The Real World

It’s not unsurprising that in the past few weeks I have made the discovery that the real world of Public Relations is quite different to the one we were taught in the classroom. Coming to the end of third year, I have learnt to apply PR theory to lots of situations. But, I am certain that northing could have prepared me for the experience of working for a paying client. It’s incredibly nerve-racking and exciting all at the same time. What if they don’t like my work? What happens then? Did I mention they were paying? Luckily I was able to work with a team of wonderful and very experienced experts at the Strategic Communications consultancy gtmedia. As a consultancy, gtmedia works with a very large scope of clients, from property developer Psaros to diary experts Brownes. Over the coming months I look forward to being able to apply the PR theory I learnt in class to a range of clients and situations.

On my first official day as an intern my task was to write a mock media release for the not-for-profit Western Australian organisation HeartKids. After looking through old documents to see how gtmedia structured their media releases, and giving it my best attempt, I sat down with one of the advisors to go through my work. She explained to me the skill of active writing, correct tense and avoiding cliché language. Later when I wrote my next media release, about a new Chicken Treat store opening, she noted how my writing had already improved significantly by putting her advice into practice. Even though I have quite a few media releases under my belt now, I still refer back to the advice she gave me on that particular day. Being able to sit down and talk through my work with a professional was fantastically beneficial.

The real world of PR teaches you that honestly, more often than not, things don’t go to plan. Countless times in class we have devised a PR plan for a client. These are normally real clients, but unfortunately we don’t get to put our plans into practice and see if they would work in the real world. A PR plan that I contributed to during the first few weeks at the company was to do with Chicken Treat’s launch of their Royal Burger. There were many parts to the plan, but one of them was to deliver the burger to different media stations. Thankfully in the end it was a success, but we did have to overcome a lot of obstacles under time pressure. For instance, one of the media stations pulled out a couple of days before we were going to deliver their burger and we also had to figure out a way of keeping the burgers warm while transporting them. In the end, we found a replacement for the media station that had pulled out, and all burgers were delivered warm and on time. PR-wise it was a great success with lots of publicity generated over social media and in The West Australian newspaper. 

I can safely say, the real world is much more exciting than sitting in a classroom, and has cemented for me that this is the industry I want to work in.

Until next week.