independent employee, ready to faced everything the business world would throw at me. So on my first week I went to a conference organized by a client of Imagine Communication at Hotel Labourdonnais Port-Louis, I had to keep track of all the press present, the journalists that attended and their contact details. That was the easiest part of my job because then during the conference I had to record and memorize all the important information discussed by the client during the conference, which was a bit hard due to the strong German accent the speakers had. The hardest part of the job was managing all the interviews that were taking place at the end of the conference. I never thought about the importance of supervising all the questions asked to the clients by journalists but my supervisor told me on the day that it was vital for me to successfully complete this task. Managing to assist and record every interviews was quite hard but in the end I managed. In this situation nothing went wrong during the interviews conducted by the journalists but I learned that being present at every interviews is vital as inappropriate questions can be asked to the clients or they may also feel overwhelmed by the amount of journalists bombarding them with questions which is when we are needed to assist and render help to the clients. When I got back to the office later, I felt relieved for having closely paid attention to the conference as my supervisor immediately told me to write a report summarizing all the press present, all the information divulged by the clients and a brief summary of the interviews. I was already exhausted after the event but I had two days to complete it so after a short break I started on working on the report immediately.

This was on the day on the event itself but now let me give you a glimpse of the behind the scene of the conference. Most of you must have learned by now that behind an event is a lot of preparation and stress, which we never seem to realize when not being the one organizing or hosting it. I spent a total of four full days working on the preparations and still had some last minute details to confirm on the day of the conference. First it was all about looking for a venue for the conference, the clients asked for something simple but classy so we had to brainstorm all the ideas we had for possible venues and finally we decided on the hotel Labourdonnais at Port-Louis. The client wanted to invite all the press of the island to the conference so I had to prepare an official invitation for the event and send it by mail to all of the media outlets of Mauritius. At Imagine Communication follow-up calls are seen as vital, so I then had to call all the media outlets to confirmed if they received the invitation that was sent by mail which took most of my afternoon. After two days I had to call them back to confirm their presence and which journalist that they were sending to the conference. I still had to make some calls on the day of the conference as most of the journals Chief Editors have busy schedules or have debriefing meetings at any time of the day.

After this whole week of hard work, I thought that they would give me some lightweight work, but guess I should have known better after an event media monitoring is vital and the client often ask for a press book. So, I had to monitor all the online Mauritian newspapers and magazines for any details concerning the client and the conference. The first week was pretty hard and hectic but I loved every minute of it as I learnt as much as possible and above all I had my first true experience of the PR world and it was exhilarating and superb!

Cheers,

Sophie.  

A Reflection on KiNDLiNG

It is true what they say, events can become ‘like’ your babies. Okay I am not sure if people say this but it is the only way I can describe the relationship between event manager and event. 

I am an aspiring events manager/coordinator/planner, any of those terms, this is the career path I would like to have. Well, the career path I have studied for. 

Interning at AIME has been a great experience in learning all things event planning and seeing an inaugural variety night come to life. I have become one with the stresses of an event, and understand that you cannot control everything. Although stressful, staging an event can be so fun and if it is successful then the rewards are plentiful. 

But let me explain this metaphor that events are like ‘children.’ 

For starters, you worry about the event day and night. You care about its legacy and want it to succeed. You put all your time and effort in giving it the best opportunity to make its mark. Secondly you cannot help but tell everyone about the event. It is a constant conversation starter.  You want everyone to know about it because you are proud of what it will become (and you need tickets to sell). And finally, once the event has been delivered or put to ‘bed’ you can finally relax.

See events are like children, well, sort of. 

 

  Taryn and myself had the responsibility of creating this colourful photo back drop. Pinterest was great inspiration. Our role during the night was to take photos and keep track of names, so that these photos can be used for social media purposes. 

AIME WA’s KiNDLiNG event was not shy of a couple of issues. Not even the most efficient planning can stop external factors impacting an event. A couple of weeks prior, we had several acts that could no longer perform at the event. This put strain on the Events Manager and myself to try find replacement acts within a very short time frame. In addition to this, our volunteer security member had a change of plans and the CEO decided not to fly over from Sydney to attend the event. 

However, none of these issues compared to the stress made from very low ticket sales. The week before the event, only 35 tickets had been sold. 35 Tickets! 35!! At the beginning of the planning process, 350 tickets were expected to sell. This was based on the reason that AIME WA has over 6000 mentors. 

This has been a very important learning curve for me. That a not-for-profit cannot solely rely on its volunteers and other stakeholders to fill seats at a fundraiser event. The promotions side of an event is so significant in attracting community support. The way you target your audiences through different platforms and the extent to which you push the event in media streams. As this was AIME WA’s first major event, and they did not have a headliner act or a major incentive to attract numbers, promotional efforts were so important. Posters and word of mouth would not be enough to carry this event. It needed radio ads, newspaper articles, social media, posters, personal emails, letters and direct communication with schools, mentors and universities to make the tickets sell. 

Thankfully, the week of the event saw a flood of online tickets sell. It is interesting to see how people tend to purchase tickets closer to the event date. We had 200 people walk through the doors. KiNDLiNG was a success and raised necessary funds for AIME’s mission in reaching 10,000 Indigenous students by the year 2018. It was a great night filled with amazing performances and great food.

It was a privilege to be a part of an event so rewarding. To close the gap between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous community, to inspire and bring unity. 

A photo from the night used for AIME WA's Instagram page.