“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
–Marcel Proust.
It has been a busy few weeks to the start of my internship with Exa Web Design, Perth. From the initial interview, to sitting at my desk and finally settling down, I caught my breath and decided it was time to reflect upon my first few weeks at Exa.
Our Team at Exa
Exa was established in 2000 by Peter Ball in Melbourne and is now employing over 250 staff. Currently, Exa has offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Mumbai, Bangkok and the USA.
The Perth office was established in 2009 by Christina and we have 6 staff with over 50 clients in various industries.
Our team at Exa in Perth is like a little ‘family’. Christina is our manager, Andy is our project and business developer, and Mark and Kim are our sales people.
The First Thrills of the Job!
My first day at Exa was exciting, nerve-racking and thrilling! I am so honoured and lucky to be working with Christina who is Perth’s Marketing Manager for Exa. Her success sheds light to the job opportunities and possibilities which a Public Relations degree can offer.
For my first challenge, I was assigned a media list to reformat and update for media contacts in each nation of Australia. This is a challenging task as eastern states are 3 hours ahead of Perth so I need to contact journalists before 2pm (5pm eastern state time) during their work hours.
My experiences so far!
I have been to client meetings with Christina for an architecture company and one scoping meeting with Andy and Kim. Scoping meetings consists of our Exa representatives negotiating with our clients to come to a common understanding of what our clients’ expectations and requirements are and what Exa can provide. These meetings remind me of how communication is the foundation of successful public relations. The scoping meetings illustrates the concept I learnt from my PR Corporate unit which is that proactive two-way communication is the key to creating relationships with clients and strengthening existing relationships.
My main task at Exa’s office is copy writing for clients’ websites. Web copy writing is communication with our key stakeholders at Exa which are our external clients. Andy and Quentin provide a brief of website requirements to me and I create a copy which will be read by our clients’ customers.
The line between marketing and public relations grows more elusive within a small company. Exa is quite large nationally but within Perth, Exa is considered a small company. I was anxious that my tasks at Exa were under the scope of marketing. I had a misconception that PR is about communicating with the media, creating media kits and event planning but upon reflection, I have experienced a whole new world to public relations that puts my prejudice of PR to shame. Exa is continually opening my eyes to the different avenues of PR and as Marcel Proust once said, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in having new landscapes but in having new eyes!”
Until next time,
Evelyn
3 comments:
Hi Evelyn!
It's great that you get to participate in client meetings!
I am also experiencing the same thing in defining the line between marketing in PR. When we are in class, it seems like PR and marketing are vastly different, however when we jump into the real world, both Pr and marketing seems to collide together.
Looking forward to reading more about your internship!
Daniela
I completely understood what you meant by the fine line between Public Relations and Marketing. I found it hard to categorise the tasks at work at times under Public Relations or Journalism. I guess when you're working for a small firm, you just have to do a bit of everything! Looking forward to hear more from you,
Amira
Hi Evelyn,
I completely agree with what you've said about the blurry line between PR and Marketing.
I am doing my placement at a small not for profit and I've been finding it difficult to grasp the structure and roles of all the people here. At times the Business Development manager takes on key PR tasks such as stakeholder management and relationship building, whilst the Marketing and Communications manager handles everything else. I think in a small organisation everyone does what they can to keep things moving forward.
I've also found that in a small organisation a lot more is expected of the employees. For example the Marketing and Communications manager is responsible for producing all marketing collateral which means she needs to be proficient in design programs such as Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. In a larger organisation there would usually be a Graphic Designer to do this. It's almost as if the roles of Marketing, PR and Graphic Design are all blurring together!
I guess this means we have to broaden our skill set and soak up all we are learning at our placement!
Can’t wait to hear more about your experiences,
Natalie
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