BLOG ENTRY THREE: SHOOT DAY

Our client who operates two bikram yoga studios throughout London, have decided the expand their company into active wear. The idea came from realising their clients were at times not wearing the correct gear when attending bikram yoga classes. This week our task was to set up and organise a photo shoot for the launch of So Hot’s range. Here’s the catch, not only are photo-shoots normally organised weeks or sometimes months in advance, but we have been given a few days to pull together two models, a make up artist, hair stylist, a studio and a photographer. On top of that not only does the client want one photo-shoot to take product shots for the online store, but he wants another photo-shoot to shoot take campaign images, on the exact same day. Talk about stress!

If we were in Perth, I would have been able to pull people from my contacts that I have worked with in previous campaigns. However, in London we don’t know anybody and no one knows us! Lucky for us we were staying in a house full of models that have a long list of contacts within that particular industry. We were then able to source a location on the outskirts of East London that provided a photographer and an editor in the package! Another issue was raised when our client informed us that he wanted models that were able to demonstrate all of the yoga poses, with the correct technical ability. Most models are not yoga professionals, so from there we turned to social media. We decided to use a part time male dancer, model and committed yogi for the shoot, and a female health and yoga blogger.  From then on, my partner and I drew up a time sheet including both shoots, scheduling who was responsible for which task. Our client then informed us he would need a stylist for the shoot, fortunately enough I work for a styling company back in Perth and was able to cut down costs by fulfilling that particular role.

After a very early start and very long day, we were extremely proud and happy with everything we accomplished in such a short period of time. We learnt that its okay to speak up when necessary and to make sure our client was happy with all decisions made by the team on the day.

Emma

Final lessons from a PR pro

On my last day of my supervisor called me in to her office for a ‘chat’ about my internship. I won’t lie, I was nervous.  In my mind this was the part where she goes through all my intern work and scrutinizes it, evaluating my progress in a confronting finale to my placement. Of course that wasn’t the case. Instead, she sat me down and said she was going to give me the most important advice she could give about a career in public relations.

The first thing she spoke about was organisation. Specifically, emails. She told me that as ridiculous as it may sound, sorting your emails in to separate folders is the best thing you can do to stay on top of your workload. In a corporate PR situation, as it would be with any communications role, there is quite a bit of versatility in the work that you do. You may be dealing with writing an internal article one day and organising a sponsorship event the next, so it’s integral to be able to have each different sector of your work carefully separated. It’s no fun having to search through your inbox to look for an email or to forget to respond to something important. Organisation is key.

 

The second thing she told me was that no matter how much writing you do at university, nothing will prepare you for the amount of writing you do in a real communications role. She told me that you may write 20 PR plans during your degree, but you probably won’t even need that skill until you’re in a high level position. ‘Ninety per cent of my role is writing,’ she said, and now I’m grateful that I studied a few journalism units while I’ve been at university. 

My supervisor finished off our meeting by thanking me for all the work I had done and saying she’d happily write me a reference– this was nothing like the scary final meeting I had envisioned. I left feeling grateful that I had been able to have for such a rewarding and useful experience. 

When I got home that day I opened my email inbox. I had 3,109 emails. Would you believe it, I managed to purge every unwanted subscription and piece of junk until I had a neat inbox with a number of carefully organised folders. 

So here I am. Internship completed. I am now ready for a career in public relations and so is my email inbox.

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong ...

Hi everyone

As promised in my previous post, this blog is going to be a little bit about the T.A.G Hungerford awards night that Fremantle Press is involved with.

So firstly, what is the T.A.G Hungerford awards? Administered by writingWA, the award is a $12,000 prize awarded to an unpublished manuscript by a previously unpublished Western Australian author. Alongside the prize money, the winner gets their manuscript published by Fremantle Press.
The winner for 2015 was Madelaine Dickie and her manuscript, Troppo.

Winner of the T.A.G Hungerford Award, Madelaine Dickie

Held at the beautiful Fremantle Arts Centre, the setting was perfect ... But as many of you know all too well, anything that can go wrong will go wrong for an event! Claire and I were joking about this on the day, exchanging stories in the car as we set off in the car to drop some things off and begin setting up the event.

The Fremantle Arts Centre was the perfect venue to host the awards

Claire hadn't heard from Madelaine all morning, and we were both growing a little worried ... she was coming to Perth from Broome, and we knew that flights had been delayed because of torrential storms up North! This wasn't ideal for any shortlister not to be attending, especially the winner. Her plane was set to land around 2pm, and we didn't hear from her until around 4.30pm ... it is safe to say we were a little relieved when the text came through that she had arrived in Perth.

As we began setting up, we realised that The City of Fremantle hadn't dropped their pull up banner stands off. Seeing as though they were a sponsor, this wasn't ideal. Setting off in the car once again, we had to call them on the way and have one run down stairs at the town hall as Claire raced in to pick it up. Drama averted.

Back at the office we were finalising last minute things, including the guest list, name badges for the board members of Fremantle Press, and the media kit. Claire thought it was a little odd that she hadn't heard back from their usual flower company where they source bouquets for the winner from so gave her a call ... The florist had a wedding on that day and had completely forgotten! With a few hours up our sleeve, she promised to have the flowers delivered in time. Drama averted again.

Getting to the venue, I was posted at the front desk and was in charge of greeting guests and ensuring that all board members got their name badges and the judges had their assigned envelopes with the running order inside. It was then that I realised I had forgotten one of the name badges ... not the end of the world but when there are 8 others and one person missing I thought that it wouldn't look great! I had five minutes before guests were set to arrive .. armed with my clipboard, I raced down the street (thanking that our office was so close!), printed off another name badge, ran back up the hill (easier on the way down may I add) and got to the gates catching my breath and trying to look calm and collected as I rounded the corner and saw the start of our guests waiting at the closed gates... it was 5.58pm, and showtime!

Despite all of these little hiccups in the day, the night was a great success!

This blog post wasn't to criticise or point out or the flaws in the evening ... it was truly a successful night and everyone that came complimented Claire and the team and thanked us at the end of the night. I even got thanked in one of the speeches which was a nice, albeit unexpected little shock, hearing my name amongst a crowd of one hundred plus guests!
We did put time a lot of time and effort into the night, and it paid off.

I wanted to use this post to point out that no matter how well things are planned, there is always something that will go wrong ... it just depends on how well you handle these curveballs!

I remember from my PR Techniques class, writing running schedules and putting together media kits and having everything ticked off the list, thinking 'well this is perfect! Nothing could go wrong'
 - this awards night was a real life example of how you need to be prepared for the unexpected, and that you need to be flexible when things don't always go to plan!

Mayor of Fremantle Brad Pettitt announcing the winner

Madelaine with her certificate

Has anyone had similar experiences when interning at an events company? Or perhaps running an event for the company your interning at like I did? How did YOU deal with an unexpected surprise on the day of something important? I would love to hear about them in the comments below!

Thanks for reading,


Anouka
Interning at Fremantle Press,
Marketing and Communications Assistant

Events - the Good and the Bad!

With my time at Pirate 88FM Fremantle soon coming to an end, I thought I’d reflect one of the more eye-opening experiences i've had - events. My experience with Pirate has definitely made me realise how fun, yet how hands-on events can be. I’ve always had an interest in events, and have even considered taking a course on multiple occasions specific to events, and my time with Pirate has definitely confirmed my desire to delve further into events experience or study. Having said this, my experience with events at Pirate has been very “tame”, you could say.

Although the events I’ve been involved in with Pirate have been small and manageable, they still taught me a few serious lessons. Back when I first started at Pirate, they had began organising their first ‘Pirate Sesh’ – which was to be a Sunday sesh held on the first Sunday of every month. The event would be run by Pirate and a local record label in Fremantle, and would see 6 local artists or bands come down to the Pirate office/ shed (the office back then was in a warehouse) to entertain whoever walked through the door. It was exciting to be involved in helping organise this event, however as I was new at the time, my responsibilities were minimal. I was to post updates on social media in the lead up to the event, try and help get the word out, and update social media on the day of the event (as well as try and drag as many of my friends along as possible!). I did my part, took some photos, and even helped interview some bands on the night.

Some photos I uploaded to Instagram at the first Pirate Sesh

The first event went swimmingly. Awesome music enjoyed by just under 100 guests, a real sense of team work and satisfaction, an awesome vibe, and plenty of profit from the night. We were stoked to run the next Pirate Sesh, and I was hoping to be more involved in organising the event. It turned out, however, there wasn’t much to be done – or so we thought. The record label would source the bands, we already had a sponsor to provide alcohol and food, Pirate already had all the equipment, and we knew what we were doing to run the event the next time. All that was left was to raise awareness and get people through the door. So, again, I updated the Facebook page every so often in the lead up to the event announcing bands, made a new Facebook event and invited tons of people, redesigned the tickets, and tried to get the word out. If we could get close to one hundred people to a brand new event before (in the middle of winter), we could do it again, easy, right?

Some of the Pirate team and myself at the first Pirate Sesh

Wrong. This time, a measly 20-30 people strolled through the door. We didn’t understand. We had a great lineup of bands, had been promoting the event for the last month, and had such great feedback the at the previous event. I can’t comment on the vibe of the night, as in the end I couldn’t actually make the event (long story short, burst water pipe at the house on a Sunday afternoon… took some time to get a tradie out!), but as far as I’m aware everything was set up just as before and prepared for an awesome afternoon and evening of local musical talent. The event barely made a profit.

Despite attempts to have an urgent team meeting after the event to discuss what went wrong, the meeting never eventuated (if you’ve read my previous blog post, you’ll know of the tendency of a lack of organisation and communication in the office…). It was decided the event would be cancelled until further notice, due to several reasons (mainly due to sudden plans to move the office into Fremantle). It’s a shame, because the event could have really been something. If I were to comment on the failure of the last event, I would have to say it came down to the inconvenience of the location (in the middle of industrial O’Connor at the time), and a lack of awareness. An event can’t simply be promoted through Facebook with the expectation people will turn up. We needed to put up posters, hand out flyers, talk to people about the event and get them excited. It was planned that this would happen, but it was never organised. Pirate has recently moved office space into the heart of Fremantle, so who knows, maybe the event will be brought to life again soon. We’ll see.

Another small event I helped organise and run was a Rock ‘N’ Roll themed quiz night, which was, thankfully, a big success. Yes, I know, it’s only a quiz night, it’s not hard to organise nor run. But the quiz night alone was probably one of the highlights of my time with Pirate.

When I started with Pirate, the idea for a quiz night was already planned, but was a whole big mess. Turns out the event was meant to be held months earlier,  by a group of events interns. Long story short, they didn’t organise much, failed to sell tickets, postponed the event, and then three out of four of them didn’t turn up anymore (sounds awful, right?). A new date had been set in September, but again, no tickets were sold and hardly anything was organised. The event was, however, still listed on Facebook. I was asked to step in and help take over the event – a task I was more than happy to take on, I love quiz nights! 

The last remaining events intern organised contra deals for tables and chairs, catering and alcohol, and got started on organising prizes. I got started on the rest. Spreading the word, inviting friends and family, getting them to invite their friends and family, and constantly pushing the event on Facebook. I wrote and voiced radio ads as part of contra deals, arranged some prizes myself, wrote an event schedule for the night, designed tickets and answer sheets, wrote quiz questions, helped source a live band for the night, and plenty of other little things. Unfortunately on the night a few team members didn’t turn up, so there were 3 of us running the event, and our manager acting as ‘Quiz Master’, so the night did tend to feel rushed from the get go! In the end, though, this only felt more satisfying. We had already sold a fair amount of tickets, and were pleasantly surprised when a huge number of last minute guests walked through the door. The little warehouse in O’Connor was packed. We had a great night with great feedback, made an impressive budget higher than our goal, and felt extremely satisfied to have turned this little disaster of an event around to a great success. Again, it was only a quiz night, but to me, it was a great accomplishment.

Some photos from the Rock 'N' Roll Quiz Night - check out my balloon raffle!

The satisfaction of an event running so well has made me want to learn more about events. As has the disappointment and frustration of an event failing. Although these were all fairly simple events, it has really inspired me. I’d love to be involved in larger scale events, where everyone works as a team, things are planned from top to bottom, and there is a real challenging aspect. Where you feel amazing when things go right, and seriously reflect, and hopefully rectify when things go wrong. It is this that I am disappointed not to have experienced more with Pirate, but I guess we all start somewhere. I can definitely see myself jumping into events experience after this internship!

My time with Pirate ends in 2 days – so until then!

Emma

Lack of communication can have very embarrassing consequences...

My experience at Pirate 88FM so far has taught me some very invaluable business lessons, mainly related to the importance of communication, and being organised.

Allow me to reflect. I recently attended a networking function along with two of my colleagues, and was asked to attend as a representative of Pirate. I was excited the team felt highly enough of me to represent the organisation among other business professionals. I should have, however, been a bit more cautious and far more inquisitive when I realised the event was only two days from the time I was asked. I had no involvement in organising this event, no idea what the event was for, and had no idea who would be in attendance. I of course happily accepted the invitation, however when I asked exactly what the event was, I was simply told it was a networking event run by The Fremantle Chamber of Commerce, being held on the iconic Leeuwin Ship at B Shed Fremantle, and Pirate was co-hosting the event.

The stunning Leeuwin Ship docked at B Shed, Fremantle

The whole situation seemed to be a bit of a mess from the word go. Long story short, I was asked to attend at such short notice as the manager needed to travel up north last minute, and 3 team members were required to attend. Pirate was asked to cohost the event as the date fell on the “eve” of Talk Like a Pirate Day, and as the event was being held on the Leeuwin ship itself (which remained docked), it was a fun novelty idea to have us involved. The event was also, as I found out on the day, focused around businesses in the local Fremantle area, so having Pirate involved seemed fitting.

As the day of the event arrived, I was excited to represent the organisation, and was eager to network with other business professionals with my new experience under my belt. I arrived at the office ready to start the day. First up, we were to collect the alcohol for the event, as arranged by Pirate. With the manager being away, all correspondence for what to do on the day was through email between my manager and my supervisor. Because of this, I had no reason to doubt the information my supervisor gave on the day. Off to the bottle shop we went.

Pulling up in the company car, we went to the register of Old Bridge Cellars in Fremantle, explained we were from Pirate 88FM, and said we were there to collect the alcohol for an event that evening. We did not expect to be met with the response, “I have no idea what you’re talking about”. After explaining the situation further and stating this was the bottle shop we were sent to, the staff remained adamant we had no such arrangement with them. We apologised and quickly left the store to avoid being seen as trying to steal alcohol! My supervisor rang the manager. “No no, not Old Bridge Cellars, you need to go to Liquor Barons in Fremantle!”. We had gone to the wrong place. My supervisor had simply assumed where to go, and did not think to double check before we left. Communication is key! We were already off to a bad start to the day.

After finally collecting the beverages, we made our way to Leeuwin to help set up the event, right on schedule for 4pm, just as we were told. You can imagine our surprise when the event coordinator rushed over to us, an agitated look on her face, asking “where have you been? It’s 4 o’clock!” Confused, we explained we were told to arrive at 4pm. As it turns out, we were meant to arrive at 2pm, and were an unacceptable 2 hours late. Lack of communication, again. We apologised and asked what we could do to help, to which we were told that nothing could be done at that time. As the event was being held on the Leeuwin ship (which looked spectacular!), all the sails and such needed to be checked and set up in order to be safe. The event coordinator sharply told us to “just leave and come back when the event starts”. Feeling uncomfortable, silly and downright useless, we waited back and tried to help where we could. We couldn’t just leave – the event started at 5.30!

When the event finally started, we felt a little out of place. Being on uneasy terms with the staff running the event, we awkwardly asked where we could help and served around plates of food to attendees, as an attempt to give the event staff a break. Although this was a great way to go around and talk to people (and give a bit of a plug to Pirate), we spent the evening feeling uneasy. At this point I still wasn’t entirely sure of the purpose of the event, despite my attempts to get information from my supervisor the previous days. My guess is that she didn’t really know either!

But wait, there’s more! Apparently a representative from Pirate was to give a speech at the event – something that was, again, not communicated to the team. Of course, this is something my supervisor should do – I had not been with Pirate long enough to talk about it to a crowd, and the other team member had come along to represent WAAM (affiliated with Pirate). Although I could understand being reluctant to give an unprepared speech last minute, I was shocked when my supervisor refused. The team member from WAAM ended up giving the speech, despite not representing Pirate, and I honestly felt quite disappointed in my supervisor.

As the event came to a close, there was a strong sense of embarrassment, disappointment, and discomfort. A lack of organisation and communication was more than evident in the lead up to this event. My excitement to attend the function quickly turned to a very uncomfortable feeling. I did, however, learn a very valuable business lesson. One, that communication and organisation is ALWAYS key. Should this have been better managed we would have saved ourselves quite a bit of embarrassment. And secondly, when something like this happens, it is crucial to remain professional. Despite being told to “just leave and come back” by a very (understandably) agitated coordinator, it was important for us to stay, step back, and help where needed, and make sure the staff knew how sorry we were for the miscommunication. We always say communication is key, but I now know this more than ever!

It was, however, a beautiful spring evening aboard the stunning Leeuwin Ship! 

The networking event on board the Leeuwin - beautiful weather!

Until next time.

Emma

How I made my boss cry

The theme of this blog is event planning and I’ll be talking about a Farewell Reception I organised for my boss and a big event I’m planning for October 22.

In a bittersweet moment, I had the opportunity to organise a Farewell Reception for Clubs WA's Executive Director of 14 years, Mr Peter Seaman. It was held a couple of weeks ago at the University Club of Western Australia and aimed to be an intimate and laid-back event where Peter could say goodbye to the "VIPs" of WA's club industry. I was very nervous as this was the first event I had to organise for Clubs WA, and really the first event I've had to organise ever. Thankfully the University Club hosts thousands of events every year and are prepared for almost everything. 

Below I have listed briefly what I had to organise in the weeks leading up to the event:

• Booked the venue and confirmed day and time.
• Put together a guest list of relevant Ministers, Corporate Partners, industry representatives, supporters, State Council and staff.
• Sent out save-the-dates.
• Followed up save-the-dates with emails to Ministerial secretaries, and other VIPs.
• Drew up budget.
• Sent out official invitations.
• Bought a gift for the ED.
• Visited the venue to get an idea of room layout and AV equipment.
• Chose the food and beverage menu.
• Confirmed all attendees and the correct spelling of their names.
• Printed all names onto name tags.
• Organised everything for a registration table.
• Plus so, so much more. 

The event turned out really well and thankfully ran smoothly. Sport & Recreation Minister Tuck Waldron, Racing & Gaming Minister Mick Murray and Commissioner for Consumer Protection Anne Driscoll each made a thoughtful and personal speech about their experiences of working with Peter over the past decade or so. My boss became quite teary at one point and Mick Murray made a funny speech and both of them turned red.

Although the event was quite small, with about 60 people showing up, it was still nerve wrecking having to organise the event with absolutely no experience! But it has prepared me for my next event in October, which has an expected attendance of about 130 people.

The next event I’m organising and the one that’s causing me heaps of stress is the Clubs WA Training, AGM & Networking Event on October 22.

I’ll admit that I haven’t been given a huge amount of guidance or instruction when it comes to organising either of these events and it’s making me pretty stressed. I’ve basically organised this AGM & Networking Event by looking through the previous Events Officer’s file where she has kept hardcopy invoices of everything she ordered for last year's event, and then deciding what was useful this year.  I’m so grateful that she kept such good records of everything and I plan to do the same!

Last year’s event began at 10am with an hour long Annual General Meeting (AGM) and Clubs WA company update, followed by a luncheon, trade expo and then entertainment.

This year we have decided to tie the event in with the launch of two new training workshops, Good Governance and Workplace Relations, which will begin in the morning, followed by a Canapé Reception, AGM, Clubs WA Update, Networking Luncheon, Club Leadership Panel, and then a Social Hour. This year’s theme is training and networking and we think this will boost numbers opposed to an otherwise boring AGM.

My three biggest fears for the AGM Event are that we don’t get enough numbers, that I haven’t planned well enough, and that the event goes over-budget.

Achieving the attendance goal:

I set myself the attendance goal of 130 people but I’m quietly hoping for 150.

Other than for that fact that it would heartbreaking if no one came, our Corporate Partners (sponsors) are attending so they can network with our members, and I don’t want them to think the event was a waste of time.

Last year’s Trade Expo component felt a little pushy, and most of our sponsors have been with us for a long time so their products are well known by our members. This year, I’ve planned lots of ‘break-out’ sessions for networking. For example, rather than having a three-course sit-down meal, I thought it would be nice if we served the entrée as a ‘canapé reception on arrival’ – this way our members are able to mingle and network with other industry reps and sponsors in a more informal way – think a bigger version of  ‘water-cooler talk’.

We’re 12-days out from the event and so far we have a 110 people registered which is 23 more people than last year! I think I’m doing okay promotion wise, even though I was aiming for 130 people.

We started promoting the confirmed date of the event in May, and since then have been putting articles in our monthly newsletter/magazine, in our fortnightly email blasts, on the website and through social media. My boss told me that 6-weeks out from the event we should start calling clubs, as phone calls are so much more personal. However, when we started calling clubs 6-weeks out, the majority of people we called didn’t know much about the event.

Our monthly newsletter is only sent to one person on a club’s Board (usually the Club President or CEO) and the fortnightly emails to two or three – so from calling our members I’ve realised that the Board Members do not pass information on!

So 6-weeks out from the event, instead of convincing people to purchase tickets, we were calling people to tell them about the event, which was frustrating. I instructed everyone to follow-up any phone call they made with an email thanking people for their time and to attach a copy of our event information pack and registration form. Luckily this seems to have worked, and I’ve left a note for next year’s event organiser to make the calls much earlier – I really think this would boost the numbers!

You can have a look at some of the information that was included in the event info pack and an article about the speakers written in the monthly newsletter, by clicking on the below images.

         

Event planning

I shouldn’t admit this, but I’m one of those people who leave things to the last minute (some of you will know this ;)). I think that I know myself pretty well, and I know how long I need to get things done properly. Looking at the timelines and schedules from last year’s event I know that the previous Events Officer had written the MC Script, running sheet, staff roles etc. more than three months out from the event. While this might have suited her, she would have had to of updated the scripts and running sheets constantly in the months leading up to the event as new things were decided – and I personally feel like this would have been a waste of time. Instead, I spent a total of eight hours working on the MC Script, running sheet, room plan, assigned staff roles, and an overview running sheet for sponsors just a little over two weeks from the event, and they were all approved within two days and I may only need to make one or two tiny changes. I do believe there is such a thing as over planning!

My point here is to know how long you need to complete tasks properly, and how to work to be productive.

If you have any easy networking ideas to get people talking, please feel free to share! One idea I’m thinking of is to ask people to write three words on their name tag, for example, Cambodia, photography, cricket, travel or scrap-booking, to give people conversation starters. Maybe there’s a person who’s thinking about going to Greece and then they spot someone who has Greece written on their nametag... BOOM conversation starter!

Anyway, until next time!

You can find my past blog posts here:

1. Make us famous - P.S. there's no budget

2. Don't dread the red pen

I hope everyone else is still enjoying their internships, and if you have any tips about event planning, promotion, or networking I would love to hear from you J