Kayleigh Grierson

A Cheltenham-based PR consultancy has recruited a permanent member of staff following experience of the CIPR mentoring scheme.

Colin Higgins & Associates (CHA) joined the CIPR mentoring Scheme in 2008 which paired Colin Higgins (MD of Colin Higgins & Associates) with Kayleigh Grierson, an undergraduate studying Public Relations at the University of Gloucestershire.

The mentoring scheme offers mutual benefits, allowing the student to gain access to advice on skills development, career development and job hunting, whilst giving the mentor the opportunity to establish links with local academic institutions and generate contact with potential employees.

Kayleigh joined CHA for work experience during the summer of 2010 and was later offered a full-time position as a PR Account Executive, to start after graduation.

Colin Higgins, the Managing Director of CHA commented:

‘It’s important to support graduates who are looking to get into the PR industry, especially when there is so much competition for full-time positions after university, as has been the case in recent years.  The CIPR mentoring scheme was a great success and we are delighted to welcome Kayleigh to the team.’

Mark Willock, CIPR Training and Development Manager said:

‘Mentoring is a way of supporting people’s personal and career development. It involves understanding the career issues and direction of an individual (the mentee) and matching them with someone who has suitable experience in a similar area (the mentor). Mentoring is a highly customised way to grow individual talent and can be a form of life-long form of learning for both the Mentee and Mentor. As it is essentially a supportive form of development, mentoring can focuses on helping the individual manage their career and improve skills while also discussing personal issues.’

Kayleigh will be working across all of CHA’s client accounts across a range of sectors including health, aviation, beauty, food and sports.

Kayleigh’s appointment follows a recent expansion at CHA with the addition of Rachel Thomas as Senior Account Executive in December 2010 and Duncan Matthews as Head of Studio earlier this year.

Delegate your tasks. You won’t be able to do everything.

Set up Google Alerts to track any online coverage. You will be surprised about how useful this can be.

After a 30 minute journey I arrived in Gloucester and quickly foraged for a coffee. I was due on BBC Radio Gloucester to have an interview with presenter Faye Hatcher about the #AddMe Social Media Conference taking place that evening. The conference was being set up as part of my role as CIPR Student Representative for the University of Gloucestershire.

As a CIPR Student Representative in Cheltenham I saw that I was already at a disadvantage. Cheltenham is known for its Gold Cup week in March. This is a time when the roads become gridlocked, the majority of locals move away and this means many venues are booked up. Yet March was going to have to be the date for the conference due to study obligations.

Trying to find a venue was a monumental task that caused many sleepless nights with a head full of doubt. Even the university’s halls were in use but a last minute opportunity eventually showed itself. The largest hall at Park Campus was free on Wednesday 10th March. At the time this left just a month to arrange the event.

Four weeks to sort out online promotions, press promotions, to get catering, find expert social media speakers, arrange affiliations and get tickets sold. It is also worth saying that as the University of Gloucestershire is a smaller university there is only one CIPR Student Rep. Just me. Not entirely sure how this is meant to work as the size of a class does not deter the size of the event. Despite all this frazzling head heat I had an idea. I knew what this conference was going to look like and that it would be special.

Before I arranged anything I spoke with lots of people gauging their interest in a social media conference. I soon found out that not only is Cheltenham a growing base for social media but this would be the first professional social media conference in the town. I spoke with the Dean of my Campus, this news soon reached other lecturers in the business school and there was interest. It became clear to me that no more time should be wasted.

The mixture of organising the conference and arranging publicity had been a task that I could never have prepared myself for in the classroom. Being thrown into the deep end is difficult at first but soon you learn to swim.

The contacts I have built up during the last month will be valuable and this has allowed me to become proactive in Cheltenham.

Publicising the event

Publicity included sending press releases to the local media but with this event I had a point to prove. A social media conference’s main source of publicity should be through the internet. Therefore it was critical for the conference to have a website. Any promotions using social media must refer back to the main source, a website of some kind.

As I am already active on the internet this task was simple. It took a couple of minutes to set up a sub domain but just over a week to have all the content sorted out on the website. Due to ease of use and flexibility I chose a WordPress package as the CMS. At the same time a Twitter profile was set up (@AddMeConf) which would be used to communicate up-to-date information quickly.

At the university there is such a large skill and talent base that I would one would have to be mad to ignore. One of my friends, Chris Brightwell, designed the graphics for the conference. This branded the event and helped with media exposure. My drinking buddy, Jonny Orme, organised filming at the event and will soon be editing the videos for YouTube.

People are inherently forgetful. It was necessary to repeat time, date and price information every few days and still many students asked me about the details. A Facebook event was set up to repeatedly message guests. The benefit of having sorted a PayPal system was that the money instantly hit my bank account. This made the financial side of the conference much less stressful as I could spend money that was already in my pocket.

Media  coverage

The #AddMe Conference got 18 different pieces of coverage. This included BBC Gloucestershire, Business Week, Gloucestershire Echo and Gloucestershire Media Group. In two months the website received a total of 800 unique hits and 1,784 visits. The Twitter profile got 176 followers with over 100 mentions of the #AddMe and #AddMeConf hashtag.

Keeping the success of this conference in mind here are my tips about events management and promotions.

Ten Things to remember about events management:

1. Work quickly to get a venue. Once you have the venue and date you can start selling.
2. Use your contacts or speak with people in order to get some.
3. If you don’t ask then you definitely won’t receive.
4. Always keep your audience in mind.
5. Remember to remind ticket buyers of the details.
6. You will get frazzled. Beat the pain barrier.
7. Don’t send a group email to buyers without hiding the email addresses.
8. Delegate your tasks. You won’t be able to do everything.
9. Health and safety forms are always a pain but always complete these in plenty of time.
10. Try to get as much for free as possible. The venue for #AddMe Conference was free of charge.

Ten Things to remember about publicity:

1. Always phone before sending the press release.
2. Write the press release specifically for the targeted publication.
3. Send personal invites.
4. Strike deals with affiliated companies to promote.
5. Journalists are busy but very helpful. Don’t be afraid to ask for contacts.
6. The best way to promote is by ‘word of mouth’. Get involved in the community (eg. I went to DigiTalks in Cheltenham to speak on stage).
7. Strike interest online. This will lead to blog posts and many tweets (The first ticket sale for the #AddMe Conference was through Twitter).
8. Set up Google Alerts to track any online coverage. You will be surprised about how useful this can be.
9. Never turn a promotion opportunity down. Even if you feel tired you must go out and raise interest.
10. You can never promote too much.

Public relations students have devised a responsible drinking campaign for police in Cheltenham.

The work was part of a project for second year students on the BA Public Relations course at the University of Gloucestershire. The students were given a brief in October to come up with a suitable campaign to support the Government’s ‘Safe, Sensible, Social’ anti- binge drinking initiative.

Students presented their ideas at Gloucestershire Police Headquarters in December.

A panel from Gloucestershire Constabulary along with Mr Ryan West, area manager for JD Wetherspoon, who donated prizes, listened to five competing presentations.

Winners: Weavers, O'Brien, Stoodley and Urbaite

The winning students were Laura O’Brien, Lauren Stoodley, Megan Weavers and Diana Urbaite.

The promotions, in the form of money-off vouchers, would only be accessible if you correctly answered a relevant health, social or crime prevention related question. The web page would also promote the relevant issues and risks involved with drinking excessive alcohol.

Their prize is a choice of concert tickets at the O2 Arena or O2 Academy venues.

Chair of the judging panel Inspector Boyles said “It was a wonderful opportunity to work in partnership with university students and draw on their different perspectives and creativity.

“We have gained a great many new ideas, some of which we will hopefully use in a future campaign.”

Working from a brief set by the Meningitis Trust’s in-house PR team, the students were asked to create a campaign strategy to increase awareness and donations from young people.  

The students, Zaena Leadette-Williams, Jody Dennett, Joanna Dey and Lauren Moss, devised the winning idea for the Meningitis Trust to employ an SMS messaging donation service in which the target audience can donate via text message to the charity. 

Harriet Penning, Senior Communications Officer of the Meningitis Trust said:

“We were delighted with the ideas that the team produced and will be looking to implement some of these into our work in the near future. We were really impressed with the professional approach that the team applied to the project and would recommend that any business, charity or organisation work with the university.”

The team’s success was the result of careful planning, research, and an intense day of competitive pitching to the charity. 

The move will come in January next year, six years after Richard joined Leeds Met and academic PR for the first time, following work in journalism and the technology sector of PR, including successful freelance work.

Richard will be part of a small team of two, reducing his academic work load to a part time position for the ability to take on new projects which will contribute to his choice to make a change to his working career.

The two year old, CIPR-approved course at Gloucestershire offers the opportunity for development as a small course consisting of 25 at present, and a new location for Richard to take his skills he has distributed at Leeds Met.

Although he does not describe himself as a risk-taker, he admits to having taken risks previously which paid off and feel they will do again this time.

The move is something Richard has been considering for some time, and now feels the right opportunity has come along to move somewhere closer to home and with definite development potential.