First week? Done!

And so I begin my four week work placement with London based PR agency, Publicasity. I have been looking forward to this for quite some time and hope it brings exciting new adventures.

Publicasity is a fairly large agency that deals with a range of different clients including; corporate, consumer, trade and B2B.

I was looking forward to seeing public relations in practice. As I am a newcomer to the profession, my knowledge is limited to what I had learned previously during my three months study of PR.

During my time here I hope to put into practice some of the skills that I have learnt on the course. I would like to be writing press releases, copy for websites, blogging, and also to be involved in events. While I have studied all the aforementioned on the PR course, I believe it is essential to implement that knowledge into practice, I just hope I get the chance!

On my first day I was assigned a mentor, which is a really good idea, I would say it helped a lot with the nerves and I didn't feel like I was on my own so much. I had already heard a lot about my mentor from my tutor at University as he was a former student there, he deals with the digital aspect of things, which I'm really happy about as we have dealt with this a lot on our course and I believe it is a very important part on PR today.

At the agency everyone sits down together and reads the papers and magazines, looking out for any stories that could affect or are relevant to their clients. This is also a good way to keep abreast of public affairs, which is a vital part of PR.

I was asked to do a press release on my first day, which I was so worried about, I had only really ever done a couple of practice ones on the course. It probably took me five times as long as it would anyone else in the office but I wanted to do a good job and make a good impression. My writing is an area that I do really want to improve, and I hope I get to do many more.

I've been working on some digital jobs with Aaron, trying to build up a client’s digital side of things. Looking for forums on the internet relating to the products they sold, I remember being worried about the ethical side of things, but was pleased to find out that we would be working transparently.

When we did find someone to write to Aaron stressed that it was important that we engage in a conversation with them, which I related back to Grunig’s two-way symmetrical model. It felt good to relate some of this back to the theory I had learnt.

I helped out with some mail-outs, which is one of the more mundane tasks of PR, sending products out to journalists in the hope that they will feature them in their publication, and also mailing out any prizes when a competition has been held.

Scanning is another one of the not so interesting tasks that is required in this job; any editorial and pictures that are found in print are scanned and saved to show to the client.

I was so happy to learn that I would be assisting some members of the team on Friday to the London Boatshow, who is one of their clients. Friday was press day, and I was basically shadowing the team to see how an event like this is run and handled. It was so interesting to watch it all in action, from the organising of the press, the interviews, to seeing the results on the media's websites at the end of the day.

I really appreciate the opportunity I have been given from Publicasity, and hope I can give them something back. I have thoroughly enjoyed my first week here and look forward to what's coming next!