Media Event - SUCCESS

We did it!

The media event happened today and was, in my opinion, a success. I walked around with one of the groups and, while it took some time and effort to get them to warm up and be friendly, it seemed like overall they enjoyed the activities, found it a fun atmosphere and positively responded throughout the day. I took photos throughout the day of the different activities, speakers and graduation ceremony, helped Lee print out all the graduation certificates and gave the main reception the schedule of the event in the morning along with all the rooms and mine and Chloe's phone numbers in case people from the media did show up - which they did, as we got a reporter/photographer from the Bath Chronicle!

All photos that I took on the day can be seen here, apart from the ones I took of the Big Draw and film sequence activity since those were taken using other people's cameras.



Summary:

Stage 1: Record

As can be seen from these blog posts, through this event I experienced what it would be like to lead a team to work in tight schedules to meet deadlines and produce many different aspects of a successful media event. As one of the three main deputies and head of the marketing team, my role was to support Chloe as the CEO, take an active role in coming up with ideas and the progression of those ideas and lead a designing team and a contacting media team; giving them briefs, assigning them tasks and making sure they met the deadlines. As well as delegating responsibilities and making sure everyone stuck to the schedule to meet the deadlines, I also took an active role in designing and contacting the media myself and was there to oversee every area of the marketing department. I was able to observe and learn from more experienced people such as tutors and the marketing department at the university things such as the best way of creating press releases, how to gain media coverage and how to design logos, posters and media event invitations to a high standard to make it appealing.

Stage 2: Influencing Factors

During the course of this event, I researched things such as examples of successful media events in the past and what made them a success, as well as examples of media event invitations and press releases that successful media companies such as Apple have created. The main influence that came out of this research I would say were the ones that the company Apple produced and released, as we liked the minimalistic style and simplicity of their designs. Apple is one of the most successful media and technology companies in the world, and pioneered this type of design for their products that arguably is one of the main factors of their success. For the design team, we decided to take on these aesthetic qualities influenced by Apple into our own work and I thought the designs worked effectively to get our message across.

Stage 3: Reflect

I believe that we accomplished what we set out to do for this event, as we received feedback from the students and the teacher that this was the best event they had been to as of yet. I do think we could have done some things differently though and prepared more thoroughly for other things to have made the event run smoother. One thing that could have gone much better that our team was in charge of on the day was the handing out of the graduation certificates. We had a list of names of all the students in the class, but we had also discussed briefly the idea about having everyone write their name down when they came in, so that we would know who was there on the day. However, that was as far as we got; a strategy to get this done wasn't implemented and we never got a list of the people who had come that day, so we had to design and print off many more certificates than we needed. This was a waste of money, but it also meant that Chloe had to read out all the names of people who weren't there and wait during awkward silence as no one would come up.

As I was busy on the morning of the day with printing out schedules and hand outs to go in the information packs, as well as putting on the labels of the packs and didn't get this finished until just before it was meant to start, I didn't think to have a list ready for everyone to write down their names when they come in as should have been my responsibility. In this respect, I should have handled this differently in two ways:

1. Prepared everything beforehand and gotten everything printed, labeled and ready a few days earlier so that there wouldn't be as much stress on the morning and so that I would have had time to remember to make a list;
2. Taken more initiative to implement a strategy or to delegate the task of getting all the names to someone else to get done.

Stage 4: Learn

I've learned from this process that I tend to leave things until the last minute to get done and I need to change to learn to prepare everything beforehand to cause less stress on the day. I now see this quality as one I need to improve in many areas of my life, and I will be working on this intentionally in the future to change this about myself. I need to change the approach I have to work, getting everything done as soon as possible in advance and leaving time at the end, rather than thinking I have all the time in the world until I frantically try to get everything done right before the deadline. This is valuable to learn about myself, as this experience showed me the consequences of doing this in a professional environment and the effect it would have on things under my direct responsibility.

I also learned from this event that I enjoy leading people, finding what they are passionate about and giving them tasks that would fit their specific abilities and passions and that would stretch and challenge them. I enjoyed leading my team, delegating and giving tasks, even if it meant a lot of checking up and running after people to get things in for deadline! I learned more about my specific leadership style as well and things I would do differently in the future, such as being more assertive and decisive even if everyone on the team aren't 100% happy with the decision.

Overall, I'm very happy with how the day went. I think we achieved the aims we had for this event and the students went away happy with what they did and hopefully thinking more about applying to university once they finish their course. I feel like we all pulled our weight and were committed to putting on an event that hopefully the students will remember, as I'm sure we all will.

Last week mayhem!

This has been the last week leading up to the media event, and it's definitely been busy!

Our team was in charge of contacting all media, which we have done, trying to get media coverage, getting the information packs and goody bags together, plus designing all signs, badges, invitations and posters.

For the information packs, I found and bought a pack of 25 basic folders made of recycled brown card. While at first we were thinking it would be good to have colourful ones, we thought that the appearance would go well with the university's environmentally friendly theme. I also bought a pack of 25 A4 labels to put on the front of the packs to maintain brand identity and make them look better. I asked Lee to design the front cover of the information packs, which is below:



I also asked Lee to design graduation certificates for each of the students, Leonie to design the schedule of the day and signs, Claire to design badges and the profile sheet of everyone in our class, with profile pictures and a line saying their ambition and one funny fact about them to hand out to the students in the information packs. Here are their designs:








I think we're ready!

Media coverage and last week to do list

I got a reply from my contact at the Bath Chronicle, Graham Holburn, who said he would forward the email and press release on to news editor Paul Wiltshire. As the rest of the contacting people on the marketing team were calling the different sources of media, I asked Ed to call his contact at the Bath Chronicle from the behind the scenes documentary they did on it and confirm if they were coming or not. He did call, but they were busy with publishing that week's issue and asked him to call back on the day they decide on what news stories will be in the next week's issue - which is Thursday, the day before the event! Let's hope.

I made what's hopefully the marketing team's last to-do list ever (!!) for the last week leading up to the event, seen below:



Exciting....one week left!

Emails, emails, emails

When Chloe and the others went to see the students and give them the invitations and posters on the 29th (unfortunately I couldn't go because I had work commitments, so sent another member of my team instead), they got all the names and emails of everyone in the class. I made a facebook event and invited all the students using their emails that Chloe sent to me, seen below.



Chloe asked me if it would also be possible to send each student a personal email with the invitation attached, along with asking them to bring their own USB stick in case we can't get any free ones and to bring an idea for a simple drawing for an animation activity we will be doing on the day. Here is an example of what I sent them:

Hi Melissa,

Attached is the official invitation to our media event we're producing for you and everyone on your course. We hope you'll be able to make it since we have a lot of great things planned. Since some of these will involve producing a final project that you can keep, we're asking everyone to please bring your own USB stick and an idea of something simple to draw for an animation focused activity on the day. Please email if you have any questions, look forward to seeing you there!

Cheers,

Esther (on behalf of all Year 2 Creative Media Practice students at Bath Spa University)



We also needed to send out the finished press release to the press straight away, so I delegated all the other media sources to the contacting people on my team and emailed my contact at the Bath Chronicle, Graham Holburn. As I'm doing my work placement there in April, I thought this would be a good way to contact them since they asked me to email them with ideas of stories that I would like to work on during my placement. Here is a copy of the email I sent to him:




Hi Graham,

Hope you're doing well! I thought that I would get in contact again as it's coming close to the time that I start my placement with you. I'm really looking forward to starting and I had some questions about the placement. I also wanted to let you know an idea I had regarding a possible story for the Chronicle.

Since you mentioned about thinking of ideas for stories for my placement, I was wondering if you would be interested in something that has come up now. I know it's before my actual placement, but on April 8th, students at Bath Spa University are putting on a media event for students at Bath City College to encourage them to come to university despite rising fees. We've been in contact with Don Foster, who gives his endorsement and whilst he unfortunately cannot come since he was already fully booked on the day, he is going to prerecord a statement showing his support for students in Bath for us. We are also getting guest speakers in such as Gemma Hunt, a presenter for the CBBC who has also done presenting work for BBC One and BBC Two, and Andy Roberts, a former freelance cameraman who now works for the BBC. In the welcome pack you sent, it said to e-mail you with any ideas about stories I would like to pursue during my placement, and I think this could be an interesting story about how different students are reacting to the current and controversial issue of the rising university fees.

I can send you the press release we've written up for it if you would be interested in featuring this in the Bath Chronicle at any point. I would also be happy to pursue a follow-up story during my placement about what students in Bath think of this controversial issue or anything along those lines.

About my placement - I believe you said that my placement would be different to the one outlined in the welcome pack you sent me, in that I would have one week in the photography department and one week on the news desk with reporters. I was wondering if I will need to bring my own camera for the week in the photography department and if this would be the first week or the second week of the placement?

Thank you, looking forward to working with you!

Best,

Esther

Press Release

The next thing we had to do was design a press release and contact the media to ask them to come and cover the event. I delegated the writing of the press release to Simon, since he has had experience in writing them in the past and volunteered to do it. This is the text he came up with:

"I'm writing to you on behalf of a group of students at Bath Spa University to officially invite you to attend an event at the University.

This is a very unique event in the sense that it is being organised entirely by the Creative Media Practice Students in order to encourage others to take up the course and pursue their ambitions through University.

In a time of rising fees and increased difficulties in attending University we hope that hearing from the students viewpoint will encourage others that Higher Education is a worthwile and rewarding path to take.

The event being held is for a group of media students at Bath College and will be being held on the Newton Park Campus between 10-3.

The event will be split up into small workshops were the students will get to participate in activities such as working with the green screen, shooting a scene in sequence and 'the big draw'."

I then finished writing the content, changed much of it, edited it and then designed the first draft along with Leonie, and sent to Lesley to run it past her. She said she thought the content was good, but it needed to be more eye-catching and appealing (see this post about researching media event invitations - much of it applies to press releases as well). Leonie and I worked on it on Wednesday and came up with a design for it (seen below).



Lesley also said we should run it past the marketing department at the university just in case to get their permission, so I did and when she wrote back she highlighted that we had forgotten to put the date of the event on it!! I have no idea how all of us had missed it, but it's a good thing we sent it to them first so they could catch it for us!

She also suggested changing some of the text and moving it around, which we took on board for the final product. I finished it off with the new changes using Adobe Illustrator. This is the design of the final press release we will soon be sending to the press:

Free goodies!

On Friday, Claire, Leonie and I went on a massive trek around the university to find everything we could to put in the information packs and the goody bags we're giving to the students at the end of the day. We went to the marketing department, the careers department and the Student Union offices and hit the jackpot! We were able to get everything we needed and more:

• Free Bath Spa Uni and Grad South West pens
• Free Grad South West pads
• Brown paper bags that have Bath Spa Uni's logo on them with the words 'Let's change your future', perfect to go with the theme of the event
• Black plastic bags that say 'in the bag'
• New 2012 university prospectuses
• Open Day bookmarks
• Information about the university
• Course outline booklets

...and more! The best part was we then went to the SU offices and asked if they had anything they could give us. He came back with his arms full of Bath Spa Uni t-shirts, enough for our entire class, that we said we could have for free! So now we don't have to worry about getting t-shirts made, since we have ones that we can all wear on the day and keep afterwards as a souvenir.

The only disappointing thing about the day was that we weren't able to track down the free Bath Spa Uni USB sticks that they were handing out during the Fresher's Fair - none of the departments had any idea where that could have originated from. We have one more lead, the environmental department's email, but we thought if we can't get them we can always ask the students to bring their own USB sticks on the day. It would be a bit frustrating, since they would be perfect to be able to give them something tangible to take home with them of everything they do on the day that would remind them of the university...but I guess you can't win them all.

Media Event Invitation Research

Our next task that we have to complete before we go to meet the students on the 29th is creating invitations to take to them and a poster for them to put up in their classroom. I did some research on media event invitations, seen below:

From this we can see that most media event invitations have a catchy slogan used to draw you in, with the information found below in smaller text. We wanted to make it look colourful and appealing to a young demographic. First we had to nail down the logo, which we did! Here is the finished logo design, incorporating the 3-D look with a media theme:

The second thing we had to do was nail down the text on the invitation. We worked together on this, coming up with this wording for the final one:

Undecided on university?
Uni fees going up?
Don't let it get you down!

Join us for a media event, tailored especially for you. Featuring special guest speakers, hands-on activities and the opportunity to see all the facilities available at Bath Spa University, this event will give you the chance to see the benefits that studying at university can bring you.

Where: Bath Spa University, Newton Park Campus
When: Friday, April 8th, 9:30 AM – 3:00 PM

Refreshments provided, bring your own lunch - free giveaways available at the end of the day!

Produced by Creative Media Practice students at Bath Spa University.



The next thing we had to do was create the design. Here were some of the ideas Lee and Leonie made for invitations and the posters:












I met with Chloe and Brad and we decided that liked elements of both final designs, the typography of Leonie's design and the clapperboard logo with the squares motif of Lee's design, so I combined the two in Adobe Illustrater, seen below:



I also incorporated the two to make the final design for the poster:



All ready to take to them on Tuesday!