Congratulations to all of you who’ve completed your internship. I have completed mine as well, but I must say – although it’s only been 20 days of work, I already feel a little attached to my work place. Then again, what was there not to like? I had a really nice manager and colleagues, good working hours, great location and fantastic tasks to work on.
I was interning at CBS’s External Relations. Although it revolves around communications and building and maintaining relationships, it isn’t a typical public relations department. Therefore, where my tasks were concerned, I didn’t do what most of you did – no media releases, no media kits, and no newsletters to draft. My department acts like a medium between our external and internal stakeholders, with a focus on careers and alumni. I guess I was working in a different aspect of public relations. That doesn’t mean it was any less fun, though.
My manager deals a lot with external organizations that provides internship opportunities for our students (this is the careers side of things, of course). So I was tasked with raising awareness of such internships with the students. I have been doing so by creating posters. Fortunately for me, I've attended a Photoshop workshop before so I was equipped with some basic skills.
Here are some of my works:
I started off with an internship opportunity with American Chamber of Commerce. Previously, the poster we had was done in a straightforward manner and created with a word document. My manager wanted it to look more attractive, and so it all begun. :)
Next, I worked on a poster where the Financial Planning Association were seeking Financial Planning Students to help out at a stand during the National Financial Week. It had the theme of "Value of Advice," and its purpose was to educate the public about what financial advice is and how it is valuable.
This is for the recent National Career Development Week 2010, which Curtin's Careers Centre at 599 has been working hard to provide informative workshops, seminars and one-to-one advice sessions to graduating students seeking jobs. This poster is solely targetted at CBS students, so all the other irrelevant workshops have been filtered out
That's about what I have to share this time around. I hope you guys enjoyed looking at the posters as much as I had while doing them up.
Good luck with your reports!
'Til the next time.
Signing off, Michelle.
4 comments:
Hi Michelle,
Wow! Your posters look amazing! They each represent the individual company client but also remains appealing to your target audience. Well done!
I can really appreciate your comments on not practicing typical public relations activities such as media kits and releases during this work experience. Instead, through my placement at Freehands, I have observed public relations to be all about the management of relationships, both internal and external.
This can take many forms whether it is an informal meeting, a touch-base email, drafting clever promotion materials, designing an interactive website, planning an event or managing social media channels. All of the listed before are prime opportunities for an organisation to build awareness, nurture relationships, strengthen branding and in Freehands case, increase the attractiveness of their services. I believe that effective public relations require a cohesive action plan, not just one activity to bare the sole responsibility of achieving greatness. You want impact but also retention, which is why ongoing practice through different mediums and activities are key to a successful public relations strategy.
In my opinion, your posters act as the ‘impact’ component. I am certain, however, that CBS’s External Relations will be looking at other avenues to promote the awareness and importance of extra curricular industry experience to further support your generated interests. Such things could include pep talks at various lectures, pre-scheduled information sessions, follow up emails through oasis, personal recommendations from lecturers and tutors, editorial through university publications like Grok and Cite or Curtin Careers Fair! The possibilities are endless.
Thank you for sharing your incredible posters, I really enjoyed looking at them and will be sure to show all of my friends.
Good luck for your future endeavors!
Cheers,
Linda Truong
Curtin University of Technology | Perth | Western Australia
Hello Michelle,
First of all great work with the posters!!
Your post really interested me as when I saw the posters and realised that you actually created them I started thinking how lucky you were.
As you said in your poste, you are not working in a "typical" public relations department. Therefore, you were not really involved in media releases or media kits and so on.
It was the same for me during my placement at the International Students Committee (ISC) of Curtin. Not that they never seek media coverage but it was not the right time to do so during my placement.
Anyway, my internship made me wondering where exactly PR activities start and stop. And to be honest I'm really not sure at this point. From my point of view, the posters you created would fall under advertising, or would be the final job of a graphic designer.
For example, at the ICS, I was told that the newsletter I had to write will then go to the graphic designer, so I just have to come up with what to include.
Well, I think it is different for every organisations or every work environment, and there are no proper rules on what exactly a PR person is supposed or not supposed to do.
Anyway, I would have loved to come up with creative ideas like you did, and I hope you really enjoyed it.
Diane
Linda - You're right, the posters aren't the only avenues they used for raising awareness. They used CBS website as well as e-mailing their direct target audience.
Thanks for liking my work - I really appreciate it! :)
All the best in your future endeavours too!
Regards
Michelle
Diane - Excellent point! The same question kept going through my mind throughout the internship and even after. What I've done with the posters might seem like advertising, but I guess it's really how you look at it. From a different perspective, it's just another way of gaining and raising awareness. We wouldn't think it's what PR practitioners does because it simply wasn't what we were taught in school.
But that aside, I agree with you. I expected PR being presented in a similar way that we learnt in University, but I guess in the 'real world' it simply doesn't work that way.
We cannot define PR's exact job scope as PR activities differ from organization to organization, as do their culture. Although we may not know what to expect from our future workplace, one thing's for sure - that what we've learnt in University and our recent internship will definitely go a long way!
All the best in your future endeavours! :)
Regards
Michelle
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