Happy World Cat Day!

Hi everyone!

My internship at Momentum Forum Events has continued to provide me with opportunities to work hard and venture into new territories. In particular, the upcoming Perth Pet Expo has been our main project and every week I'm in the office there's more and more to do for it. The majority of my time has been sourcing exhibitors and contacting potential companies to get them on board to participate.

Like most people have experienced during their internships, rejection and cold calls have become the norm. What I've learned whilst contacting people is that calls are always much more rewarding than emails! Emails give people the opportunity to ignore an invitation or message and it puts a halt to productivity fairly quickly. Calling someone can not only help to engage them with the topic but it also gives you an on the spot answer as to whether or not they're interested. Making calls can be intimidating initially but if all else fails, ooze positivity and confidence and your tone alone will receive a much better response from the person on the other end of the call.

For all the cat lovers - Happy World Cat Day! Little did I know, the 8th of August is a day to celebrate cats internationally and today we did just that. After a huge morning working on the upcoming Perth Pet Expo, including emailing and calling potential exhibitors and researching industries to source new contacts, we decided to head to Perth's very own Cat Café in Subiaco. Luckily, the cafe is only around the corner from the office so we were able to quickly pop in to check out the space.

The Cat Café was teeming with customers for a Monday afternoon and it's not hard to see why. The sweets they had on display were beautifully decorated and all looked positively delicious and the coffee cup sizes were labelled after kitten, cat and lion after our feline friends. Through the glass divider you could see people getting up close and personal with the cats, with many people taking photos that are no doubt going to show up across their social medias. Although we didn't get to go in to sit down with the cats - bookings are essential and we had work to do - the smiles on the faces of people in the room were enough to know that it was amazing!

Celebrating at the Cat Café 

After a delicious coffee and a quick time out, we had to return to the office for more business! I spent the afternoon transferring contacts gained from previous events into the bulk list for our newsletters. It was an incredibly time consuming task and definitely something I'll have to do again in the future but it needed to be done. Once again, the tedious tasks that you never think about are often fairly crucial to make sure contacts are maintained and messages can be shared to the right people. 

I'm still loving my internship and I feel like I'm gaining a useful skill each time I leave the office. I'm now closer to the end than I am to the beginning of my internship which is a scary thought!

As always, I hope everyone is enjoying their internships and gaining some really useful experience!

Jess

Kitty Cupcakes and the Perth Pet Expo

Hello fellow PR interns! 

I hope you've all had a good week interning and probably doing a million other little things in between - so let's keep this blog nice, short and sweet. 

This Tuesday was another internship day, and it included a quite unexpected outing. But first, the admin duties called. Emails, beloved spreadsheets and research awaited. Social media was calling too, and so I went on to do some promo posts and reposts on Facebook and Twitter.  After a while of getting into this, Barbara got the idea to see if she, Kasia (her daughter) and I could maybe go and talk to the owner of a new cafe just a couple of streets up the road, to be an exhibitor at the Perth Pet Expo later this year. 

So off we went.  

Trips to the Cat Cafe

Unexpected trip to Perth's
first Cat Cafe 

The owner of Perth's first Cat Cafe is Chris Mewburn, which we had the chance to catch and tell him about this partnership opportunity. Dealing with potential exhibitors for the Pet Expo , there are many businesses you’d never think were in the neighbourhood; one such being this cafe lounge for kittys and cat lovers alike. Having made its debut in Melbourne, this cafe for felines and their owners has purred on over to Perth.

Thinking about the Pet Expo and potential exhibitors, to be able to team up with the Cat Cafe would be a really great and beneficial partnership. That's why Barbara and Kasia were so excited about getting together to discuss possible plans and merchendise to sell. This is a unique collaboration, because at the expo food and drinks would not be able to be sold at a stand - especially being surrounded by furry animals. 

That's why we were all hoping to get the Claremont Showgrounds team to maybe work with us to create a win-win situation, in which the Cat Cafe would still be able to sell some of their food products. Asked what I would do, I thought it would be a possibility to maybe get them to wrap the cupcakes and other sweets in some sort of seethrough gift bags. Going ahead this was a real possibility, and I was glad I was more of a help. Having a brain storm session with Chris was spontaneously productive, which was later followed by a one-on-one meeting about joining us with a purrfect stall at the Pet Expo. 

Enjoying some cute cat cupcakes 

Yet putting puns aside, being a part of meetings was a breath of fresh air; because usually we're all in the same office, intently looking at the computer screens and saying that we're on our way to lunch (which usually doesn't happen until later anyway).

So far this internship experience is full of surprises, and there's always something new to learn. Reading everyone else's blogs is really insightful too; every place is so different and exciting! I always look forward to reading them. 

Blog 1 (On The Spice Route)

I am currently working with a company with several 'sub-companies', many of which are in need of the very basic public relations tools to keep them in the game. The sub-company that much of the PR focus will be centred on is 'Poivre d'Or'.
Poivre d'Or, is a medium sized company specializing in 100% natural and 100% authentic foodstuffs, such as, jams, honeys, sugar, preserves, tea and sugar. the company makes most of its business from hotels, restaurants and other food outlets.
its main focus and aim before the end of the year is to maximize awareness locally and internationally, and start exporting their goods to countries other than Seychelles, Germany and France that are becoming quite stagnant. in effort to do so this weekend (22nd, 23rd and 24th of August) the company is taking part in 'MAITEX' (Mauritius International Trade Expo). This expo was established to give medium size Mauritian enterprises a chance to interact with international buyers.
Thus, to capitalize from this opportunity, company's PR manger and I are in the process of developing a media kit to be distributed to the potential buyers both prior the show and after the show.