Hello everyone,
As my first blog, I would like to introduce myself to you all. My name is Emma, I am in my third year of a Mass Communication degree and have chosen to complete my PR 393 placement at my current place of employment - The Sunday Times/PerthNow, Perth.
I have been at The Sunday Times for about one year now, and have enjoyed every moment of my time there as the Marketing Assistant (well, almost every moment)! My role entails co-ordinating, liaising, and organising all the appropriate elements regarding our in-paper and online promotions. Although, I generally look after the smaller promotions, I am also involved in some of our larger promotions such as the National Geographic DVD series and the annual Pride Of Australia awards.
Our department runs all the in-house public relations activities. However, being a part of such a huge global organisation (News Limited) the majoity of public relations comes out of our head office.
On paper, my role doesn't really sound particularly like what most would consider a 'public realtions' position. But, as discussed in Wilcox & Cameron (2006), public relations is "concerned with building relationships and generating goodwill for the organisation", which I would describe as first and foremost in my role at The Sunday Times. My practical experience is something that is not limited to a 20-day internship, so I will continue to blog throughout the semester on what is going on at my work. I look forward to hearing from everyone and seeing how different the expereinces at your 393 placements are!
Best wishes, Emma
4 comments:
Hi Emma,
You're very fortunate that you get to combine your work and your placement in one setting; it means you miss out on the lovely "work experience" tag. This will no doubt work to your advantage as you are already established at the organisation and therefore may be given more responsibility than a 20 day intern.
Your comments on pr defined roles were very interesting and in my opinion, 100% correct. Public relations is not a restricted field that brands you with a particular title and if anything, I find this appealling. It broadens the number of industries we can work in using our respective pr skills which can complement marketing, advertising and many other sectors of business. It's great that we don't have to be in a specific pr role to use the skills of writing, targetting and building relationships and in a way, makes our degree more valuable and us as graduates, highly employable.
I wish you all the best for this semester.
Thank you for your introductory post, Emma – and well done for posting what I believe might be the first PR quote/ definition. Well done!
Chantelle is right, combining work and your placement appears to be a fantastic opportunity. HOWEVER, before everyone out there starts getting the wrong idea, I’d like to emphasise that the main aim of PR393 is to provide you with an opportunity to gain hands on experience and insight into an area of PR (or a particular industry) in which you are considering to pursue a career upon graduation. Professional Practice allows you to add relevant experience to your CV and to build your portfolio (as well as aims to take the fear out of job applications). For some people the opportunity to combine existing work and a placement might be a good solution, however, this also means that you are missing out on the opportunity to build your CV and broaden your insight into the very varied world of PR. If you are working already, a placement is always a fantastic opportunity to ask for a secondment (if there is another relevant department), or participation in placement relevant projects.
I fully agree with Chantelle, as PR graduates you are not restricted to a niche in the market. Your opportunities are virtually limitless. Now it’s up to you! Make the most of it.
I am sure you’ll have a fantastic time at the Sunday Times, Emma – and will be able to share some very insightful experiences with the rest of this semester’s PR393 students. In the industry the line between marketing and PR is frequently blurred, particularly if you are working in a relatively small in-house department. Many of you will come across this – but PLEASE, try to keep your “PR hat” on .
Have a fantastic time, everyone!
Katharina
Sorry, blogger didn't like my smiley... :-) :-) :-)
Thanks for the comments, it's great to hear some feedback. I totally agree with you Katharina on the whole PR thing and I wish there were more hours in the day to do as much as I PR work as possible! I think though, good PR skills can be applied in anumber of different situations, rather than our PR roles become something different altogether... the skills I have learnt over the whole period at Curtin are invaluable and I think can certainly be applied in any communication or like-position!!! :-)
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