I make events successful with good promotion and speaker supports
Georgian College
The 2019 Applicant Reception, a brand new event, was an interesting one to promote because it had a huge target audience (30,000 accepted applicants) but wasn’t open to the general public. In this communications plan, I identified targeted tactics —mail, email, phone calls, and a hidden landing page — to meet our attendance targets.
Email campaign
Postcard
Landing page
To make things even more complicated, the reception was actually a 14 separate events — one per academic area — all taking place in one day. So instead of developing one speech, PowerPoint, and event program, I created or wrote copy for templates that could be customized.
PowerPoint
Program
Speech
For this land acknowledgement, our president needed to be well prepared, staff and faculty needed to be brought on board, and most importantly, Georgian’s Indigenous community had to be front and centre. Thanks in part to pieces like the ones below, the event was declared a success by everyone involved and received positive media coverage.
FIRST Robotics is a competition for teams of high school robot builders that Georgian hosts to position itself as a leader in STEM training. My job as the communicator on the project is to get participants and the broader community excited about the college’s facilities, programs, and expert faculty.
United Way
Perhaps the most glamorous night in the United Way calendar was Celebration Dinner, designed to thank and further engage our biggest donors. I had the pleasure of writing for, briefing, and accompanying our emcee, CBC Radio host Matt Galloway. I wish I had pictures of Matt and I, but instead here is a PDF of his comments.
For the Enbridge CN Tower Climb and the Scotiabank Rat Race, I typically wrote media materials and helped manage on-site reporters. This advisory about the race kept us pretty busy coordinating interviews, as you’ll see from the ensuing media report.
I supported events by writing pledge forms, ad copy, fact sheets, and more. While I was covering a mat leave, I was responsible for acquiring and placing about $6-million in donated ads. I set up a meeting and sponsorship proposal that landed Business News Network (BNN) as a Rat Race event sponsor, a perfect fit for the event brand.
Kids Help Phone
At Kids Help Phone, I led volunteer committees in organizing bowlathons and walkathons in Niagara, Hamilton, Barrie, Peterborough and Belleville. I loved motivating my teams. I’m proud to say I increased donations, event participation, and volunteer numbers across all five chapters over my tenure.
Here’s an explanation of how event tasks were supposed to be divided, between me and my volunteers. However, most teams required a bit more support. In smaller locations, like Belleville, I managed even the nitty grittiest event details like sound, water stations, prizes, and race routes. Here’s a good sample of the materials I would produce, in my role.
Mikaela Lefaive 