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SubWoofers 2018 - yes we did that!

Since September my day to day life has consisted mostly of planning for May 6th and hoping that it’d be a success!

As team leader for marketing my main job was to get people through the door and get tickets sold. In the build up the online sales were slow but picked up as we managed to get some print material out. We were incredibly blessed to have the weather on our side for the whole weekend so the build and break of the site was easier than if we had pouring rain. The day before the event consisted of putting up fencing around the site - which was hard in the heat but everyone was very hard working and pulled through to get that up. 

On the day of the event I arrived at 7:30am with half of the team to begin final preparations for the event. This entailed setting up the box office, queuing systems, putting up signage and getting the remainder of stalls/traders/rides in. Having all the team there on the morning after 10:30 was really helpful as we managed to get everything together quicker! 

By 12 people were already arriving - even though we didn’t open until 1! The last hour until the opening was manic as final checks needed to be done and everything needed to be in place. Once we opened I stayed at box office to get people through the door quicker. Our pre-paid queue was moving very slow and we had a few disgruntled customers complaining. I managed to work out a new system that would then get the queue moving quicker. Once this was implemented the queue started to move and we got people through the door in a faster time. The main rush of people came within the first two hours and the site soon filled up.

The day seemed to fly by and it was already time for Ska Souls to take the stage. This was my favourite point during the day - a group of us all were by the stage and everyone was really happy and dancing along to them. It was also great seeing the crowd up on their feet dancing along to the music and enjoying themselves. 

Once they left the stage the site emptied and it was time for our break down. The production team organised this incredibly well and we all were put into smaller groups. This allowed us to get the site broken down before we left for the evening leaving us with less to do post event! 

From a marketing point of view throughout the build up to the event I was so worried that we wouldn’t get anyone through the door. Each sales update we would get would fill me with dread that the event wouldn’t be a success for the Hearing Dogs for Deaf People. I couldn’t have been more wrong! Seeing the queues of people at 1pm working their way into site and the car park filling up made me feel like we had done a job well done!

We managed to get all our print out - that being banners, A0 boards, posters and fliers. We got posters up into shops and fliers handed out at train stations during peak hours. We managed to secure interviews on BBC Three Counties, Wycombe Sound and Marlow FM. We had a media partnership with Mix 96 who played an advertisement for SubWoofers in the last two weeks running up to the event. We engaged with Bucks Free Press, Bucks Herald, Wendover News and Hiya Bucks. All of them put us into their media. On the day - we had photographers from Bucks Free Press and Bucks Herald come to site and photograph. Helen from Hiya Bucks came along with her family and is going to cover the post-event on her platform. The Hearing Dogs got print out from their end too to volunteers and distributed at schools. Banners were placed at areas with high amounts of traffic. All of this was such a success as we managed 3,500 attendees through the door on the day - which is more than I could have ever imagined!

The only thing I would criticise myself on would to have grown more of a back bone to delegate the jobs building up to the event. I enjoyed being team leader so much but found it difficult to fully get through to people what I needed them to do. For the most part - half of my team were incredible at what they managed to achieve and I’m so proud of them!

SubWoofers was incredible and I am absolutely gutted I won’t be able to put it on again next year as it is my favourite thing I’ve done at uni in the last two years!!!

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SubWoofers - the final countdown!

It is crazy to be sat writing this post with 11 days to go until SubWoofers! The time has seemed to fly since the Christmas break and week by week more has been fitting into place. As team leader for marketing the range of jobs that I have had to delegate and complete have ranged from print work to social media to PR. I’ve enjoyed leading my team into the roles and have tried to appoint people to where I think they are best suited. Week by week these roles would switch as different people would take on different jobs as the work load increased.

As well as being team leader – I took on the role of PR as my main focus. Since the beginning of the year this has allowed me to write a number of press releases about the event which was a new area for me. This allowed me to practice how to write a piece of text that would spark interest from the media and would hopefully then go into their newspaper/online.

I have also had to arrange a number of interviews for radio – including BBC 3 Counties and Wycombe Sound. The interview with BBC 3 Counties took place on Monday 23rd April on Nick Coofer’s show just before 2pm. Myself and David from the Hearing Dogs travelled up to Dunstable and went live on air. This was my first time doing a radio interview and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I have enjoyed being able to see the print come together and arrange for the different print. The print has included: fliers, posters, banners and putting together the programme. Being able to give the event its identity by using our event mascot Hudson to feature on all print material made the event seem more family friendly. Choosing to use the Hearing Dogs colours allowed us to keep the event linked to them too whilst fitting the design work together.

In the final build up to the event there is a lot that we still have left to do.  The print is still being distributed and we are arranging fliering for every day in the build up to the event in town centres and train stations. Peak times at the shopping centre are on weekends so this is ideal to speak to families about the event with it being a week away. We did this at the Great British Dog Walk at Culden Faw Estate last month. This allowed us to speak to supporters of the charity directly about the event and see if they were interested in coming along.

Over the course of the next 11 days we will be getting everything else together to ensure the event runs smoothly. We will be starting to get things delivered to site from mid week. In the last build up we will be getting the word out continuously using our social media, print material and press presence!  

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Yee-haw! C2C Festival

I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to work with Ginger Owl Productions for this years C2C Festival at the O2 Arena. My job role was artist liaison runner which involved taking artists and their crew around the venue from stage to stage. The O2 transforms itself to a multiple venue site for the weekend as they use every available space to situate stages. Not only did they use the main arena and their Indigo venue – they also used areas such as All Bar One, Nylon, Building Six etc. This meant that once an artist had finished performing on one of the stages they would need assistance to get to the next place.

Over the course of the weekend, totalling up about 30,000 steps a day, I would meet a range of people from the artists themselves to their tour managers. This was a great opportunity to speak to people directly about their life in the music industry and how they got to where they are. I had to be engaging and polite as well as knowing my way around the venue to get them where they need to be in the right amount of time.  

Throughout the weekend I managed to catch a number of acts perform ranging from the main stage all the way to the up close and personal gigs in All Bar One. The set up of the gig was my favourite “festival” I’ve been to as it really allows the fans to get up close and personal with the artists and meet them too!

Looking after the artists was a new job for me and one I really did enjoy. Getting to be behind the scenes and seeing how much work goes into getting artists from A to B was a lot of fun! Since working at C2C – I’ve worked with Ginger Owl again at Global Citizen Live. This involved being a VIP Usher. I was involved in welcoming the VIPs to the venue, checking their tickets and then giving them their VIP wristband that allowed them to then go and access the VIP lounge and their seats.

 Hopefully I will have more work with them during the summer as working with the Ginger Owl team is always fun!

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Life as an Intern!

Since September, I have been working as an intern at Aylesbury Waterside Theatre in the marketing team! Each week seems to come around so quick and before I know it, it is Thursday and I’m on my way to the theatre again. Whilst working at the theatre I have been working with different members of the marketing team who under take a range of different roles. For example, when working with Jayne I undertake a lot of work around the theatre. For example, each show has an exit flyer schedule. Jayne puts together a schedule of what leaflets will be given out after the shows and will pick the show that has a similar target market. The leaflets then have to be collected from the print store and taken to where the stewards will then pick them up. Another job I assisted Jayne with was changing print materials around the theatre. This includes, large posters on the outside and inside of the theatre, a5 leaflets in the rack, posters in the bathrooms etc.

Working with Steph, the main job is to make eFlyers. These get emailed to their database and can be anything from a single show eFlyer or multiple shows. To make each eFlyer, I used a system called silverpop. In this system, ATG have pre-set templates for each venue which the marketing team will then insert their titles, subject lines, pictures etc. I have made a number of these. For example, I made one for their Black Friday offers. On this I would insert the shows, the offer and a description. I would have to resize the shows artwork to fit into the template using Photoshop. I would then have to come up with an engaging subject line which the consumer would see when they received the eFlyer.

Working with Ali would have me more involved with social media and PR. I would assist Ali in creating Facebook posts for shows. These would include an engaging first line of the post to grab the readers attention, a description of the show, a picture then a link to buy tickets. In the run up to Christmas it would be essential to include text about Christmas to encourage people to purchase ticket. On Facebook, I would also create event groups for each show so that theatre goers could confirm that they are going so that the show would be shared to their friends and so on. In addition, using Tweetdeck I would schedule a number of tweets for 2018 about confirmed shows. These posts included Jersey Boys, The Little Mix Experience and many more! In addition, working with Ali also meant working at both Aylesbury and Princes Risborough light switch on. At each one, I would be handing out pantomime flags and stickers to children. At Princes Risborough, I would also hand out the new seasonal brochure to the adults to inform them on the shows that are coming up at the venue! Working the light switch on meant meeting the lovely cast in the show including Jon Moses, Su Pollard, Andy Collins and La Voix!

On the 12th December I will also be attending the press night for the Pantomime which I am looking forward to! So far, my time at Aylesbury has been great and I can’t wait to carry on!

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Bucks Live moves site!

In September, we were given our next brief for Bucks Live and was informed that we would be moving to a new venue, The Hearing Dogs for Deaf People (based in Saunderton). At first this sent a huge wave of nerves through me as going from our lovely little concourse at Bucks New Uni to a 27 acre field was a big step up! I knew it would be exciting as this was a new partnership and the charity is a great one!

First things first was which team I would be a part of. I knew from my internship that a marketing role would be good as I was gaining a lot of experience from there and could relay this to the event we would be putting on together. Luckily, I was place into the marketing team and was looking forward to getting to work! What we knew about the event so far was that it would be held on Sunday 6th May 2018 at The Grange, Saunderton and the main goal of the event would be to raise awareness of hearing loss in the music industry as well as how the charity helps deaf people by training a dog to be their companion by assisting them in their day to day life. Myself and my team got together to discuss our plan and appoint a team leader. I put myself forward for this and the team agreed I was the right person for the job.

From there, I split the marketing team into four categories: social media, PR, sponsorship and graphics/design. I appointed members to each team and started a marketing plan. I made a group email as well as a spreadsheet to start and put in tasks that we could then get to work on. The first priority was to get to know our potential customers. The customers that come to our usual Bucks Live events and the ones that would come to a Hearing Dogs event could potentially be a lot different and our job was to research those differences and highlight how we would have to market our event differently. As team leader, I knew this had to be high priority so when we were assigned a team of Business students to carry out our market research I knew it was essential to get this information. The Hearing Dogs held their annual market on the 25th and 26th of November so it was crucial for us to be there to speak to their customers as the people in attendance are likely to be the people that would attend our event.

Working with the business students, I was able to provide them a brief of what questions would be good to ask (e.g. transport, music taste, demographics etc). We then got our own area at the Christmas Market to be our base. This then allowed us to speak to the customers to tell them about the event and allow them to enter our competition to win tickets. To enter the competition they had to then provide us with their email which allowed us then to build up our very own database to form a mailing list. On the stall we had our competition and then on the Sunday, fellow course mate Dan offered to sing some songs alongside playing his guitar which went down a treat! We were able to get over a 100 questionnaires filled and 150 entries into the competition.

So far, we’ve been able to gather data, I’ve wrote a press release and some of the group have started work on graphics, content ideas and sponsorship. The number of jobs will continue to build as we get closer to the event and I’m looking forward to planning the event further!

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My first day as an intern..

Today was my first day as a marketing intern at Aylesbury Waterside Theatre. I under went two interviews in the early summer and was selected for the role commencing in my first semester of 2nd year.

I arrived at the theatre at 10am and signed in then was given a pass for all the doors. I then went up to the office and met people from all different teams and was introduced formally to my team. Steph, a member of the marketing team, then gave me a quick tour of the theatre and it was great to have a look around the theatre again. We made our way back to the office and the real work began.

My first job was to put together a Facebook post for a single show called “One Night of Elvis” this included writing a brief description of the show along with a review. I also put together a listing of key words related to the show that people may search for so the post can be tailored towards the correct audience.

I then put together an On Sale Newsletter that would be emailed out to a mailing list. This process included resizing the pictures of each show to fit in with template by using Photoshop. After that, I added in the name and date of the show along with the release date of the tickets. Underneath that I then put together a paragraph about each show and in some placed a review. I then put together a subject line that would be sent in the email as well as a header at the top of the newsletter.

Above is an example of an On Sale Newsletter for Richmond Theatre.

After lunch I sat down with another marketing team member, Alison, whilst she explained her role to me. She then showed me a lot of her work regarding press and showed me content for the upcoming Pantomime “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”. I got to see exclusive unreleased photos from the press gathering last week as well as a few videos they had filmed to release in the upcoming weeks. Alison then told me about the creative side of her job with how she has to come up with marketing ideas for things such as competitions and also showed me a competition she will be releasing for Hairspray.

In addition we went into the carpark and set up a brand new marquee with the Aylesbury Waterside logo and photos on that would be used this weekend at Thame Food festival for their stall. My last job of the day was to call Living Magazine and inquire about an ad we wanted to put in for the pantomime. This included asking about the price of the size of the ad and the spec of the ad. I then gathered her email and passed it along to my team for them to follow up with the artwork that would be used for in the magazine.

All in all, I had a great first day and really clicked with the team. I’m looking forward to next week and to get back down to the theatre to do some more marketing!

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What happens when a band member leaves?

Over the summer I got word that one of the members of a group I’ve supported for a number of years was leaving. At first it was hard to believe but I had to admit to myself it was coming. A number of gigs where the trio was a duo and an apparent “illness” that lasted a few months. I still couldn’t let myself believe that she had left.

The band that this post is about is a three piece U.K RnB girl group named M.O. I first started to support them back in 2013 due to the friendship between band member Nadine Samuels and Leigh-Anne Pinnock from Little Mix. I checked the band out and instantly loved them. The band consisted of Nadine Samuels (from Aylesbury), Annie Ashcroft (from Sheffield) and Frankee Connolly (from Manchester).

The 3 piece supported Little Mix on their Salute tour back in 2014 and I carry on supporting them to this day. They went from having a few thousand followers on Twitter to growing to now 40k. They went from a small indie label to signing for Universal label Polydor. Over the years I joined their street team to form “Team M.O” and we helped them out online by sharing posts, tweets and content. At their gigs we would hand out flyers, wristbands and badges to concert goers in exchange for their email for their mailing list.

After their release of Preach they started to gain more hype and started getting interviewed on Radio 1, Kiss and Capital FM. Everything seemed to be going smoothly when they had their first headline gig at the o2 academy in October 2016. But in the start of this year things seemed different and Frankee wasn’t as present. We then learnt that she had left after her post to Twitter about her departure back in June.

I was unsure on what the band would do and whether they would carry on as a duo or get a new member. In all honesty I thought they would carry on as a duo as they had been doing in the majority of their gigs during 2017. But, not too long after Frankee’s departure post there was multiple posts onto Instagram of them rehearsing with only their feet showing.. but there was 3 pairs of feet.

No announcements were made but someone new had joined the band and it was only when they attended a gig in Liverpool that the new member was pictured on stage. The new member was 19 year old Chanal Benjilali who had auditioned on last years X Faotor. I didn’t think I could like another member as I had gotten so used to how the band were.

However, vocally and physically she is a perfect fit. I got to see this first hand at Fusion festival at the beginning of the month where they were one of the first few acts on stage. Hopefully they continue to grow and gain more success as they are the most genuine people I’ve met.

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Adele - Chasing Pavements (Wembley)

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Adele’s entrance at Wembley

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An evening with Adele

Attending Adele’s gig at Wembley was very lucky, after getting tickets in the 2 additional dates she added; our date turned out to be the 1st of 4 at Wembley stadium. In the end Adele ended up cancelling the last two dates which luckily wasn’t ours.. We purchased general admission tickets in the hopes that we would have a great view. We joined the queue about an hour before and in the end we had a great view of the centre stage and 360 degree catwalk.

Adele fans know of her infamous route to the stage that being in a box on wheels. In the first instance a box was wheeled past and fans started to cheer thinking that Adele was in the box. However, once the gig started it was clear to see she had tricked the fans and decided to walk down one of the four entry routes to stage. We got even luckier as the route she chose was ours and we had a barrier view as she walked past singing her most famous classic “Hello”.

Even though I was looking forward to hearing her vocals I was really looking forward to hearing her chat to the audience. Most people who I’ve spoken to who attended her arena tour talked about how its like attending a comedy show as well as a concert as she is undeniably funny. I wasn’t met disappointed as she cracked out jokes and stories about her tour then went from her strong London accent to killer vocals. She sung old classics such as Chasing Pavements and hits from her latest album such as When We Were Young. It was different to go to a gig and the audience be a different age range. Being a Little Mix fan means I’m used to an audience of teens and children with their face paint and “I love ‘Little Mix” shirts. This audience was more older with middle aged women and older women attending as well as a lot of couples which was great as most of the time I’m used to parents complaining that their kids can’t see.

Her set list was everything that I wanted it to be and vocally I can’t pick a fault with her. The gig was fantastic and one of my favourite gigs of all time. The tour visuals were pleasing and went well along side her performances. Hopefully she doesn’t stop performing and will return back on stage again.

I’m not usually a fan of stadium gigs finding them too big and impersonal but I actually enjoyed seeing Adele there and it was a nice change rather than being dragged along to see Tottenham Hotspur play with my boyfriend..

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Working at Download 2017

At the end of May I packed up my whole wardrobe, threw my suitcase in my car and ventured north to Donington Park for my first festival of the year – Download! My role originally was to be part of the Licensing team but this role was soon to expanded. I arrived on site, which was literally just a field at the time, to meet the Production team who then took me to meet my team. The members of my team were all super lovely and made me feel at ease right away and soon set me on to tasks. During the first part of the week my tasks were mainly office based which included making health and safety posters. These included noise management signs to be based in the main arena for the different level of risk to workers. I also made signs for the observation towers, no smoking, drinking water and many more. I then printed and laminated these signs and got to place them around site which involved driving round in a buggy!

Each day the site became more and more like a festival and the office I was based in was next to the main arena and day by day the stages began to grow. I also got to put together some boxes for the hub managers which included all relevant information they would be able to give the customers if needed as well as snacks for the hub managers themselves. I then went around the campsites and delivered them to each hub site as well as putting up the relevant signs in each OBS tower. I helped with traffic management which involved me making a timetable that went up on the website for times of trains for both East Midlands Parkway and Derby. As well as taking regular traffic update screenshots for the members of my team who were not on shift at the time. As the week went on there became less and less for me to do for Licensing and the 12 hour shifts really began to drag. The solution to this meant me moving to work with Alice from second year in Health and Safety.

Alice had been doing Health and Safety inductions all week and to free up one of her team members they moved me to work with her. This was something new and exciting which would hopefully make the days more enjoyable. Our role was to induct every member of staff working on site during the build and break. This meant going through the site rules with them and answering any questions which they may have. They then would have to sign a sheet to say they had been inducted and be provided with a wristband that would then allow them to work on site. I spent just over a week working with Alice doing inductions and it’s safe to say by the end of it we could say the site rules in our sleep. Once the show started we then got to go around site checking things were meeting up to the licence and also going over “no show procedures” with different companies that were working on site.

Although the music at Download definitely wasn’t my cup of tea the experience overall was so much fun. During the show once we had finished work I got to go around site and to see all the festival goers enjoying the show and seeing how great everything I had been involved with was going was definitely worth while!

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ILMC 2016

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Working at GEI & ILMC

This week I was given the chance to work at The Royal Garden Hotel in London at two conference in the Live Event industry. This was an incredible opportunity as both conferences had some big names in the industry in attendance and to get to meet and engage with some of them was something I’ve never done before.

On Tuesday, it was the Green Events and Innovations conference which talked about the implications of live events on the environment. Some of the talks included designing sustainability, smart energy for outdoor events and even the environmental impact of fireworks. My role for the day was to work at reception which included assembling delegate passes, checking delegates in and directing them to the conference location. During the day we worked alongside Teresa Moore who was the former head of department at my university and it was nice to talk with her again after meeting her on my open day. Although I didn’t get to properly sit in on any of the panels it was a great day spent meeting different people and working with Diogo and a few other international students to ensure the conference ran smoothly.

New Technology: Digital Discovery Personally, this was one of my favourite panels of the week as we got to see new technology that was about to be released. We got to see a new 3D silent disco that will debut at Glastonbury this year before anyone else in the world has. We also got to see new apps made for artists that they were in total control of. This was a big help as it gave me a lot of ideas/points to incorporate into my current projects at university.

The Fan: The social overload This one I got to attend without being a mic-runner and I found it interesting. The panellists spoke about how artists engage now more than ever with their fans and some people believe it has gone too far. This panel included a fan, Live Nation, a management company etc. It was interesting to see the different perspectives to how they felt on the relationship between artist and fan.

The second day of ILMC was jam packed and included me mic-running on 5 of the panels. These panels included: The Emerging Markets Place: Territorial Investigation; Ticketing: The survival plan; Direct Licensing: Rates, rights & wrongs; Venue Summit: Safety & security and Tales from the Front Line. My favourite of the day was the ticketing panel as secondary ticketing is a very controversial topic. It was great to see different managers and even venues criticise companies such as Ticketmaster for the issue. It was also good to see some ticketing companies say that

The final day of the conference was a lot quieter than the rest as delegates started to leave and the conference started to end. Panels I sat in on included The Breakfast Meeting with Paul McGuiness, Family Entertainment: The generation game and The ILMC 29 Autopsy. It was great to be able to not only work at the conference but to be able to listen in to some of the discussion that was going on in the panels. It also was a great opportunity to network with some of the attendees and learn about the different companies within the industry.

Working at the conference I was able to make some great friends and keep in touch with all the staff that worked there! Hopefully both me and Diogo will be able to attend next year and do some more mic-running. It was an incredible opportunity and so enjoyable!

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Ed Sheeran – Castle On The Hill & Shape Of You feat. Stormzy [Live from the Brit Awards 2017]  

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Ed Sheeran is interviewed on the red carpet before the 2017 Brits. 

“I’ve got a few things up my sleeve… not just a jumper.”