The Recess... (welcome to the alcoves of my mind)

Oh, look at the kitty.

Song For the Moment
Song: Upside down
Artist: Jack Johnson
Album: Curious George: Sing-A-Longs and Lullabies





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Ok, so I know this is a personal blog and all, and it really is supposed to be all about me (what a vain exercise eh??), but most of the time I do try to incorporate little tidbits about more than what surrounds my tiny little universe in hopes of not being swallowed up inside it.

This, however, will not be one of those posts.

I AM SO AWESOME!!!

Does that fall under the category of tooting horns? It doesn’t matter, cuz it’s TRUE!! :D.

Ok, so I may have had a good day yesterday. I’ll elaborate so as not to make it seem as though I’ve turned into a narcissistic shrew.

Last night was a big night in the public relations course I took this semester. At the beginning of the semester, Bernie—my professor—split us into three groups of five and gave us each a real-live non-profit organization for which we would spend the semester getting to know, and creating a marketing campaign for, based on the things we would learn in class. Seems like the perfect win-win situation because the orgs get a free campaign and we get to learn stuff.

Flash-forward four months: three people that I barely knew at the beginning of the semester have now become amazing friends. A fourth has been discovered for who she really is (a selfish, inconsiderate, two-faced…oh, don’t get me started…). Despite all the late nights, early mornings, crazy amounts of revisions (version 14 by the time we printed!!), and many other obstacles we faced over the last couple weeks (not to mention all the work up until now) we came together as a team last night and pitched our campaign to our clients in a 25 minute presentation.

And we NAILED it!!

I’m not kidding. We were good. We were REALLY good.

Of the three teams, I seriously, honestly and sincerely think we kicked an amazing amount of PR ass.

It was funny, it was edgy, it was animated, and most importantly of all, we showed what we could do (and had done) for them. The campaign wasn’t about us, and all the effort we had put into creating it over the last four months. It was about the results, about selling our ideas to a client and making them feel as though they never could have done it without us. We blew ’em away and honestly I’ve never been prouder of myself and my team. We rock.

We were the only team with no questions at the end of it. We were the only team that had our 150-page document professionally bound. We were the only team that didn’t stand up there and instead of pitching an idea to a client, gave a presentation that could have been titled “What We Did This Semester.” We did it, we got it, we nailed it.

In case you were wondering, our client was the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Network of Eastern Ontario (come to be known by us as ADHD NEO, or simply ‘The Network’). They’re a small group of doctors, psychologists, teachers and others who work with those affected by ADHD and are trying to find a way to survive among all the other similar organizations out there dedicated to the same cause. They had good resources; they just needed to be shown how to use them. And boy-howdy did we do that…and oh, oh so much more.

Over three months we basically did the following things for them:
- Created a brand new website complete with message boards, extensive lists of resources, a newsletter, an online membership application page and a crazy-awesome lay-out (MY IDEA!) to throw it all together.
- Organized their entire conference, set to take place at the end of April
- Created a marketing campaign for them including a new logo, slogan, banner, two brochures, six poster ads, letters to send to prospective donors and members, and a list of newspapers/magazines directed at their target audiences (which we also identified for them) that were willing to advertise at low-cost.

Oh man, it was great. Our group even had a slogan for ourselves by the end of it: “Go team ADH—oh, look at the kitty.”

Heehee.

After the pitch, which took place at Bernie’s marketing firm located in the Delta Hotel downtown, he took us down to the hotel bar and bought us all a round of drinks. We also got some finger foods and basically just celebrated the fact that it was all over. After a while everyone slowly started to trickle out, leaving only our group (minus the bitch) left at the table. We were still on such a high from the presentation that we stumbled over to D’arcy McGee’s on Sparks and kept the party going for another few hours.

What an awesome experience. After last night’s performance, that has definitely become one of the highlights of my university career.

Thanks Bernie, and GO TEAM ADH—oh look at the kitty.

posted by Megan at 4:16 p.m.