From Intern to PR Pro: My Experience with the Veterans Day Parade Campaign

---

Written by Morgan Ray, 10to1PR Intern

As an intern at 10to1PR, I’ve packed these past couple of months with numerous learning experiences. I had the opportunity to contribute to the first-ever intern project, which included building a PR campaign for the Veterans Day Parade from scratch.

The Veterans Day Parade was a new client that was introduced in October with the parade taking place in November. Although it was a tight turnaround, the 10to1PR team executed a successful campaign.

This was the first campaign I worked on where I had full responsibility over the tasks and how to execute them. The first step in handling a campaign is to brainstorm ideas and break them down into manageable tasks. I worked alongside Halle Sweeter, an intern at 10to1PR, to create a timeline of ideas and concepts that we wanted to execute before, during and after the parade.

Prior to the Veterans Day Parade, a press conference unveiled this year’s theme, as well as the Celebrity Grand Marshal and the honored Grand Marshals. Our team ensured the media was informed and secured coverage.

To secure media coverage, we pitched several news outlets, with an emphasis on hyper-local ones. Our goal was to give the Veteran Grand Marshals an opportunity to share their stories and have those stories featured in the media that covers their homes. We secured about 10 stories covering the Grand Marshals in news outlets like the Arizona Republic, SanTan Sun News, Surprise Independent, Scottsdale Progress and KTAR.

In addition to the press conference, we worked to raise awareness for the Veterans Day Parade by submitting calendar listings and distributing press releases. The goal was to spotlight the Grand Marshals while encouraging the community to come together and honor the veterans.

On the day of the parade, our team arrived on site at 4 a.m. to coordinate interviews with parade participants and Grand Marshals for several news outlets. Our role at the parade was to ensure interviewees were prepared and ready for TV appearances, while also working closely with the media to brief them and set up ideal backgrounds for live shots.

We coordinated 20 TV segments, as well as 45 online and print stories covering the parade. Overall this was a successful campaign for the parade and a successful first intern project at 10to1PR.

I gained valuable experience in building a campaign from the ground up. I developed project management and team leadership skills, which was an area I was less familiar with before. This project highlighted the importance of organization and communication for a successful campaign, which I can bring with me when working on future projects.