My Placement Experience

I have just completed the last day of my PR placement and as I write my report it is really interesting to consider all the things I have done and learnt in my internship.
One of the things I found really interesting was gift giving to the media- what we learn at uni vs what they do in the real world. One of the clients of my consultancy is in the entertainment industry and are just about to launch their first show. The consultancy is in charge of generating publicity and promoting the launch mostly through the media. In order to get journalists to write about the show, the account manager is giving them free tickets to the opening night. I found this really interesting because my PR media tutor taught us that no gift giving to media was acceptable, and this included free tickets etc. Maybe she was a bit extreme and other tutors didn’t teach the same things but the general idea taught at uni was that it was unethical to give gifts to the media. When I discussed this with the main consultant she was shocked that they taught this at university. The way she saw it was how could you get journalists to talk about your product if they hadn’t tried it? And how could you expect them to pay for it when it’s you that wants the publicity?
I got a great insight into events management both on a large scale and small scale. As I’ve previously discussed in my blogs I was involved with the Oasis Ball, a major event. I learnt a lot on the night about organization and managing problems before they turn into a crisis. I also was involved with the Westfield Whitford City Market Day- a day of promotion at whitford for their fresh food precinct. This was a smaller event, but it was really interesting to see how the girl ran it. She obviously learnt a lot from Oasis as well so she was very organized and well prepared. Things did go wrong on the day but these were issues to do with the spruiker and promotions model which unfortunately were out of our control.
I also tackled the dreaded media release- and won! I wrote three media releases over my placement time (I know not that many compared to most of you!) The first one was really scary. Because I was given the topic and told to write a media release, I really struggled to grasp the ‘newsworthiness’ of the topic. This release was a major flop, the pr support had to completely re-write it. I had a few weeks off from my placement and when I came back they were in the middle of a major media campaign for the Good Food and Wine Show. One of my first tasks was calling some of the wineries that would be exhibiting at the show and asking them about what they were bringing to the show, was there anything exciting happening, what could people look forward to etc. I then had to take this information and create a media release to send to the local newspapers from the area the winery was based in. I wrote two media releases, and although they were both edited, it was very small changes. I found it much easier to write the media release when I had researched the topic myself and picked out the ‘newsworthy’ item out of the information I was given.
Of course I had to do the ‘normal’ internship tasks- databases, updating media lists, and running errands. Although they were tedious I found the databases and media lists interesting and very helpful to teaching me who the major journalists/editors/publications are in Perth. I don’t know how much running errands helped me learn about PR but it definitely taught me how to get around the city!
By the end of my placement I was really pleased with my experience. When I first started I was actually adamant that I wouldn’t go into PR. But now I’m actually considering it! There are many tedious jobs involved, but at the same time you can have so much fun creating promotion ideas and planning events. And nothing compares to the feeling of satisfaction you get when an event goes brilliantly or your media releases turn into an article!