A Night out at the Ballpark

Hey Everyone

I only have a few more days left at my internship with the Perth Heat. I have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunities presented and am excited about seeing what impact my actions have on the brand visibility of the Perth Heat.

The season is only 10 days away now, and so a lot of my recent work has gone into game day initiatives and the various communication elements involved in preparing for a game night with the Perth Heat. For this post, I want to just give you guys a quick insight into the planning and implementation of game nights, and what exactly goes on. The following is a list (in order) of the tasks undertaken by communication staff prior to the Perth Heats first pre season game last Thursday night.

(The Calm Before the Storm.......Which turned into an actual storm on Saturday Night)

 

1. Confirm and allocate sponsor attendance
The Perth Heat have over 50 corporate partners, many of whom will regularly attend games at the "diamond lounge" (equivalent to a corporate box at the footy). It is the job of the commercial manager to organise which sponsors will be in attendance (mainly via phone communication), and begin allocating space in the diamond lounge, as well as prior transport for corporate partners.

2. Create social media and PA announcment schedule
One of the unique experiences of a baseball game is the degree to which PA announcements are used. As well as updating the play and score, PA announcements and video boards are able to be used by sponsors to promote their product to fans in attendance. Each sponsor has a policy regarding PA announcements written into their agreement with Perth Heat. A lot of the food trucks at the game for example, expect at least 1 social media mention during the game(https://twitter.com/PerthHeat/status/522724507622973440).
A few of the sponsors also sponsor game events such as Home Run's and Foul Ball's so it has to be ensured that these are conveyed over the PA announcment

3. Confirm first pitch, and 7th inning stretch entertainment
This was not included in pre-season matches, but is still an important part of the game night event operations. The right to throw out the first pitch is usually given to corporate sponsors to raffle off, whilst little league junior players are given an opportunity to run out onto the field during the middle of the 7th inning (much like what is done at AFL and Cricket matches). It is important there is a clear understanding of who is doing what, and having a strict schedule of when it will occur.

4. Finalizing Media Attendance
There is a press section allocated at the Barbagallo Ballpark. All games are streamed online, and broadcast through Sport FM radio station, so it is important to ensure that all equipment and facilities are set up and ready prior to the gates opening. Any journalists attending the game should have access to Wifi, and broadcast staff with the necessary equipment.

5. Finalise other arrangements with ground staff and team operations
The final step involved is to check that ground staff have completed their tasks, and the ballpark is in perfect condition to host game night. This step is really a means of checking off that all elements of the organization are ready for game night, not just communications


Then finally the lights are on, and the game begins. Luckily most of the hard work is done, so most staff can sit back and enjoy the game. However from a communications point of view, there are still a few things involved in game night opperations.


1. Ensuring all stakeholders are satisfied
This is really a job for all members of the Perth Heat organisation. Generally speaking the commercial manager will spend the game night in the Diamond Lounge with the corporate partners with the General Manager. Other non-event staff will hang out at the members bar, talking to Perth Heat members to ensure everyone is enjoying themselves. Communication staff are encouraged to do this also, but with more of a focus towards the press section of the stadium, ensuring that the media have everything they need to cover the game.

2. Live Social Media updating
One of the main aspects of game day for communications staff is to live tweet matches. The rule of thumb is usually to update the score at the end of each inning, or when a run is scored by either team. https://twitter.com/PerthHeat/status/523106417289338881
An effort should also be made to see if anyone else is using social media at the ground, and to retweet and engage with them using the official account.

(Guess the question correctly, and win a photo with a man in a dog suit!!!!)

3. Run Game-Day competitions and initatives
Usually there will be a few competitions run for fans attending the game. Prize packs are often given to fans who catch foul balls. One new competition that was trialled during the pre season game was a "find the mascot" competition. It was posted on twitter that the first fan to get a photo with the Perth Heat mascot (who was hidden somewhere in the ballpark) would win a prize. A lot of the time sponsors (such as monster ball or Hog's breath) will bring their own mascot to games to run similar competitions, and these are all outlined in the individual sponsor agreements.



So that is just a bit of insight into what goes into game nights at the Perth Heat. I found there was a lot of stuff that I had learnt in units such as PR Techniques and PR Media that I was able to apply to this situation. I hope that some of you found this post interesting, and may even check out a Perth Heat game sometime this summer.


Till next time
Simon

Oh, and for your information the Perth Heat won the game 9-2

Final Month and So Much To Do..

Dear readers,

I’m entering in my third and final month at Apave and to speak true, I have not noticed time-passing by.

Those two last months have been so overloaded with work that time seemed to speed up and to speak true it was an amazing experience.

I’m not saying it was boring and that I was overloaded, au contraire, having so much work really gets into you and as an intern, you’re so proud when something goes right that you want this feeling to continue and get involved totally in your work.

1^st experience:

My major tasks as communication intern were mainly to contact the Press and keep in touch with them. What is interesting with this is that you really get the grasp of how it is to work with journalists when you actually work with them.

There is always that need to keep contact, to recall and specially to have regular phone calls with them. Whilst doing this, I realised that:

WOW

I was already beginning my first media contact lists and I understood that those relationships would or at least should last for the entire time that I’ll be in the public relations field.

It was quite interesting as an experience, keeping in touch with them is rather time-consuming but when you get the chance to have that sweet girl at the end of the phone who is really willing to help, you do not even think of it as time-consuming but as a well done task.

2^nd Experience:

When I began my studies, I thought that working in the public relations field would be mainly focused on the media relations but I came to realise during my internship that every single petite aspect that touched a company’s image and reputation was to be taken into account. From the designing of the invitation card to the articles and adverts posted in the Press.

Every tiny detail was to be considered crucial and budgeting really was a necessary pain to be considered at some point.

It all started when time had come to focus on all the conference day material. The Graphic Designer and I had to start working on all the official documents that were to be distributed to all participants, prior to the event and during the conference’s day.

Invitations were to be finalised and official documents of the conference day had to be confirmed before the end of September.

I thought that a month of work on this would be enough, but I soon realised that time went by too fast and that procedures took long.

We had to ask for quotations regarding the prices and the products proposed, we had to concentrate on a quality-pricing focus and we had a lot of amendments to do regarding the final documents.

Dozens of quotations later, I realised that to fulfil a task and especially when it was to be done budget-wise, you needed to make compromises and to choose the best out of a global quotation. One could order invitation cards with a company and the envelopes printing with another one. This was normal usage in a corporate world and companies had to deal with that.

Well I hoped that you enjoyed all of my posts and that it really helped you to get an insight of what my life was as an intern.

 

 

Project

Hi my fellow interns,

I hope you are all enjoying your internship.

Just a little update on what I have been up to with my internship. It is getting more and more busy in my office. We have our first event coming up at the end of May and I've been busy helping my supervisor putting the finishing touches of the event. This includes emailing sponsors and making sure they are updated, also promoting in social media feeds about the event and making sure delegates are up to date on what will be happening at the event.

Apart from this event, I have also been given a little project of my own. I have been given the opportunity to be more apart of the event known as Energy WA. Even though I have not helped with organising the event from the start, I have recently been given the task to create the event in the Promacos System. This includes creating the website, providing the necessary information about the event, writing up the sponsorship prospectus for suitable sponsors and also creating twitter for Energy WA and updating it every week.

This has been a great opportunity and a great experience as I get to see how it all plans together and the work that it takes to plan an event and make it successful.

It takes a lot of time and effort to organise an event together, there are many concepts and layers that is needed to be done. One of the strength that I think I bring to Promaco is my Public Relations background. I am able to use the skills that I learn from Uni to corporate it in terms of promoting, coming up with ideas on how to make the event more attractive and also using social media as a tool to communicate with the target audience for the event. My attention to details is also used in Promaco as I am able to help with editing and making sure that sponsorship prospectus is perfect when it goes out to clients.

Overall, I have learnt and experienced so much in my time at Promaco Conventions and put what I have learnt at Uni into practice. I am only more excited every week to see what else I can learn and the new things I can experience.

Have a great week everyone, till next time.

Grace

Sponsorship Relations

As my firm Minter Ellison has combined with Squire Sanders, effective today, we have been keen to leverage any opportunities to profile the new brand.

A few weeks back myself and my Manager met with the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA). We are the legal and legislative partner for this association, which represents the urban development industry.

In this meeting we agreed that our firm would sponsor the October addition of the Quarterly Urban Development Index publication which will be published to their membership in a fortnight. This entitles our firm to 4 pages of content.

I came up with a plan for the four pages available to us, this included 1 full page advertisement, 2 pages for a thought leadership piece on regeneration or affordable housing and 1 page article profiling some of our lawyers who will speaking in their November professional development program.

This plan was approved by my manager and I began working with a graphic designer on the advertisements. They look fantastic and I am very happy with them. I worked with a graphic designer in our UK office, because of the time difference it was important that I knew exactly what I wanted and sent a detailed brief to the designer.

I have received some great feedback in relation to the work I have completed for this sponsorhsip. I have found the process of working directly with a sponsor very rewarding.

Hope everyone's placement is going well!

Jess

Going Global

Hi everyone

I work full time at Minter Ellison Lawyers and have been fortunate to complete my placement in my current workplace.

My role is Business Development Executive and my core duties include providing marketing support to our Real Estate and Disputes division. This involves identifying profile raising opportunities for our legal staff, including speaking at conferences, identifying sponsorships and if there is a hot legal topic in their industries, making sure that we are informing our clients. This may be through events or newsletters.

Our Events and Sponsorship Coordinator has been on leave for the last fortnight, and because I am doing my placement I have been fortunate to look after events and sponsorships during this time. So I have some really exciting things to share with you over the coming weeks!!!

But first things first, if any of you read the newspapers you will have seen the recent media attention our firm has received. The Perth office will be combining with Global Law firm, Squire Sanders. As you can imagine it has been a hype of activity in our department of late, below is just a taste of what I have been involved with;

- Preparing media packs for journalists who were interviewing our Managing Partner and Chairman

- Involved in the internal communication annoucment to staff

- Setting up meetings for our key clients to ensure good client relationship management

- Using our CRM to pull a list of clients to disseminate an announcement letter

- Involved in meetings with key industry associations that we sponsor

It really has been an exciting time for me! The most interesting take out from this media attention is how critically important the content of your media release is. Below are links to some of our coverage - interested to hear your thoughts!!

http://www.perthnow.com.au/business/wa-company-news/minter-ellison-in-us-merger/story-e6frg2s3-1226109258658

http://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/blogs/special_reports/archive/2011/08/25/western-front-squire-sanders-chief-on-the-firm-s-australian-strike.aspx

http://www.thelawyer.com/squire-sanders-partners-vote-in-favour-of-aussie-tie-up/1008971.article