Hello all. I hope all your internships are going swimmingly.
Most of you are likely to have no idea about my placement so I’ll give you a
quick brief. I’m at The Communications Store – a PR agency in London which
specialises in beauty, fashion and lifestyle. I am working with beauty.
In my second week at TCS got my first chance to write a
media release. I felt quite privileged to do this as it meant they were
trusting me with a task to send out to all their media contacts (although I
suppose they could have changed their mind if it wasn’t good enough).
The release was for festival season; every year in England
when the annual summer festivals (such as Glastonbury) start to approach, the
beauty team sends out a big ‘e-blast’ – this is virtually a press release sent
via email. The main idea behind the e-blast is festival beauty essentials and
how to best prepare for festival season. I thought about everything I learnt
at University as I began approaching my press release. I thought about the
inverted pyramid and what angle I should approach to best promote our clients,
though before I began writing I thought it would be wise to look at previous
examples of ‘e-blasts’.
To my surprise, these press releases didn’t seem to follow the
kind of order I was taught about at University. I suppose this may be because
of the type of features we’re targeting – rather than being solid chunks of
writing, beauty pages tend to be just bits of writing here and there to support
the products or images featured. Most of the press release examples I looked at
had a ‘catchy’ heading, a sub-heading and then simply pictures of clients’
products and a blurb about each of them which linked them to the larger subject
matter – i.e. festival season. I suppose some aspects of the inverted pyramid were included; it's important to include where the items can be bought, how much they cost, why you should buy them, and what they achieve. However this is all based around a product, not an event or a newsworthy topic.
So I began writing. To be honest it felt kind of silly – I was
writing about how dry shampoo can keep you looking glamorous without a shower
etc, but this is the business, and I was interested to see how quickly I could
adapt and learn in my new environment.
Jasmine who is a senior account executive looked over the ‘e-blast’
once I’d finished it, I even had to add a colourful exciting backdrop. Most of
her corrections were small grammatical ones, and she was happy with the piece
on the whole. I titled the e-blast “Festival Fresh” but she suggested “Festival
Fabulous” as she believes the word ‘fresh’ has connotations of something being
smelly. I personally feel that the word ‘fabulous’ is a far too over-done cliché,
especially in beauty and fashion publications, but perhaps it has been used
time and time again for a reason.
So voila, my ‘fabulous’ e-blast was completed and was sent
out the next day. I think it’s a little early just yet for magazines to start
working on festival stories, but of course it’s always good to get in first and
get the ideas flowing for the journalists.
I would love to work on some more interesting strategies
that TCS are doing for their clients. I overheard some of my co-workers
talking about crisis management and wished I could hear what they were
planning, and who for…
I can only hope that I build the trust of my co-workers so
they include me in more of their work, or perhaps I should try to worm may way
in a little more.
Well if any of you need to contact me you can probably find me in the TCS post room, sending trial products out to various journalists. You know, intern work.
Hang in there!
Jessie x
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