Not too long ago, myself and a group of five other USC students travelled to Catalina Island for a weekend to represent TriSight Communications at the Catalina Film Festival. We had all been working on the account for a year on a variety of PR tasks including social media management and media outreach so there was a lot of anticipation about finally seeing everything come together for the big weekend.
From posting to the Catalina Film Festival social media accounts to helping run red carpet logistics, the TriSight team was active all weekend. However, there is one part of the weekend that stands out in my mind the most so I’m going to share that with you here. And you’ll see why I chose this one.
It was Saturday morning and we were all sitting down to breakfast at one of the local joints. I had been monitoring the Catalina Film Festival Twitter account all weekend – writing, re-tweeting, favoriting, the works. We had just ordered our meals and I pulled out my phone to check and see what new tweets had come in overnight. There were a lot of great original posts from followers and notifications of re-tweets…and then I saw this tweet:
“Hey @CatalinaFilm try picking up your phone once a week & thanks for cancelling our boat & tix to festival…”
A lump grew in my throat. This wasn’t good, and the first thought I had was how much worse this could get for our client if it wasn’t dealt with appropriately.
The lessons learned from crisis management class at Annenberg immediately came to mind. I got up and went outside to respond to the tweet and sent the following message:
“We’re so sorry for the miscommunication, we’ll DM you so we can work something out”
We took the conversation private and he told me that he had bought the tickets through Groupon, but was not aware they had been cancelled until he arrived at the ferry in Long Beach. They had tried contacting the festival the week prior but had not had a response.
I told him how sorry I was to hear what had happened and that we were going to try and figure something out for them and to bear with us. He told me they were making the best of it and thanked me.
I immediately messaged the festival founder, explained the situation and asked him if we could get them on the next ferry to the island and into the Tony Scott Tribute and the screening of feature film Big Sur. I made my case for why this was the best move for the festival from a communications standpoint and he gave me the green light.
I messaged the guy back less than an hour after telling him that we would arrange the ferry tickets for them and he was thrilled with the response.
I arranged for a golf cart to pick them up, set aside two seats for them in the cinema and even asked one of the house photographers to take their photo on the red carpet. I wanted to make sure that everything that could be done to make up for what had happened to them was seen through to make sure they had a great experience on the island.
I saw them after the screening and they couldn’t stop raving about how much they loved it! Later I saw he had tweeted this:
“Just watched the premier for Big Sur which was amazing! Huge thanks to Lauren @CatalinaFilm for helping us get here!!!”
It made my day. No one asked the couple to tweet anything positive, we just wanted to make sure they had a great time and hoped that they would tweet organically because of our efforts, so it was nice to see this play out.
A few hours later I met them after their dinner and escorted them to get their tickets reimbursed. They were really appreciative and I couldn’t have been happier that their vacation was off to the great start that they had intended it to be!
And then the best thing of all happened.
I was at the red carpet for the screening of Enter the Dangerous Mind and was getting ready for the talent to show up when I noticed the two of them arriving at the cinema for the screening. The girlfriend handed me a card and said “just a little something to show you how thankful we are for everything you did.” I couldn’t believe it. The card read the following:
“Thank you for making the start of our vacation extra special! You didn’t have to do everything you did and we really appreciate it.”
It was so sweet! I was overjoyed that their potentially devastating day had turned into a great start to their vacation together.
That card is currently sitting in my nightstand drawer and I intend to keep it forever as a reminder of my first brush with crisis PR!
Now the purpose of this post isn’t at all to flaunt what I did, I promise! The purpose is to highlight how great of a learning ground TriSight is for getting real exposure into the life of a PR practitioner. This is what our agency is all about.
I hope this little case study will get you excited about being a part of TriSight and open your eyes to the fantastic learning opportunities ahead of you! Moments like these, whether they happen at TriSight or at your next internship, can be great opportunities to grow in your career or even mention in that important job interview.
This incident made me realize how much I’ve learned over the last year, and TriSight has undoubtedly contributed to that.
By Lauren Alboini, VP External Relations