Witney Christmas Lights Switch On

Witney Christmas Lights Switch On - Friday 25^th November 2016 - Level 3 Business, Sport and Public Services

 

 

 

As a faculty, we were contacted by the Witney Rotary Club to help with the social media and all round marketing of the Witney Light Switch On 2016. Firstly, a meeting was held at The Blue Boar in Witney to discuss the planning and preparation of the event in which 3 Business Level 3 students attended to take notes and find out what their role was in the event. After the students fed back to the class the next day, they then progressed onto designing and choosing which was best for the posters to promote the event. This was an exciting time for the Business class as it gave us all a clear indication of what is it is like to work for a real event within the marketing industry and how our work would to be used in and around the community. A lot of pressure was put on us to make this a great success; however, we felt like as a team we were able to do this.

Moreover, the Business class was asked to put together two social media pages for the event to reach out to a wider audience and make people in the community aware of this event. In small groups, a Facebook and Twitter page was set up in which we gathered photos from last year’s Switch On event and reached out to local businesses asking them if they would kindly share our event page (374 managed to, to be exact!). As a team, we learnt that communicating via social media was a quicker and more cost effective method of reaching out to others, as nowadays technology is more advanced and more businesses and ordinary civilians are using it in their daily life. On our Facebook page, we managed to receive 582 interests of the event and 358 confirmed they were going however, when attending on the night the turnout was a lot larger than this.

After attending the second meeting at The Blue Boar, we discussed what we had done and achieved as a college. As a class, we developed our skills, including communication (from talking to employers and the public), creativity (designs of social media and posters) and organisation skills (from preparing and meeting deadlines).

Public Services and Sport students were also involved with the event. As a class, they managed to come up with the idea of setting up a soup and tombola stand. When discussed at the first meeting the Rotary Club team were pleased with the idea and were willing to give them a place on the high street for their stall.  During the week running up to the event, students split into groups and approached shops within the local area asking for any donations for prizes to use for the tombola. Shops such as TOG24 and Restaurants were happy to participate in giving out prizes, which we were very thankful for.

On the night of the event, during the daytime the students went to the supermarket to buy supplies for the soup stand (soup and bread) and picked up the TOBES gazebo. From 3pm onwards, the students set up the stand with no trouble and were eager to get selling! When talking to students a few days later, they were happy with the outcome and enjoyed all aspects of the evening. 

The night as a whole was a success and we were happy to see all of our hard work pay off. We are thankful for this opportunity, as it has not only gained us new skills but also transferable skills for our future lives.