My love for organised chaos.

Coming in to the last week of my internship at Mills Wilson, I have had the chance to take part in a lot different activities and have learnt so many tips and tricks about PR and the industry in general. Looking back on my time, it was hard to choose a favourite aspect of my experience to write about.  

I enjoyed developing my writing skills and having the opportunity to write for different clients. I enjoyed seeing all the theory I had learnt through Uni be put in to practice. I enjoyed seeing a ‘real life’ consultancy operating in all its glory. 

There was however, one PR activity that interested me the most – event planning.  

I have always loved organising – everything – and event planning is all about organising. Perhaps I would feel a little differently if I wasn’t just helping out on the sidelines as everyone tells me it is one of the more stressful aspects of PR, but it really appealed to me. 

During the time I have spent at Mills Wilson, they have been organising a large event for one of their major clients. 

The event is to celebrate the opening of a new shopping precinct. It will be a community event that will be held in the shopping precinct just a few weeks after the new stores open their doors to the public for the first time. The event will have live entertainment, rock climbing, tack-less train, cooking demonstrations from Anna Gare (Junior Masterchef Judge), face painting, balloon twisting, bouncy castles, stalls and more. 

The event is expected to attract around 2000 people, so it has taken a lot of work and organising in order to make happen. Watching the amount of effort and planning that goes in to an event like this made me appreciate every event I had ever been to. 

There are so many aspects that I had never considered before – letters to residents,  ensuring suppliers have all necessary information and insurance, council guidelines,  informing emergency services, traffic management and the list goes on! You have to think about every little possibility and actively account for it.

I had the opportunity to play a part in the organising of the event by drafting media material to promote the event, constructing supplier files, drafting letters to residents and emergency services, updating supplier databases, and more. 

All the aspects that go in to event planning and all the things that must be considered really is enough to send your head spinning - but for some insane reason, I loved it. 

Overall, my time at Mills Wilson has been more beneficial than I had ever thought. In the beginning I wasn’t sure what I would get out of the experience but I have definitely taken away some valuable skills and advice that I will carry with me in the future. It has given me a clearer view of where I want to go with my career after Uni and I know that consultancy is definitely on that list!

Knowledge overload.

I am now two thirds of my way through my internship at Mills Wilson and during my time at the consultancy I have learnt more than I expected.

Going in to the experience I was so unsure of what to expect and didn’t really have a clear grasp on the skills I would pick up from just getting out in to the ‘real world’.

One thing that has stood out to me over the past 5 weeks at Mills Wilson is the wealth of knowledge you acquire from working in a consultancy. Due to the nature of working for so many different clients and therefore so many different industries, you would expect PR practitioners working in this type of environment would have a wide breadth of knowledge but I never really appreciated the vastness of that until seeing it for myself.

Mills Wilson works for a number of clients in the property and infrastructure sector including projects around Australia, and it provides the full range of PR services to them.  So it would be fair to say that throughout my internship I have contributed to an array of work Mills Wilson consultants have been doing for clients in the development industry.

Starting at Mills Wilson I had little knowledge of the land development industry but it is incredible how much information you must acquire to carry out a simple task – such as a media release.

I have worked with consultants undertaking a number of PR activities including:

• ·       Drafting event listings
• ·       Logging media monitoring material
• ·       Drafting media releases
• ·       Captioning images Drafting newsletter articles and notices
• ·       Updating databases
• ·       Drafting web copy, material for residents and brochures
• ·       Drafting sponsorship agreements and letters
• 
  
• And more!

It is no wonder my knowledge of the industry has increased. I found myself talking about land development casually with a friend and surprised myself at the knowledge I had picked up in only a short time.

The continuous learning and improvement is one of the many reasons I would love to enter the PR consultancy field. I can’t imagine the volume of knowledge I would acquire working for a consultancy full-time.

It turns out I actually do know things

Hi, my name is Alyssa and this semester I managed to secure an excellent opportunity working as an intern for Mills Wilson – one of the largest PR consultancies in Perth.

Walking in on day one I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I kept imagining worst case scenarios and felt seriously unprepared. I doubted whether anything that I had learnt throughout my 3 years in my PR and Marketing degree would help me in the slightest.

It turns out I was wrong.

I couldn’t believe how closely the course work coincided with the everyday workings of a consultancy. Although a lot more time pressed and fast paced than a Uni assignment, it was pretty much bang on what I had expected.

As I walked in on the first day, I scanned the office to find it was open plan and FULL of paperwork, newspapers and an entire wall of files. Although it was a little intimidating, I couldn’t wait to get in to it.

Not really knowing what to expect in terms of what exactly it was I would be doing I was a little apprehensive but the work was not far from anything I had done before. I got to write up EDMs, shorts paragraphs for client websites, short articles for client newsletters as well as a blog post for an insurance company website and captions for photos.

The first day flew past and when the end of the day came along I couldn’t believe how fast time had passed, I was busy all day! It just goes to show that when everyone tells you that you never stop working as a PR professional, it’s true! There was never a lack of work.

Leaving the office for the day I was excited to see what the rest of the internship would bring.