PR pitching for students at Hills Balfour

Final year student Sam Williams on the Sport Business Management BSc visit to Hills Balfour:

“On March 23^rd, third year sport management students were fortunate enough to have a trip to a market leading travel PR company, Hills Balfour in their London offices.

“The first challenge of the day was tackling the tale-end of the London rush hour, which we got through unscathed! On arrival, a very warm welcome was provided by Managing Director, Jonathan Sloan and PR Account Director, Amy Scott. We found out that a couple of members from the company were University of Brighton alumni, and we shared stories about our times at the university.

“Once pleasantries had been exchanged we got an introduction into the outstanding work that Hills Balfour produce; a particular campaign that stood out was their Best Job in the World Campaign which generated an incredible £35 million of unpaid coverage. It was also good to find out about their work for New York tourism and what they do in the UK.

“Now it was down to business. The group was split in half, with one team working on a campaign to promote Queensland, Australia and the other team working on a PR promotion campaign for the destination of Hawaii.

“The brief was to increase tourist arrivals from the UK going to the destination. The specific objective relating to sport business was to identify opportunities to encourage an increase in total spend through sporting events. At the end of the day we would present our ideas to the key account managers who had responsibility for those destinations and other members of the staff. The battle commenced…

“Angie and Jane who were responsible for these PR accounts briefed us, giving some useful tips and ways to go about our work, which we took on board and began brain storming. My group used the idea of having a road trip, led by Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff who would drive across Queensland for a year, attending all the different events throughout the state. To showcase all Queensland has to offer we promoted the campaign as ‘The Perfect Year’. Some of the events included sailing, The Ashes and The Commonwealth Games.

“We were going to run a couple of competitions to increase engagement and give people the chance to join Freddie on his road trip, along with having an native Australian providing a tour. Alongside working hard, we also perfected the art of a working lunch! The other team focussed on a marathon, golf and surfing as their events, with the use of a range of celebrities that fitted the bill nicely.

“There was friendly competition throughout the day, with both teams feeling they had the upper hand in proceedings! As the deadline approached we started to rehearse our presentations, looking to impress our mentors and beat our competitors.

“Presentation time. Tension grew as the room filled with senior members of the PR agency but the presentations went well with both teams opting for different styles. We received some really positive comments from the Managing Director who said: “You have some very switched on students with you and there are a few we would have employed based on what they did today!”

“Overall the day gave us a fantastic insight into the function, challenge and importance of PR and it was a great opportunity to contextualise what we have learnt in seminars to real, live examples. It was a challenging day but one that was very rewarding. On behalf of my course I’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone at Hills Balfour for giving us their time and providing such a great day for us. A big thank you also to our course leader Adam Jones too, for organising the trip – we really appreciate it.”