Hi everyone,
I am writing this blog in London as I am doing my PR
placement here at the Chivas Brothers office which is part of
the parent company of Pernod Ricard. Pernod Ricard is the
second largest wine and spirits company in the world, with brands such as
Chivas Regal, Malibu and Absolut vodka. However the main brands which the PR
and Marketing team work on at the Chivas Brothers office in London is on a
global basis across all international markets, looking after products such as Chivas
Regal, Ballantine's, Royal Salute, Beefeater gin, The Glenlivet and Plymouth.
The current leader in the market and clearly their major competitor is Diageo
who is currently leading with brands such as Johnnie Walker and Smirnoff.
As I imagined, on my first day I was completely nervous and
had no idea what to expect, but as soon as I walked into the office all the
people were so friendly, warm and genuinely nice. I felt comfortable almost
straight away and knew it was going to be a great experience! I am working in
the PR team who work across all Chivas brothers’ brands, the team is made up of
10 people, including roles such as: Communications Director, The Head of PR, 2x International PR Managers, Internal Communications manager, Communications Executive, Graphic Designer, The Head of Sponsorship, Events Manager and a Personal Assistant for the Communications Director. However, I mostly work with
Jennie who is the Head of PR.
Here are a few pictures- The Chivas Brothers office and view from the building at work!
This first week, mainly revolved around me learning the
office facilities, each PR person’s role, collecting media coverage and sitting in on
meetings. This was very interesting as I noticed that most tasks discussed in the meetings,
could be related back to assignments I had done in the past at uni. For example
the creation of key messages and objectives as an initial starting point for
any task and the process involved in evaluating a PR campaigns effectiveness.
As Chivas Brothers is such a large and global company, many meetings involved
briefing PR consultancies such as John Doe about where a brand
such as Ballantine’s is now, and where they want to be. Thus, expecting the PR
agency to help them come up with creative ideas of how they can get the Ballantine’s brand to the position which they want to be in.
I have been given the task each week to collate all media
coverage on Chivas Brothers, Pernod Ricard, any Chivas Brothers products and any
competitor coverage. Once I have gathered the relevant and interesting articles, I create a document of them all which gets distributed to staff members working at Chivas Brothers
offices in London and Scotland. This document is to be read by all staff in
order to keep up to date with what is happening in the media in regards to how
their products, company and competitors are doing within in the industry. This
week I had help from Alicia, the Communications Director, to collate and
forward to all staff; however from next week onwards I will be doing this by
myself which is a little bit nerve racking as I will be emailing employees
around the world this coverage. (I’m just hoping I remember every step of the
process and email it to everyone correctly).
The 'event season' for most of the brands have just taken
place and/or are coming up later in the year, so whilst I am here I will not be
taking part in any specific events. However, Chivas Regal 25year old whisky has
just sponsored the Cannes Film Festival for a fourth year during
May. Since this event recently took place, I will be working on the evaluation
for the event, and working through the process of evaluating each international
market with the communications team and Chivas Regal marketing team!
I’m looking forward to evaluating this huge event over the
next few weeks and to see if it was a bigger success than last year and how the
PR and marketing aspects contributed to the success. I'll keep you updated!
This week has been a very eye opening experience and has
already shown me a great picture of how PR works in real life, including the
in-house side and consultancy side, through the meetings with different agencies. I already feel
very comfortable and a part of the team, I’m loving the work and I know this is
a once in a lifetime experience and I wouldn’t be able to get this global
experience in Perth, so I am very grateful for this opportunity and so excited
for the next few weeks!
Bye for now,
Gemma O’Hart
