First thoughts

One of the main duties of a CIPR student rep is to organise an event which promotes the image of CIPR and is beneficial to students. To be honest, I have had all sorts of ideas but none of them quite fitted the description. The budget offered by CIPR was £50, which kind of ruled out my initial idea of taking my group on a PR trip to Ibiza. What else could be interesting to my fellow students and is still within the CIPR domain? The next thought I had was a job fair called "How to land your dream job" offering CV writing and interview tips and featuring key PR agencies on the lookout for graduate employees. Unfortunately thematically it clashed with one of the events held by CIPR at roughly the same time and called "Getting started in PR", so I had to come up with an alternative.

The main concern for students is how they are going to secure employment when they graduate, and the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of organising an event offering students internship opportunities. Life is all about competition, especially in PR, so why not prepare students for their future career by exposing them to this rule from the very beginning? I came up with the idea of conducting an internship competition offering the winners a placement in one of the key PR agencies and started my search for the PR practices that might be interested in my proposal. I used all possible avenues to approach consultancies: through the CIPR membership directory; via personal contacts; by responding to articles in PR Week publishing practitioners’ contact details etc. As it happened, the internship market is rather problematic and agencies are not prepared to commit without knowing the level and experience of the candidates, so I was able to find only four agencies willing to participate: Lansons, PHA Media, Phoenix and Three Monkeys. I visited their offices and met with the practitioners scheduled to present the company at the competition and they all provided me with their company profile overview, internship terms and any other information they considered to be important for attracting most of the students' attention.

The student candidates for the event have also been carefully selected. I targeted BA and MA PR students both in London and outside the capital by way of contacting CIPR student reps asking them to share my proposal with their groups. My PR tutor, Jeremy Baker at the London Metropolitan University, kindly supplied me with contact details for the tutor teaching second year students BA in Communications Technology - Gareth Thompson - and we agreed to have a Skype conference call for me to introduce the students to CIPR and invite them to take part in the competition. This unfortunately never happened due to technical problems. Nevertheless, Gareth has distributed the printouts which I had previously posted to him just in case and as a result a few students from his course have since been in touch.

To document the event a photographer was required, but to make sure that I have the best professional available, I held another competition amongst young student photographers. I informed them that although there was no budget for their fee and their main benefit would be a high profile project and a great client on their CV, plus the opportunity to extend their portfolio further by making use of the amazing venue, meeting high-flying PROs and gaining coverage in local and national media. I sent my proposal to the key London-based photography institutes, courses and departments as well as a few of my own contacts and also posted a note on Facebook. Having reviewed the portfolios and CVs submitted by the interested parties, I identified the perfect photographer - Chen Gao, a freelance from Zibo, China, who also had a BA in Choreography.

The same procedure was followed to find the best event logo design. A competition was held and the best option was chosen. Freelance graphic designer Nick Foster also supplied images for the posters.

The event was held at the Moorgate campus of the London Metropolitan University with the Awards ceremony to follow at the nearby restaurant. I considered a few bar and restaurant options for the after-party, trying to combine proximity to the university, appropriate layout and flexibility in meeting my tiny budget. Having spoken to the management of the nearby venues such as The Globe, Pizza Express, Indian Mehek, O'Neills and The Wall - I have chosen the latter.

Their individual approach from the very first moment did the trick. I walked in without any appointment on a Thursday night at around 7pm and barman Pavel kindly invited me to the quieter upper floor private function room to go through the details of my proposal. I informed him about my major budget restrictions and my event requirements and he assured me that they would contact me the next day to make a booking taking into account our special circumstances. I left with a happy feeling. It had been a long time since someone had treated me in such a dignified manner considering students never have any money.

Next morning, Manager Katherine Atkins contacted me to confirm our booking and finalise the menu. I must admit, I was desperate to get that bar as my heart was already there, so I told her that we were prepared to allow them to use our photographer for their own professional portfolio. I also mentioned that the event would get local and national coverage in the media and I would be happy to mention their name in the feature. And the deal was done. The next day I went to see the allocated function room and I was speechless! We were given a lovely spacious private room on the top second floor with our private bar, bathroom and terrace. The room had a massive screen and computer equipment so we could run the entire event in the same place. Katherine offered a great combination of drinks and food, giving us a 25% discount plus corkage on champagne.

I sent out a confirmation email to the successful students asking them to choose the three agencies for the event.

On Tuesday I got back in touch with the agencies to confirm who was selected for the next stage.

I was really exciting about this event! It was an unbelievable joy to see all these little puzzles fall into place.