Racing past the finish line!

This week at Perth Racing a lot has been going on we have the spring carnival happening in just over a month. There is a major buzz in the office, with so much going on!

This week I have been sourcing products to put into goodie bags for the Prive fashion event that is happening on the 16th of September the event is going to big we have around 300 people attending. It includes Western Australian designers Jontè, Jessica Bratich, Ela & Jackson, IIka and Kinn Apparel. The event is an annual non racing event Perth Racing hold. This week we have been doing the final adjustments of the event brief, I have worked on a basic plan that will be future developed. In the event brief I have included the designers, the event information, beverage and food packages and how the food and drinks will be established and served on the night of the event. The event brief also included the information from our contracted events company, the package they included, the invoice and all of the budgeting that came with the event. This brief also included information for the designers for the night of the event. An event brief is very important for an event as it brings together all of the elements including who, what, when, where, why, It is a summary of the event and puts all of the elements in one place that can be easily accessed.


This week we also pulled together all of the resources for a photo shoot we will be shooting on Tuesday 13th of September for the spring carnival racing season of 2016/17. On Friday I had to contact an event furniture company asking to work together on the shoot rather than pay them for their services we will promote the company on all our socials, print and video campaigns they are featured, this free publicity is a hard but necessary means of doing things sometimes when resources and budget is limited. You can only spend so much money on a shoot. It was really nerve racking in the beginning to call someone up and ask them strategically to work together but its PR sometimes you have to get things for free, it can be hard but putting some things in place which can incise companies to work for you like Perth Racing did with the free promotional activity, as well as using Stylist Teagan Sewell for the shoot made it more attractive for the company to work with us. For my first time asking for free work, it was a very successful contract and the company is very happy and excited to work with us.

I also had to contact florists for the shoot as well, sometimes you do not always get a lot of details from your managers about a shoot, just an idea, or a sketch of something they need and you have to interpret there vision and then you have to give the vision to a florist to interpret, take your ideas and inspiration and then develop and that into what you need, all for a small budget. Communication skills are so important to develop in PR as they are the first thing you need both vocally and textual you need to make sure you can communicate. Communication is the essential element for everything and you need to be able to develop and understand on how to know what to do with an element and communicate it further.
 

Here is a Picture of my Office desk 

Getting the hang of it - Lavinia Wehr - Bentley

Hi everyone,

My name is Lavinia, I am interning this semester with Perth Racing. Perth Racing runs both Ascot and Belmont Park racecourse along with all the events that go along side, these include Belmont Bonanza, The Masters series and Perth cup as well as other private events including corporate and social. Perth Racing is a vibrant place to be in something is always going on!

After my second week at my internship I have already seen A LOT, Perth Racing is a very fast pace environment and a lot can happen very quickly, especially with the Spring Carnival vastly approaching! It is everything I expected and more. I am very lucky my mentor at Perth Racing is great, I am so lucky to have someone like her, she has a lot of connections and knows everyone who is anyone in Perth, In recent years she had her own PR agency and is very willing to work with me to teach me a lot of her industry knowledge!

The team is really great and very approachable and easy to get along with, I have felt so comfortable the entire time, I am very included in all that is happening and really am starting to feel like I belong. So far at my time interning I have been working on establishing the 2016/17 media list. I have worked with our previous media lists to create a new one with the relevant media to communicate with them and issue them with new media passes, media car passes, and complementary tickets to help encourage the return of them for the new spring racing season. It is important to have a strong relationship with your media in order to be able to get press when you need it, especially for Perth Racing as they have a lot of consecutive events they need to keep the public engaged with the racing over the summer to draw a crowd!

I have also been working on the trip advisor pages for both Belmont Park Racecourse and Ascot Racecourse. Perth Racing want to generate more reviews and interest to their trip advisor pages and I was assigned the task to create strategies to do so here is what I came up with.

Top 5 strategies
 1. Thanking customers with positive feedback and encourage them to come again through promotion, or two for one tickets because this will encourage people to bring their friends and also their friends may also write a review.
2. Authenticity, thinking about the situation before answering and really answer according the comment, personal replies sound a lot more cordial and people are going to feel more likely to forgive previous mistakes, if any exist.
3. Highlighting the positives and mention the upgrades or improvements that might interest return or potential guests, enticing patrons to want to come back give the situation another go.
4. Good Customer service suggests you reply to all reviews, if you want more people to review on trip advisor, they are more likely to if they get a response, People like to be acknowledged and enjoy knowing that the company is taking on their suggestions.
 5.  Updating the Ascot and Belmont pages,  need to include  more information, photos, and more interactive to the website and our other social media platforms, also the info graphic suggested including an icon of trip advisor on the website I thought that could encourage more people to review. Or just be aware that we have the pages on trip advisor.


I have also worked on backgrounders for both Ascot and Belmont Park, and picture selection, hopefully the new and improved trip advisor pages should be up and working in a few days so you can all check it out! I will let you all know next week more about my next task working on our Privè fashion show event next week!

Here is a picture of me if anyone is wondering what I look like... or not.