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.

Features of a childhood memory

A remembrance of those moments when we were young, hyperactive and enthusiastic about the simple things. Somehow I felt like I was 7 again last week, when we were walking to The Labourdonnais Hotel to monitor our latest conference.What it meant was simple: less planning, more action.Yes people, those surreal things in Events Management, when you get to see the final results of weeks of hard work, do happen.

A souvenir of the day - myself at The Labourdonnais Hotel

Here’s how it went:

As I was comfortably sitting in the office dealing with phone calls and emails, it was time for the last challenge of our current event, the running schedule of the day. This strategic plan of the monitoring of the event is basically 10 % on paper and 90 % sweat. It was an important meeting with the senior management of IBL so we had to be perfect, as always.

I got there quite early; 2 hours before. From there I was allocated to the conference room and we verified the set-up, one important part of this was to get acquainted with the hotel staff (later on it proved to be extremely helpful). Eventually, we saw the trainers and attended to their last minute requests – in this case, to get email address sheets so that they could send the slides to attendants later on (so then we had one attendance form + the email verification sheet at the registration desk): Lesson here – always bring more pens.

Then everything happened all at once:
attendants had arrived 
and the hotel staff were serving them breakfast, 
the trainers were rehearsing on the main room, 
we were collecting attendance 
and verifying e-mails 
while we had to continually inform the attendants of the running schedule of the day.

One skill that I noted in particular was to recognise the attendants. It was important in terms of time because we needed to know their name in order to direct them to their email address on the list (which was NOT in alphabetical order by mistake)

Our pilgrimage continued as everyone entered the conference room. In the mean time, we walked back to our office on John Kennedy Street (which is exactly 600m and 80 steps away). But first we would stop at the IBL House to see our client’s personal assistant for some feedback, we had left the sheets with the hotel staff in case someone would walk in late.

Another 600m/80steps later, we were back at The Labourdonnais, Following the running schedule for 10:45; tea and coffee break. And we left once again, when meeting had started. (Yes, it means cardio session all over again). We went back one more time, after lunch to put the evaluation sheets (training department obliges) at their disposal. And one last time finally after the conference was over to collect the forms.

So from this exciting experience, I understood that in Public Relations, professionals need to be ready for anything. Consequently, a practitioner will need to be able to adapt to all circumstances and have the capacity to process information quickly even if sometimes it means serving the coffee yourself, or staying at the office until 7 p.m waiting for the event to end so as to be reachable at all times.

Still the thrill of your plan finally coming to life and the overcoming of last minute challenges make the hard work worth it. 

What was your first Public Relations Cardio Session?

x

Gaëlle

Blog Post 2 - The Everyday Routine

As the days go by, work starts to become a routine. I can feel it in my bones, the drag of endless work piling each time. The anxiety of watching the hours go by, until it is time to leave. Okay, I’m being a bit too dramatic now. But, that's work; either way you gotta do, what you gotta do.

So, this is my job everyday. In the morning, I'll have to go through the daily newspapers. I have to search for coverages of the company's clients in every print publication. It’s tedious, trust me. The workload is unimaginable, but we manage to get it done in time before noon.

On, in ‘we’. It means that I wasn’t the only intern with the company. There were two other senior intern that started about a month ago before I did. They too had their fair share of trial and hardship. But still, they took the time to show me the ropes to get the job done.

There are times when no newspaper arrives at the office’s doorsteps. So, we have to call the company to send in again. There also are times when we need to send out letters or items by post. That’s where we call on the carrier service to drop by to collect.

News monitoring is important in public relations. It keeps companies and organizations well-informed with the latest news and trends in the industry. These news allows the companies to craft a more effective campaign and remain on the competitive edge.

In the afternoon that day, we were in a meeting to brainstorm for an upcoming event happening during the weekend. My supervisor brief us about the game plan. The event is a roadshow for promoting a television channel. We would be making stops at a number of locations.

We were each given a task that, each one of us would be handling on the day itself. I was in charge of space setting and gift distribution. It’s basically just putting up the banners during the stop and getting the crowd to join in the fun and get some freebies.

The meeting adjourned, ending with a few words from my supervisor. I went back to my office and continued on the work that I am doing. If I was reading up on things, my work is to deal with lots of calls and follow ups. My supervisor would get me to call the media or source for things.

I took some time to get used to the working life. It was all very new to me. I didn’t know much about anything. Then, it made me think about the times that I had in school. It is nothing compared to the outside world. In the sense that deadlines, are by the hour not weeks.

The second week of my internship gave me a first hand experience on what it means to work. I have learned a great deal to manage between the task that was given to me. I have to prioritize what on what is important, and in meeting close deadlines.

Jonathan Mah Chen Jing
Curtin University, Sarawak
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