The Quick Succession – Public Relations Appearances
of Friendship Force Varel in 2011

The sound of joy of Friendship Force Varel about the wonderful and successful „Open Day“ celebrating the club’s 20th anniversary at the historical orphanage at Varel in Mid August 2011 was still in the air when a sensational news required priority attention throughout the Club:

Within their competition “Club of the Month“ a jury of 5 from the Centre Management and Advertisement Association of the famila-Shopping-Mall at OL- Wechloy had selected Friendship Force Varel as the Club of the Month September 2011 and granted the club the following prizes: An extensive portrait of the club in the Centre Newspaper „Einkaufsland Wechloy Aktuell", which meanwhile can be taken note of at www.famila.de/Verein des Monats The possibility to arrange a cost free PR presentation of the club in the middle of the Mall for a whole day at a weekend and A financial gift worth 500 € which will be handed out at a public ceremony.

The immediate enthusiasm and delight was followed directly by the seriousness of reality and produced time pressure for the whole club. Whilst the arrangements first and the last part of the prizes were to be handled nearly by routine the club needed to worry about the middle part, the “Public Presentation in the Shopping Mall”, requiring lead and coordination and helping hands immediately. 

Following the principle “There is no such thing it does not work” the president Birgit Wagner and Heiner Kroeger to the responsibility and developed a concept and delegated all side issues and tasks to pending talents of available club members.

There were not even 4 weeks for preparation and in addition at the same time and in parallel the participation at FFI World Conference, and a hosting phase thereafter had to be taken into account as well as the absence of 30 club members who were on an exchange tour led by Heiner Kroeger to Northern Ireland and Ireland for a fortnight.

Exactly on time at 08:00 hrs on Saturday Sept. 24th 2011 the detailed equipment had been installed at the PR - presentation stand and FF Varel had erected a small kind of fair pavilion, like a “shop in a shop”. The impressive design of the presentation with glass containers, banners, billposters, costumes, photos and video show and – last but not least – the club members as knowledgeable advisors were targeted to attract the attention of visitors and to invite interested people for an informative talk. The well-being atmosphere at the stand was nicely supported by the pleasant smell of perfume stemming from the cosmetics department of Muellers drug store all day long.

Small presents were handed out like self baked cakes (from the international kitchen of Gaby Friesen), ball pens with the internet address, flyer about FF Varel etc… meant to remind our visitors of us even after they have returned home. Early afternoon especially Heiner Kroeger 
was hoping that all those visitors who unauthorised took away little flags from his private decoration set will at least be reminded of FF Varel.

The afternoon highlight was the ceremony by the Centre Management awarding the prizes to the club which put pride on to the faces of the “club members involved”.

When the event closed down at the evening everybody shared the feeling of pride and contentiousness hoping that if this PR and advertisement act would have interested new members it would have been a joyful and successful day. 

It should be mentioned that in the background statistics about “additional homepage clicks” are already being analysed to find out whether there is a measurable success to be noted.


Rainer Becker
Hans-Hermann Best
Heiner Kröger

Copyright © 2012 Friendship Force Varel