The final hurdle

 Looking back on the whole process of the group work I feel it went really well. I have learned a lot about working within a group. Time is always of the essence and I continually learn that in my second year forward planning is needed to make the most of the time you do have to complete an assignment. Compromise and hard work is needed when working within a group to make it work, however if you pick the right group this will become second nature.

After going against Belbin’s theory of having a mixed group of personalities we found that quite the opposite works too. Belbin does suggest that “Teamworkers are among the easiest of people to work with”. As we were all Teamworkers this definitely worked in our favour as I felt it very easy to work with the rest of my group.

Belbin is one theory that can be used when forming groups however Tuckman’s theory on groups he suggests every group goes through the following stages:

• ·         Forming- when the group first gets together

• ·         Storming- people fight for position

• ·         Norming- roles get established

• ·         Performing- getting the job done

• ·         Mourning- the task comes to an end and the group may not work together again.

For our group this theory would have been more accurate than Belbin, as we went through several of these stages.

Throughout I have learnt a lot about myself and my style of working which I will take on board with other assignments. The main thing would be I need to manage my time so I don’t feel so thinly spread and rushed when getting assignments done. I have also learnt I work best with like minded people as I feel that sharing interests with people is a foundation to building a good working relationship.

The pitching process

Time to squeeze in one more practice of our pitch, by this point we are all feeling fairly confident in what we had to say so with morale pretty high it was time to pitch. We got to go second which was ideal as going first can often be nerve-wracking, so we had some time to relax before being put into the spotlight.

Pitching is a vital part or PR, it is often is the decision maker on whether you win a contract or not. So making sure that you achieve what the commissioning company wants is key. Believing in your pitch and feeling confident helps along the way. We all felt fairly confident delivering our pitch and enjoyed listening to our pitch back; we were all very impressed with the logos the other group had delivered us!

Within the workplace pitching would often be left to one person whom would be the leader on the account. Davis suggests that “A successful leader, in any environment, has to be an effective communicator, in order to arouse confidence, sustain credibility and generate excitement.”. In relation to our pitch it was vital that we got our point across and communicated successfully otherwise there could have been a misunderstanding.

Shannon and Weaver’s theory of communication is a big factor to consider when pitching as any noise can interfere with the commissioning agencies understanding of your aims. The sender was our group (Pink Box PR) and the receiver being Carry on events. Noise could be someone that has been distracted so having an engaging and interesting pitch can help avoid this. Feedback was delivered via questions from carry on events, which we answered with ease as we had prepared for any questions that we would receive. By knowing your project well it makes the whole communication process easier.

So after months of preparation and hard work we have now come to an end of our group work and it has been a pleasure doing the assignment and working with my group. We decided to have one last meeting just to de-brief and discuss how we all felt it went.

The roles reverse

After looking at our role which was a group of University friends that had set up a PR company who dealt with crisis management it was time to get started on Carry on events.

Gregory's Planning Model

So now we have to reverse our roles and pitch to a commissioning agency, PR campaign can be a difficult concept. Where do you even start? Well when planning a PR campaign a useful tool to follow is Anne Gregory’s planning model. This model covers 12 steps to planning and managing a successful PR campaign.

 

After making copious amounts of notes in the presentation we looked back at what we all understood of the objectives set, to understand what our next step would be. Without a written brief from our commissioning group we did find it challenging to clearly define the objectives as we felt that from the presentation there was not a clear set of objectives. By having a written brief it would have made it easier as the objectives would have been clear and in black and white. In working life there would always be a written brief for the PR agency to take away. This did make our second presentation more difficult as it was a bit of a guessing game, based on what we understood from the commissioning group’s presentation. Struggling to get the aims right can often be a problem when planning and managing a PR campaign as Anne Gregory states “Setting realistic aims and objectives is absolutely vital if the programme or campaign that is being planned is to have direction and demonstrably achieve something”. This suggests that without getting the aims and objectives right the whole campaign would struggle to have any sort of direction or even work.

Once getting over our initial hurdle our pitching presentation slowly came together as Pink Box PR (our PR company’s new name). Once again working together was an easy process. In our first meeting to bounced around some initial ideas and started to put them into a PowerPoint presentation again, with the intention of polishing off the final product after Christmas. 

Christmas had come and gone and after a well deserved rest it was once again time to get back into working. We scheduled our meeting for our first day back to make sure we had time to get the work done. With fresh minds and determination we powered through with only a few issues of what our actual aims were for Carry on events. 

Positive synergy was a big part when creating our pitching brief. By working all together we were able to achieve more than if we were all working individually on the project. By putting our brains together we got over our hurdles which would have been a lot more challenging than if we were working solo.  After all the saying is two heads are better than one well in our case four heads are better than one.

I guess it’s now time for our final pitch. Scary Stuff!

Presentation Day

After the final presentation was made and we were all happy with the changes that Rhiannon had made it’s now time to present.

Presentations can often be nerve wracking standing up in front on your peers and putting yourself out there is a task most people run away from. Personally after presentations at college and in my first year of University I have become used to presenting, although the nerves are still there. We decided that for the presentation we would all have equal speaking parts so we made sure we all had the same amount of slides to talk about as it is the fairest way to involve everyone as seeing as we all put equal effort in we wanted this reflected in the actual presentation.

Well we all felt it went really well and now we have our brief for our PR agency. We are working for Carry on events a company that organises events such as carnage, which is the event we have been asked to work on.  We have been asked to improve the reputation of carnage so watch this space to see how it goes.