Hello every one!
I hope your work experience is going swimmingly!
As my work experience continues at Myer there is one issue that continues to become more evident to me that I thought I might share. It has occurred to me that the major issue I face is trying to operate within a work place where no one else around you understands the role of PR and the increased difficulties that come with this.
With the many events and activities that take place within Myer (or any company) I assumed that everyone would some how work together to promote the brand and the businesses positioning in the market. Everyone would understand what one another’s roles within the company were all about and operate to some extent harmoniously around one another. That bubble burst not so long ago highlighting the real importance of needing clear and in depth understanding by employees of each others specific functions within a group. The difficulties in performing the public relations role with in Myer is not met by media or customers of the store but by the complete lack of understand as to what we do by the people working with in the store.
Setting up for an event, loaning product to journalist for editorial etc is constantly fraught with little problems/grumbles be it retail staff on the floor or other co workers due to the complete and utter lack of knowledge as why it is we do what we do. For this reason no task is ever as simple as it seems as I now see the every day battle my pr coordinator has on her hands, as she continues to operate on her own (in Perth) with in this large company with very little help if any from her surrounding colleague’s.
I have a feeling this situation may be a common occurrence for in house public relations practitioners who are lone rangers in the corporate team attempting to manage public perceptions of the brand/person/product they manage as no one outside the PR office really understands what the PR role is all about…
I hope your work experience is going swimmingly!
As my work experience continues at Myer there is one issue that continues to become more evident to me that I thought I might share. It has occurred to me that the major issue I face is trying to operate within a work place where no one else around you understands the role of PR and the increased difficulties that come with this.
With the many events and activities that take place within Myer (or any company) I assumed that everyone would some how work together to promote the brand and the businesses positioning in the market. Everyone would understand what one another’s roles within the company were all about and operate to some extent harmoniously around one another. That bubble burst not so long ago highlighting the real importance of needing clear and in depth understanding by employees of each others specific functions within a group. The difficulties in performing the public relations role with in Myer is not met by media or customers of the store but by the complete lack of understand as to what we do by the people working with in the store.
Setting up for an event, loaning product to journalist for editorial etc is constantly fraught with little problems/grumbles be it retail staff on the floor or other co workers due to the complete and utter lack of knowledge as why it is we do what we do. For this reason no task is ever as simple as it seems as I now see the every day battle my pr coordinator has on her hands, as she continues to operate on her own (in Perth) with in this large company with very little help if any from her surrounding colleague’s.
I have a feeling this situation may be a common occurrence for in house public relations practitioners who are lone rangers in the corporate team attempting to manage public perceptions of the brand/person/product they manage as no one outside the PR office really understands what the PR role is all about…
1 comment:
Firstly- I'm so jealous you're doing your placement at Myers!
I have been doing my placement at a consultancy, and I think that this issue is something that PR practitioners in consultancies also face. Even though clients may realise that PR is a useful tool, they don't seem to fully understand the way it works. Some of the clients at the consultancy have gotten angry over the fact they didn't see instant results in monetary terms of media coverage. They don't seem to grasp the fact that media releases are not the same as print advertisements.
Then to the other extreme- some clients think they know exactly what PR is so if the consultant wants to do something that is slightly more like marketing, the client won't let them do it. There was one particular client who had a marketing firm working for them as well as the PR consultancy. When a big event came up and we were asked to do the PR for it, we found we had to cut nearly half of our ideas as the client felt they were too marketing based.
I suppose because PR is quite a young and unknown industry in comparison to advertising and marketing, it will be an issue wherever you work. We just need to become confident in explaining what PR is and how it works (something I'm still not quite able to do effectively- but I'm getting there!)
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