All Good Things Come to an End - What I Learnt

Hello again all,

Well I've just finished up my last week at The Communications Store and it has been quite a learning experience. I thought I'd reflect on what I learnt and also my thoughts and feelings on the industry.

I feel as though there are so many minor details I have learnt which are hard to dig out of my memory right now, but were just so important. Little things about how to present yourself, how to talk to your co-workers, and how to talk with the press. I suppose I'll just have to focus on my most 'stand out' learning experiences.

First of all, I feel as though PR is all about dealing with people effectively. If you can do that, you're half way to success. Many of the executives in my team, particularly my supervisor, spent so much of their working hours on the phone building relationships. Once I was putting together a mail out - virtually just putting together bags of clients' products to send out to journalists - and my very busy supervisor took the time out of her day to go over all of them. She was making sure the products were relevant to the journalists' tastes and publications, and was including personalised notes for many of the journalists who demanded a more personal relationship with her.

This is only one example of the importance of dealing with people; I saw this every day. I love this aspect of PR because it's so nice to be social in your workplace, and I much prefer the idea of working with people in tandem with computers.

I learnt about the importance of what I would call 'house style'. I was always tempted to be super creative whenever I got the chance to do something exciting in my internship, but it was a priority that I held up the agency's image and reputation if I wanted to succeed. Every time I was given the opportunity to write something, or put a presentation together, it had to follow a previous example which was provided for me.

I suppose this aspect is a little disappointing; I thought that public relations would be an incredibly creative job. However, maybe the creative side will come into play later in my career - for now I'm at the bottom of the food chain!

I've also learnt a lot about myself and my career. I was so hesitant to step into the PR field, I suppose because I am a creature of habit by nature, and it was an intimidating thought. However I now wish I had started months ago, I loved office life for the month I had it. I always knew what hours to expect from my week, I always had weekends off, get to enjoy bank holidays, and in future when I'm not just an intern I will earn so much more than I ever have before. On top of this I get to spend my working hours using my brain, being creative and developing relationships with co-workers and the press. Why did I stay in hospitality for so long again?!

I wish so much that I could have stayed on at The Communications Store but it always had to end. The team are all adamant about me staying in touch with them, so who knows, maybe one day soon they will need me back!

I hope you all had positive experiences in your internships, and if you didn't, maybe try again somewhere else.

That will be all from me! Can't believe I'm graduating soon!! :D

Jessie x

Communication - all types of it - is key!

Hello all,

How goes the internships? I have to say while I am thoroughly enjoying working office hours in an office environment, I am looking forward to skipping the 2 hours I spend on the underground tube every day. At the moment in London there are tube strikes going on and so many of trains aren’t running. The result is lots of antsy people squashed into a worn and blackened carriage like sardines.

The other evening as a hoard of people got off the carriage and onto the platform alongside me, one lady said “Ah get that fresh air!” I wouldn’t consider the air in the underground particularly fresh; it hasn’t seen sunlight in days, it’s full of emissions from the trains and God knows how many people are down there every day breathing the same air in and out… Urgh. She hasn’t visited Perth clearly!

Enough about that. Working in beauty PR has been a lot of fun – a few free bits here and there and always plenty to get done. A few days ago The Communications Store hosted its biannual Press Day, and it was so amazing. They hired out this big old church, and I mean old, London style, and filled it mostly with fashion collections, and also with a lot of our beauty products and services.

The purpose of Press Day is virtually just an opportunity for the agency to showcase a whole lot of product all at once, and invite as many journalists, bloggers etc as possible to come along. I found Press Day interesting as it helped me understand a bit about the different models of communication that we learnt in University.

Now, I was always under the impression that symmetrical two-way communication was the only way to go, with clients, audiences and the press. I suppose I have an ethic which extends into my everyday life, and that is the motto ‘communication is key’. To me this means having frequent and balanced communication between all parties is the ideal way to build relationships, as it promotes honesty and trust.

For the most part, TCS works on the symmetrical two-way model of communication, as they place an emphasis on listening to the client’s wants and needs and keep them informed on any activity. However I see the Press Day as a prime example where Grunig’s “Public Information model” is used; as information about the client is simply distributed to the public without there being a conversation. This example showed me that two-way communication isn’t always necessary – sometimes it can be more efficient for everyone if the information is pre-packaged, succinct and in large quantities. I found this worked well for the beauty and fashion clients at Press Day, as they simply needed to display the exact same information and products to a large group of people.

So, it appears hands-on learning is all it cracked up to be! My placement continues to open my mind to how public relations operates in the real world and my knowledge on this industry seems to be growing.

That’s all for now folks. I hope nobody has nodded off over their keyboards!

Jessie x