PR agencies - my views

I am into the 6th week of my internship program at Cohn & Wolfe XPR.

When i first got this post, i had the intention to learn as much as i can here, on top of that i have always wanted to be given the opportunity of a conversion after the internship period.

Today when i look back i am very satisfied with what i have gained during my stint here, came in as a new guy who knows next to nothing other than the practical knowledge of Public Relations and to be honest not much of that knowledge is very useful. After weeks and weeks of "Intern Jobs" such as media monitoring, monthly reports and  article translations. But as the days passed i see myself getting more involved in the works at the office. In the past weeks i have been involved in multiple brainstorming sessions with the team, also i have pitched five different laptops from my client to as many as 30 different media partners, which gave me the opportunity to be introduced to the media even if its on a digital point of view. Got to localize a press release from an American context to a Singaporean context, seems like an easy task at first but when i started doing it, it seems like everything has to change in the article. I am very happy with the day to day work that i am doing now, other than the fact that i work a 12 hour day 3 times a week which brings me to the topic of PR practitioners being pushed to the limit.

There are 2 parties that would push us into newer heights first and foremost is the clients, people who pay you to do their PR work, in their mind they are king and queens that can demand for everything. They are not entirely wrong. they are the people who pay us the money. On the other hand we are also always being asked to provide more to the media, things like 1-to-1 meeting and interview with the client, extended testing periods of products and the most common of all is when the media partner asks can they release bits of information earlier to their readers.

however i know that this may be the norm for the industry and i have to say that the amount of workload that is given to us gives us the opportunity to really work under pressure and also to be able to absorb information faster than what we usually do.

i am glad that i got to do this internship as it has gave me an opportunity to see how the actual public relations industry runs and then evaluate if i am suitable for the job.