When I first thought about studying and entering a career of public relations, my first thought was me emulating someone similar to the Sex and the City character Samantha... OK so I'll be honest, she was one of the main reasons why I wanted to get into the field. I even remember having a conversations with fellow members of my class that went a little bit like this:
'People ask me all the time what we actually do in public relations for work, I'm not even too sure.'
'Yeah I know me too and I never really know what to say.'
'I don't even know what it is... I honestly just wanted to be Samantha Jones off Sex and the City,'
'Yeah me too.'
Obviously the conversation was a little more animated than this, but this was the general gist of the conversation. After my time organising the fashion event with Colosoul Magazine I have realised that Sex and the City had given me a very sensationalised, glamorised and unrealistic view of public relations - particularly my perception of events management.
It conveyed a false view in many ways, firstly I was unprepared for the amount of work involved in producing a successful event, the importance of high organisational and management skills was also not very well emphasised.
When I was first assigned this role, I honestly thought I could handle every aspect on my own, or at least one person. I thought that if I handled all the background work like organising sponsorship, recruiting the designers and handling all the paperwork and have someone else handle all the creative aspects of the show I would be fine. Turns out I was quite deluded; I have learnt now that while it is possible to handle the paperwork and other background work on your own it does create unnecessary pressure and stress just on one person. While having high organisational skills does work in your favour I would say it is more advisable to create a team to help you with the event. I have learnt that you really need a strong group and delegate individual tasks for them to look after - some people can be in charge or developing promotional material and distribution of this material, some will look after getting sponsorship, etc.
All major events have a strong and large team broken down into departments to help with the smooth-running of the event and ensure it is successful. You definitely can't achieve anything as successful without co-operation and team work. This is one of the most important lessons I have learnt during my internship - team work is essential.
No comments:
Post a Comment