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Week 8 & 9- Trade Show in Disney

Petland Inc. hosts a trade show each summer to invite all the Petland franchisees from across the world (this year only those from the U.S. attended), some of the corporate employees and the store general managers, as well as vendors who would like to set up a booth and showcase their products. Many of the recent trade shows have been held in Walt Disney World, including the 2021 Trade Show.

Leading up to the show, I spent time organizing a door prize drawing that took place during the show. I also continued working on the spring tip post graphics so that there will be enough posts for each week of the year, and they will be ready to be posted long after my internship is complete.

I was able to go down to the resort and enjoy time at the parks before the show began. In preparation for the show, I helped set up the large Petland booth in the middle of the show floor. I also checked in the vendors and gave them their registration packets as they came in. The show was shortened this year due to COVID restrictions, so the actual trade show was only open on Monday. I spent the time speaking with franchisees to tell them about all the new products the Petland Distribution Center has available for purchase.

The selling aspect was a newer concept for me, but I really enjoyed being able to showcase our items and spend time with franchisees. This part of the internship has made me appreciate my choice of an Agribusiness minor– verbal marketing skills put to use! Additionally, I feel like I used skills I learned from my public speaking class as well.

It was a long day on the floor, and we ended on a high note by completing the door prize drawings. I kept track of all the winners and which vendors donated which prizes. At the end of the show, all the corporate employees worked together to break down our booth area as well as help the vendors with their booths.

Overall, I really enjoyed getting to learn and observe the different roles employees played in the show, and I really loved learning about the planning process my supervisor goes through as she organizes this major event year after year. I learned a lot in a short show, not to mention I got to visit Disney for the first time!

Week 7 – Getting Creative with More of the Same

As Trade Show looms closer, I continue to learn more about the event planning process and all the challenges and stress that comes with it. While I was in the office, we finished getting everything together that needed to go onto the truck shipment for Disney. I worked with the communications team to organize the name badges and add their banquet seating information to their welcome packets. We alphabetized them in bins so they will be ready for us when we work registration at the show.

I proofread speeches, brochures and other documents for the show before they were finalized. I find proofreading to be very enjoyable and rewarding, so I do not mind being the extra set of eyes at Petland.

I also did some editing of coupons in Adobe InDesign that are given to teachers whenever we do classroom visits. I did not do anything serious, but it was nice to be reacquainted with InDesign.

The tip posts are going over well, so I have been asked to continue making them for the whole year. I decided to move outside of my previous seasonal themed posts, and think of some holiday and special event posts that can be added in to the mix. Below is an example of the Thanksgiving and Halloween themed tip posts I created.

I also wrote a blog post on National Pet Fire Safety Day, which is July 15th, which covered pet fire safety and how to plan for emergencies with pets. Additionally, I wrote another post for the future about what to include in a pet first-aid kit.

While I am doing much of the same, I know the work I am doing will be used over the next year and I like the challenge of coming up with new ideas and editions.

Next week will be a short week of work before I spend some time enjoying Disney World prior to the beginning of Trade Show!

Week 6- Trade Show Prep & Winter Tip Posts

As Petland’s annual Trade Show looms closer, more odd jobs are needed to ensure we are ready to go to Disney in just a couple of weeks. When I was in the office this week, I helped the rest of the communication team by organizing the name badges and other registration information that all the vendors, corporate employees, managers, and franchisees will receive once they check-in at the show. I also spent some time stuffing vendor’s envelopes and editing the show book a few more times.

I also finished up my July 4th safety blog and published it through WordPress. I also drafted two other blogs to publish in the coming weeks.

A great deal of what I am doing for my internship is getting ahead on content creation so that the team can continue to pull from my work after the summer is over. With that being said, I created 12 more of the safety tip post graphics that have started being posted weekly.

I have really enjoyed all the jobs I have been able to do to prepare and organize for the Trade Show. I like the event planning aspect of the role. I do not mind the blog writing because I have quite a bit of freedom in the topics and how I want to format them. I also feel like I am putting the WordPress skills I learned in my scholars program to work.

Week 5- Trade Show Prep & Therapy Visit

To start off my week, I did a variety of odd jobs for other departments. I entered in the flyer ads for July into the e-commerce website. I also spent some time doing edits and proof-reading of documents for other employees.

The bulk of my week was spent on formatting and adding pictures into the Trade Show book that shows all the products Petland keeps and distributes from our own warehouses. I had to use excel to make sure each product had its own page, and then match and move pictures from previous showboats to this year’s book. The task itself was not difficult, but it took a lot of patience to work with this slow document and get it to look the way it needed to for all the franchises to utilize in July.

The other highlight of my week was getting to come along on a nursing home pet therapy visit. Petland has slowly started getting back out to visit local nursing homes as the COVID restrictions ease up. On last Friday afternoon, we were able to take two puppies, a ball python and a guinea pig to the Manor House nursing home and assisted living in Washington Court House.

We were not allowed to go inside, but residents were seated in an outside area where we could safely come around to each person and let them hold or pet the animals, ask questions and just talk with them. The residents really enjoyed spending time with the pets, and telling us all about the pets they have had in their lives. I was able to see how much they enjoy and benefit from these visits, and I am very glad I got the opportunity to partake in this community service activity.

Week 4- More Graphics & a Breeder Visit

I continued created pet first aid and safety graphics to add to the collection for the social media team to pull from each week. I have used Petland’s Canva Pro account, and I have really enjoyed getting to explore all the features the program offers to create so many different things. From Canva, I am able to access Petland’s branded colors as well as the official logos. Below, I included an example of a post I created this week about common poisons to pets. The green and orange are the main colors for Petland and their brand, so they are used throughout many of my posts to continue the established brand identity.

Additionally, I had the opportunity to travel with a few people from the corporate office as well as the corporate store managers, to Great Pets, which is our main guinea pig and small bird breeder’s operation in Alexandria, Ohio. I shadowed Hannah, who works in communication at Petland, during the event. She took videos of the animals and the facility, as well as pictures during the informational and more casual meetings and conversations that took place during the visit.

I learned a great deal about guinea pigs, cockatiels, and parakeets, and the owner of Great Pets, as well as about how to record these events through video and pictures so we can produce professional videos and posts at a later date. I was glad to be able to make this visit to see another side of the business. It was nice to visit with a local breeder and see how relationships are made between the company and supplier. Additionally, I learned the importance of building trust between the communication team and the owner. Great Pets allows Petland to take videos and pictures of the facility as long as Great Pets sees the video before it is posted or released to the public from Petland. This relationship allows for the opportunity to show Petland’s customers the reality of where the pets come from– transparency is key!

Week 3- Repurposing the First Aid Research

Over this past week, I was able to think creatively and critically about how to continue using and sharing the first aid pet information I researched for the app during my first week. After my social media exploration last week, I decided a good outlet would be a weekly tip to post on Facebook. Based on the topics of the blog I wrote last week, I created 10 safety tips and graphics for those tips, to post each week throughout the summer.

I started working on my next blog post, this time switching species and writing about reptiles as pets and why your next pet should be a reptile. I had to do much more research for this topic, but it came together with the stock photos I found.  Additionally, I continued being creative in the area social media. I felt that the Petland Instagram needed a refreshing update, so I created story highlight covers for the social media specialist to add in the coming weeks.

This week I really enjoyed getting to create the Facebook posts that share the highlights of the safety tip for the week, as well as the highlight covers. An example can be found below. As I was creating these posts and the highlight covers, I considered some of the ideas I learned in AGRCOMM 4130 about creating and following through with your unified brand. I wanted to make sure that I utilized the Petland Brand colors in my creations so they could be easily associated with Petland’s brand.

 

Week 2- First Blog Draft & Social Media Research

This week, my tasks were focused around the Petland’s social media accounts as well as writing a blog post about the pet safety information I researched last week.

I wrote a summer safety blog post to help remind pet owners of the most common dangers to pets during the summer months. I included things such as fleas and other insect bites, the concern of heatstroke and dehydration and lastly cuts or open wounds.

Above is the draft of the header I created for the blog post I wrote. I also used Envato to look up stock pictures to add to my blog post. Additionally, I created a small infographic to add in with the blog post about the different types of insect bites commonly seen in pets.

Petland currently has a Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram page as a corporate company, and then also manages individual Facebook pages for their corporate stores. My supervisor directed me to a website titled Social Media Examiner where I did research on social media in the business world today. I then looked over the current profiles and made notes of what content I liked, what I did not, and what suggestions I might have.

Next, I researched competitor accounts on each of the platforms. I took notes of what they are doing, what their most popular posts are, and how often they post on each platform. Petland currently does not utilize TikTok, so I also did research on competitor TikTok accounts and using TikTok for business in general to pitch the idea of utilizing the up and coming platform.

I learned a great deal about utilizing social media as a business in today’s fast-paced environment through my research and speaking with my supervisor. I enjoyed doing the research and creating the blog header. I really did not complete anything that I did not enjoy, and this week’s content was more enjoyable to work on than last week. Only two weeks in, and this internship has shown that there is always something different and new to do in a communications position.

Week 1- The Welcome to Petland

This week marked the beginning of my summer communications and community service internship at Petland. My internship is a hybrid format where I commute to the office located in Chillicothe at the beginning of the week, then work remotely on projects for the remainder of the week.

To start the week, I was introduced to the communications team and they shared the public relations and social media guidelines they work by. They also explained their duties and the projects they were currently working on. Some examples include creating and planning all the social media content for the month of June using the platform Angorapulse, doing virtual classroom visits at local schools to teach students about various pets, and YouTube blogging about community service events and activities.

My first project to focus on is writing content for the new Petland app. The new app is formatted to be one-stop resource for pet owners where they can find all of their dog information and paperwork within it. Additionally, there will be sections of general information , such as training tups and first aid information for pet owners to utilize. I spent a lot of time researching and writing out information to help owners know how to look for and treat various health issues or injuries their dogs and cats may experience.

The research and writing for the app is not the most interesting or creative thing in the world, and has taken a large amount of time to get through. On the other hand, it is fulfilling to write with a purpose and know that this information will be on a public platform to ideally help families and their pets get through an injury.