Week one: Success!

Hi everyone! I am currently entering the second week of my PR internship at Cannings Purple, located in West Perth. 

On my first day, I arrived at the office at 8.20am, surprisingly feeling much more relaxed than I had anticipated. As I walked into the office I introduced myself to one of the colleagues I recognised from my interview a few months prior. She gave me a tour of the office and pointed out what the different areas were and who worked in which department. I was introduced to a number of people and was greeted with a warm welcome from everyone who passed me in the office.

At 9.00am, the office has a daily meeting which they call WTF, or What’s the Focus. These meetings are designed to keep everyone informed of the daily activities occurring in the office, and give people a chance to put their hand up for extra work when they have capacity. The meetings are usually quite short, but there is always some form of banter going on between everyone and a lot of laughter. I think the meetings are a great idea, as they not only keep everyone up-to-date, but they also get the energy of the office up and create a happy environment for everyone to begin their day.

Once the meeting was finished, I had a brief chat with one of the executives to discuss what I would do on my first day. She directed me towards the Investor Relations area, and from there I was given a research project on dysprosium, a rare earth element that is predominantly mined in China. The reason for this research was to gain an understanding on the future outlook for dysprosium in order to give advice to investors on whether they should invest in a client called Northern Minerals. Northern Minerals is a mining company that is currently set up in the Northern Territory who are the first mining company in Australia to mine the rare earth element. My research for this project is still underway, however I have definitely learnt a lot from it, as it has not only broadened my understanding of the element and its uses, but also on how to conduct effective research. I found this task very interesting, as I discovered that dysprosium is a material used in many sustainable energy innovations, such as electric vehicles and wind turbines. As sustainability is an area I am very interested in and hope to end up working in, I found the content that I researched very valuable to learn. 

I was then given my second task for the day, in the area of Corporate Affairs. This task involved generating social media content for a client called Business Foundations. I produced a total of 18 Facebook posts and 18 Twitter posts on a variety of subjects regarding the company and their service offerings. My supervisor was very pleased with my work, which was a big confidence boost!

My second day was very similar and just carried on completing both tasks from the day before. On day three I was given a new task that required urgent research for a client called Landscorp. I was instructed to gather information such as population and economic data for various WA towns. The information needed to be sourced from credible sites and completed by that afternoon. Finding population size and demographics was quite easy, as I gathered most of this information from the ABS website. However I was surprised to find that the most recent data was taken from 2014, and even then majority of the information I needed was from 2011. I began to stress that the client would not be pleased with these outdated results. From there I became more stressed when trying to find information regarding any major projects occurring in the area and really struggled when it came to some of the less well-known areas. Thankfully I sent a draft copy to my supervisor of the work I’d already completed and was told I was on the right track and to continue doing what I was doing. That was a major relief and suddenly the task was much easier to do.

After completing my first week I can definitely say I am looking forward to graduating university and entering the workforce! I know that this internship will be a valuable learning asset towards my career and I am very excited for the days ahead! 

Five Down, Five To Go: An insight into the real world (toughen up princess)

Five Down, Five To Go: An insight into the real world (toughen up princess)

This week I have reached the half way mark of my internship at an events company. With five more weeks to go, I will reflect back on the work I have done so far.

Week one was very nerve-wracking. Working with people with completely different personalities has taken some time to adjust to (something which I am still doing). The work I completed in week one included a press release on celebrity chef, Anna Polyviou for the De Lish expo as well as annotating and making notes on one of the clients websites.

The second week differed greatly and research was my sole task. I first had to research professional assistant office trends for 2016 and compile a blog post of how far that profession has come. I learnt early on the importance of asking questions as my first attempt apparently did not match the idea of my director. I’m glad I made this mistake early and have been sure to clarify any confusion BEFORE I start tasks. I’ve learnt that those who are in charge are often very busy and unfortunately can’t dedicate their time to properly teaching you, like a tutor or teacher would. I new level of independence was gained in my second week.

My third week involved emailing similar events to the De Lish expo nationally and internationally in order to find out how much they charged their exhibitors. I worked on this task for 3 days and think I know about every food event around Australia now.

The next week I was asked to proof read a registration site for any errors such as spelling mistakes as well as making sure the site functioned as it should have. I was then asked to make a call sheet with a set list of questions to keep in the office for when my directors were at meetings and the role was left for interns to answer the phone.

My fourth week involved researching exhibitors that would be at the famous Margaret River Gourmet Escape that would also fit in at an event such as De Lish. These were complied into an excel spreadsheet as always. On the Friday I was then asked to write a press release on the celebrity chefs that would be at the expo as well as mentioning the changing Perth dessert scene and how alike we have become to Melbourne’s foodie scene. I enjoyed this task.

This week I have been asked to make a ‘how to” research list for the other inters in order to make sure we are conducting the right researching methods. The importance of correct documentation in excel spreadsheets was emphasized and therefore my list features the information that is vital to be included. This includes personal emails as well as full names and correct contact details.

All in all, I frequently tell myself that the experience of this internship will be priceless when it 

comes for applying for future PR related jobs. I am always reminded about the amount of hard work that goes into running a successful events company.

Networking – Can You Help Me?

What a cruisy start to my intern day 10. Researching potential artists for AIME’s upcoming fundraiser KiNDLiNG. From triple J to upcoming YouTube stars from Perth, this task is really shifting the Monday blues into a Monday session of cruisy beats and soulful artists. What makes this moment even better is that it is raining outside, and not a light drizzle but a thunder of water battling against the window pain. This is my kind of day in the office. However, I know it won’t always be like this. It will rarely be like this. 

I guess the flip side to my chilled out morning is the task that lays ahead. When I will have to put in the hard yards to book in a musician or band. It is one thing to listen to their music, appreciate their talent and want them to perform. But to actually book them in as a confirmation can be a tricky endeavour. One that I would say should have been done months ago. 

I am now experiencing the all too familiar “sorry we are already booked” reply. It feels as if I am unrealistically hoping that a semi-famous band will be available in two months’ time, knowing all too well that schedules are written and stamped months in advance. However, I will not keep a couple of ‘rejection’ letters keeping me from achieving AIME’s set list. Hopefully a really exciting act will come my way. 

So two things I have learnt from this experience.

1. Always plan ahead. You might not be ready in terms of planning an event, but it is certain that people outside the organisation are planning their lives, especially musicians who will have gigs, concerts and tours lined up with no space in between.
2. Secondly, I am more than ever realising the power of networking. How one face can lead to another, and potentially a performing act, an inspirational speaker or even a caterer. Networking is everything!

So I am putting this one out there to anyone who is reading this. PR students, colleagues and tutors, if any of you have connections with a local band (Perth) or a semi-famous musician group can you please let me know in the comments.

Sending all my thanks in advance!

From networking with friends I have already confirmed a WAAPA 3^rd year dance student to do a contemporary piece, so perhaps networking will once again work in my favour. 
 

I love music so this internship just keeps getting better and better. Maybe next year’s KiNDLiNG event will have a headliner! Perhaps in 5 years’ time this event will become an Indigenous music festival, inspiring social connectivity within the non-Indigenous and Indigenous community. 

  

 

The Importance Of Research

The importance of research;

Until recently my placement organisation Netball WA had been essentially flying from the seat of their pants in terms of communications strategy. While what they describes as a “going with the gut” feeling has evidentially not had any serious ramifications on their business success, it’s an approach they finally reconsidered. As far as I can gather from chatter with my supervisor (Netball WA’s Communications Manager) and those who work under him, the communications team was a one or two man show up until 2015. With the addition of four extra staff members, a ‘Communications Team’ appeared, complete with a Media Relations Officer, Social Media and Marketing Officer, Graphic Designer/Photographer and Events Manager/Membership Coordinator.

Under the Events Manager/Membership Coordinator I completed one of my first major projects at my internship, while that was a week or two ago, I was recently reminded of the importance of the work I was doing whilst in a Public Relations Planning and Evaluation seminar earlier this week. The seminar, entitled ‘making a case for communication’, explored the ways that research and evaluation in PR can help to justify the existence of communications teams in businesses and organisations.

Clearly, a core part of the business at Netball WA is to ensure the WA netball team (West Coast Fever) have well-engaged and happy members. The work that I was doing, while rather laborious, was to analyse membership feedback data from the recently finished 2016 season, compile trends and finally recommend some changes to the way the memberships were handled based on the feedback data. This kind of research is an example of the data and analysis that can contribute to ensuring that West Coast Fever members are well engaged and happy with their membership experiences. Not only does this kind of communication and research help to achieve this business objective, it allows a concrete connection to be made between the quality of this communication and the rate of member retention and registration. This kind of data gathering and analysis is not only a great example of a feedback channel in operation (part of the 2-way symmetric model of communication in action), but also a fine example of a way that professional communications justifies itself and it’s place in a business or organisation.

While back in first year, research may have seemed like an inconvenient prequel to an exciting PR plan, looking back through my third-year goggles I can definitely see that not only is research a fundamental foundation to the formation of clear communications goals and objectives, but it is essential also as an ongoing review and monitoring activity. Without this continuous reflection upon our PR efforts and their results, the efforts themselves are nullified in the way that we have no record of their effectiveness, and their results are practically invisible to CEO’s and organisational boards.

Research is an not only an essential starting point, but it comes into play at both the mid, end and review points of any PR activity in the forms of all kinds of feedback lines as well as the day-to-day monitoring conducted by PR practitioners.

This has finally solidified for me having seen the kind of tasks performed daily by the Netball WA Communications Team, without research no plan or proposal can be justified.

Getting a "clear" perspective of public relations

Firstly I would like to note that this will be my first official public blog and I would absolutely love feedback! Constructive criticism or just a handful of compliments are encouraged please! I know I can ramble as my brain works in very mysterious ways, so hopefully I do not bore you! 

So today marks the end of my second week at Clear Public Relations consultancy (also known as the Clear Group). I am situated in London, UK for this internship as I decided I wanted some global experience and a chance to network with people on the other side of the world (and also the fact I am a travel freak). It was interesting coming to the UK when brexit was introduced, and this was the topic of the office nearly every single day so far!
The Clear Group consultancy was established in 1998 and is a small successful creative PR business running in central London that is involved in b2b and consumer PR services (I have included a link to their homepage for more information.)
So far it has been a really positive experience as everyone at the office is lovely and helpful. On my first day I came to the office early to make a good impression. I dressed up professionally and shook each of my colleagues hands. My first impressions of the office were that it is like a small and cosy house, it has a kitchen, bathroom, garden and shed, a boardroom and of course a work space with 6 desks and clutter, so much clutter, everywhere. Magazines, papers, flyers, books, notes, client materials you name it the office was full of it! As well as boxes and stock to giveaway as prizes. 
The managing directors of Clear are two very nice and experienced professionals who work with a few different clients and have three other employees in the office helping them out. To get this internship I had an interview over Skype and then I was offered a place for the internship.
I was handed a starter pack which contained files such as "Welcome to  Clear" and "Handover Notes". I flipped through them getting to know how the business was run. One of the things reiterated in the files was that tea every hour is how they deal with all the workloads (so making tea and drinking a lot of tea is a requirement here, which I honestly love, I am in London after all!)
As I mentioned there are a few clients that the firm deals with and they include a European cheese company called Dziugas, a sausage company called debbie&andrew's, a lock, safe and security company called Burg Wachter and some more but the main ones I am working on and focus on are those three. Being a consultancy that deals with different clients means having to be extremely organised and time conscious I am learning, as the time goes on there are more and more different tasks I need to achieve, my diary and notebook are full of notes and checklists.

My tasks so far are to pick competition winners on Facebook for Dziugas and Burg Wachter (which are easy and fun to do) and reply to the Facebook messages and update the scheduled post to announce new competitions via Hootsuite, which I must do every Monday. I also send out prizes to the Facebook competition winners when they replied with their details and update the relevant files with the information. We send out different cheese every week which I think is quite cool! 

I update UK competition websites such as Loquax and Prize Finder which help boost competition involvement and was easy to do! I also do a lot of screen-shotting of positive comments for the monthly reviews and work with photoshop a lot. I also research into different topics for the different clients such as events, products, media scanning, blogger and editor research and much more. I proof read media releases, emails, Facebook posts and anything the managing directors need me to edit/ read. I have also learnt a new PR tool called PRmax which helps find relevant media and media contacts to any topic and can save data and figures from public interest.

I have so far communicated with media on the phone and by email and have gained approval from an editor of a local magazine and newspapers to run our competition in their weekly print (a small achievement but am proud of it as I had many rejections!)

I have also been to an exhibition for one of our clients which unfortunately went poorly as there was not the expectant number of attendees but I got to see other presentations and ideas from other unique companies which sound very interesting. 

The days are long but they go quite quickly.  I think I can say now that I have gotten out of the classroom, that I really enjoy this industry. I think that it is very much for me and I am very glad I have chosen it as a major. I think I can thank Curtin University for making PR Internship 3002 a core unit so that students can delve into the workplace and create a clear and better perspective of what we want to do and where we want to be as public relations professionals.

How research will prevent you from looking like a fool in front of your peers and client

Recently I was given a research task to complete from the Managing Director. Prior to this I didn’t understand the full extent of how important research was as the only real research I had performed was for assignments. As there is a large amount of confidentiality surrounding the client and task there is only so much I can say, so please forgive me for the lack of specific details.

The first part of the task was to research public opinions and what has been brought up in the media regarding the topic. As the topic was a foreign idea, one that I have never had much of an understanding of, it took me quite a while to understand what was relevant and what was not so relevant. I was restricted by the Managing Director to secondary research, which according to Jugenheimer, Bradley, Kelley & Hudson, (1955) “is the summary, collation and/or synthesis of existing data.” In particular I was restricted to online research so was not able to phone or speak to anyone. So after reading and reading and reading recent information which was released on this topic, having to use a dictionary to define some of the unfamiliar terms, I put together a summary of public opinions according to online media and blogs.

Everything had to be referenced so that the Managing Director could read further if she wanted to on the information provided within the research to ensure that she was fully aware of the topic before she used the information in a work shop she had to present.

The next section of research involved summarizing data in the form of numbers. Although one would think it would be easier to find factual statistics rather than public opinion, I found it quite hard as various sources gave different statistics. This therefore took time to research where each of these sources got their data and information to decide which one was better informed and up to date. Although it took time I managed to find the correct statistics and lay in out into an easy to read format with extra information than what was asked just to help shape the information required.

The third part was to research major events occurring in Australia. As a lot of the task and client was confidential and so I was only given a short and concise description of what was required within the research task, this task was what stumped me the most. How was I going to define what events were considered ‘major’ and how would I differentiate what was major from all the events that occur in Australia over a year? Not knowing what industry the client was relevant to or what this research was going to be applied to, I took a shot in the dark and listed out various events in the nation that I personally believe to be major.

After completing the research and I sent the tasks to the Managing Director, not knowing if what research I had done was useful, correct or in depth enough. However I received compliments on the work.

Reflecting on this research task I was given, which started off a little dry and tedious, as I had little understanding of the topic which made it quite a lot harder, I was in a seminar at University where the importance of research was discussed. The tutor told the class that without completing the necessary research and planning, you could make a fool out of yourself in front of your peers and client if your information isn’t correct or if you are unaware of the details.

This stood out to me in regards to how important research is and that the Managing Director trusted me with a task that could have tarnished her image and reputation of not only herself but also her business if I had not done the research necessary for her to complete the workshop with the confidential client. This experience has opened my eyes to the amount of and the importance of research in every task that is completed not only whilst studying a university degree, but also throughout a career within the PR industry where practitioners need to have a thorough understanding of a client, their position within society and their industry before even meeting a representative from the Clients organization.

References:

Jugenheimer, Donald W, Samuel D Bradley, Larry D Kelley, and Jerry C Hudson. 2010. Advertising And Public Relations Research. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe.

Importance of research & planning: putting theory into practise

I have completed units in the past where they discuss the importance of using research methods such as surveys, questionnaires and focus groups. But before completing my internship, I didn’t realise it's full potential and how much of an impact it actually makes, especially for PR.

The Friday before my internship commenced, I went into Professional Public Relations (PPR) for a hand-over from the old intern, and to meet everyone I would be working with. One of the Senior Counsels asked me if I would like to meet him on Sunday to help complete patron surveys regarding the move of football to Lathlain oval. As per advice given from the old intern, to take all opportunities, I said yes and helped him out. 

The Monday I started at PPR, I entered 184 survey results into an excel spread-sheet. After this, more surveys were conducted and more data was entered. While this may not seem exciting, it was incredibly interesting to see the stretch of questions, from asking how old they were or what suburb they’re from (demographics) to open-ended questions such as what they would like to be done with the remaining Subiaco oval. Some responses were very opinionated and others seemed not too fussed.

I was then taken through the process of how what I had helped with (surveying and data entering) will then be used to help with a major research report for the City of Subiaco by attending an exclusive meeting. The whole process was discussed and I could now see how the work I had done fits into the bigger picture. This data would form part of a potential decision that will made in the future as a result from the people I helped survey and the data I had entered.

Research is vital for any industry, but especially important for public relations professionals in order to estimate and plan for the future as well as developing strategic PR plans. After completing my placement at PPR, I now fully understand the potential and significance of research and how effective the use of surveys can be to develop a broad research base and to access a large demographic of people.

The following video shows how PR planning/ research is ‘over-stated but over-stepped’ and how many businesses underestimate this step, resulting in an overall loss of efficiency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYjjhisFJRw

Until next time, 

Greta x