"Adieu, Adieu, to you and you and you..."

Hello once again (and for the final time),

I'm happy to report that while my internship with Marcia Ball for the purpose of this unit is done and dusted, I'll be continuing it indefinitely -- it seems that there is lots to be done now that we are working on revamping Style Voyeur, and now that the Jaime Lee label is growing rapidly thanks to press we received (and are still receiving) for her show at the Perth Fashion Festival.

There were many exciting times during this internship and there are many exciting times ahead. I've learnt a lot about the way the industry functions and how public relations can work (or not work) in an atypical working environment like the one I was in, which was extremely relaxed compared to some of the government departments some of you were at. Even so, I learnt and great deal, especially about myself and my capabilities.

1. Love what you do and it won't be a 'job'. The best kind of work isn't even work -- if you're doing something you're passionate about, it will translate into what you produce. So figure out what you love, and find out what industries will work for you, and then go for it. The rest will come naturally.
2. Sometimes things don't go to plan, and that's okay. Whether it's a big crisis that undermines an entire project or someone who just won't pick up the phone or email you back, you just have to take a deep breath and tackle it as best you can. Some things are just entirely out of your control.
3. The importance of a 'can do, will do' attitude in approaching tasks big and small. Do anything and everything! No task is too small or beneath you -- as an intern, you may have to do things like walk dogs (I'm looking at you, Simon), pick up dry cleaning or update boring databases, but your enthusiasm will show your employer that you're up for anything, and that in turn can and will lead to more responsibility. As for the big tasks, no matter how daunting it seems, it's always better to jump into it and ask the questions you might need to ask than to decline or be unsure. I've learnt that employers often want to know that you're at least willing to do the job, and are happy to help you along whenever they can.
4. A thank you goes a long way, and both ways! An honest "thank you" from your superiors can re-energise you with your tasks and make you feel appreciated for your hard work, but sometimes a "thank you" to your employer also shows them that you appreciate the opportunities they're giving you and the things you're learning from it. Gratitude is key in making the most out of your experiences.
5. No two organisations are the same, and they all operate in very different ways. I was worried before I began my internship that I would not get as much out of it as I would if I were working in a more corporate environment, and I was wrong. My internship environment utilised public relations functions in different ways, and in some cases not at all. That allowed me to assess the brand in ways they hadn't previously been able to assess themselves. At the end of the day I still got a lot out of it, and while I perhaps never wrote a media release or published a marketing strategy, I still learnt a great deal and used public relations in the way I knew how to bring another dimension to an existing brand.

Thanks for reading thus far; I hope you got as much out of your placements as I did. Good luck with anything and everything you decide to do after you graduate, whatever that may be. Judging from your blog posts, I have no doubt we're all capable of going out there and taking the public relations industry by storm. Who knows -- maybe I'll see some of you around!

Good luck for wherever your degree takes you,

Nicole

Out with the Old, in with the New

[Due to unforeseen circumstances, the following blog post has been published in hindsight and was originally written for publication on Friday 18th October 2013]

Hello, all!

I hope your placements are going smoothly. I see some of you have already finished -- congratulations! I can just about see the end of my placement over the horizon.

In today's day and age, social media has taken the world by storm. Blogs like Marcia's have been cropping up left, right and centre, and are vital for many industries as means to get information out that traditional news platforms might not cover. Over the last few shifts with Marcia, we've been doing a lot of brainstorming and thinking about where we want her blog Style Voyeur to go. The blog industry is a tricky one, and while blogging is fun for the most part, it is also incredibly time consuming, and time is an important resource if you're earning your income elsewhere. When I first saw Marcia at the Women In Media panel discussion earlier this year (as mentioned in my first post), she brought up some of the challenges she faces in regards to blogging for Style Voyeur:

• Sleepless nights -- this was her biggest frustration with blogging, and it is just part of the bigger picture: the need for newsworthiness. Certain events need to be blogged about the day they happen, otherwise others beat you to it and you lose newsworthiness. Blogs are often competing with each other for the best coverage, and while certain events or issues naturally garner lots of coverage, blogs will have better leverage if they are the first to get their stories out. As such, and especially during busy periods in the industry, bloggers will find themselves losing sleep over how much needs to be covered, photographed, written, interviewed, researched, and finally published. While this is done all the time in newsrooms around the world, we often forget that blogs are...
• One man bands: Marcia highlighted this as a blessing in theory, but a nightmare in reality. She, and many other blogs owned by just one person, are constantly competing with large media corporations, who can have multiple people working on a story and all the resources and talents available to them. While it is great to have all the power in making executive decisions, hiring extra hands is difficult because:
• Marcia's voice (style of coverage), expertise and taste in visuals is difficult to teach
• Her blog is not her main source of income (in fact, it's not even a source of income), and therefore it will not sustain employing additional team members
• Blogging is much more time consuming than it looks, particularly when they contain multimedia and quotes from interviewees. It can and sometimes is as credible and thorough as the news stories you may find in traditional media platforms. This ties into the two issues stated above.
• It is not commercially viable: Marcia earns no money off Style Voyeur, and given the time, effort and resources that go into maintaining the blog, it is soon coming clear that the outcome of having a successful, competitive blog that supports her career as a stylist and vice versa is difficult to sustain. 

After lots of brainstorming and discussion, we came to the conclusion that Marcia's biggest obstacle with Style Voyeur was the fact that it was not commercially feasible. If it were, many of the struggles she's facing maintaining it would not exist. Oh, the things one can do with money! We decided it was time for her to reinvent the wheel, so we then came up with a long-term strategy to turn Style Voyeur into a commercially viable business, which I'll be sure to delve into in my report.

After all the research I've been doing into the landscape of blogging, it got me thinking about how much the internet has changed the environment brands and businesses operate in. Everything in this day and age is evolving too fast to keep track of, and in the case of blogging, there will come a time where it isn't enough to just keep up -- bloggers have to try even harder to stay ahead of the game so they don't get left behind. This concept can be adopted into many industries I imagine, especially ones as innovative as media or the arts. As digital natives and current graduates, there hasn't been a crazier, more ever-evolving time to be out in the workforce than right now.

I hope you're all enjoying your placements so far,

Nicole

Jaime Lee -- Shows, Shoots and Sparkles (and the Power of Social Media)

[Due to unforeseen circumstances, the following blog post has been published in hindsight and was originally written for publication on Monday 16th September 2013]

Hello again!

Phew, what a whirlwind last few days. Where do I even begin?

This past week has marked the busiest time for the label Jaime Lee (for which Marcia Ball, who I intern for, is Brand Manager). While Jaime has had a heap of highs in the few years since its inception (Kimbra's Grammys dress, anyone?) it was these last few days that has really set the ball rolling for the label, and it was in these last few days I have learnt a great deal about the many functions of public relations - in particular, event management.

Thursday marked the second day of Perth Fashion Festival and Jaime's show, which ended up being a stellar success. So much planning went into this one hour-long event (hour-long on paper, though I swear it lasted only 30 minutes) and much of it I wasn't even present for (it has been months and months and months of hard work on the label's part). Luckily my internship commenced in time for me to be involved with other integral parts of planning, and I was given the opportunity to be a project manager and put in charge of transferring 6 large floral arches, the main prop in both the fashion show and the live campaign shoot the next day (more below), as well as liaising with the volunteers. It involved lots of emailing and calling and running around but was worth it in the end, as the arches were transferred successfully with minimal loss of flowers.

During the show itself I was able to do a number of smaller roles. I took over Marcia's role as photographer for Style Voyeur while she was busy dealing with other elements of the show, and was also able to help the show run smoothly by transferring the garments to and from the fitting room and dressing models.

Backstage at Jaime Lee: How many people does it take to dress model Tallulah Morton? It looks like 7!

The show garnered a great deal of success and extensive media coverage, both on traditional media and social media. Search the hashtag #jaimelee and you're bombarded with thousands of results on Jaime's show, the campaign shoot, and the Q&A. We had a 2 page spread in the West Australian the next day, and senior arts and fashion journalist Pip Christmass called it 'Paris-worthy', 'jaw-dropping' in a review, and in another called it the best show of the festival -- on the second day!

"As a fashion journalist of some years' standing, I've been to more fashion parades than I can count, and it's easy to get jaded and blasé about the clothes you see coming down the catwalk. Tonight, however, Jaime Lee Major knocked the ball out of the park, producing one of the best fashion shows I've ever seen - and I've definitely seen a few." - Pip Christmass

It was really great to see the show be so well received, and with the power of social media we saw that success almost instantly. The next day we were back at Claremont Quarter after staying there 'till late the night before to get the store front set up. There we hosted a live campaign shoot, which was open to the public. We had many people come in and congratulate us on such a great show, which felt amazing after all the hard work that was put in. Throughout the shoot I was everyone's general assistant, which involved a lot of smaller tasks like fetching water and dressing model Tallulah and making sure all the look changes went as smoothly as possible. I was also put up to the task of live-blogging the event on social media, and publishing a number of images on a number of different platforms and hashtagging to no end to ensure maximum coverage.

Jaime Lee Live Campaign Shoot

Yesterday (just two days after the live campaign shoot), we hosted a live designer Q&A, also at Claremont Quarter and also open to the public. On the panel was Marcia, Jaime and Matt Jordan, who is Jaime's publicist from Sydney-based PR company Mother & Father PR. It was great to see Matt at work, doing what we've been learning to do for the last three years at university in a fun and interesting industry. The event went well and was over before I knew it, and while I wasn't given as many tasks as I was for, say, the fashion show on Thursday, it was a great experience to see how the entire event was managed.

Jaime Lee Live Q&A

The power of social media still astounds me -- over the course of these last few days, the label's 'followers' and 'likers' on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook absolutely skyrocketed. In this day and age information is shared in an instant, and it felt like within just a moment Jaime's brand awareness exploded. It made me think about how much of an influence social media and the internet has on a brand's image. If it can make a brand in just moments, it can surely break one too.

Overall, this experience has been fantastic so far, and it seems my internship is off to a great start. Here is to better things ahead!

Placements come in all shapes and sizes...

[Due to unforeseen circumstances, the following blog post has been published in hindsight and was originally written for publication on Tuesday 3rd September 2013]

Hello everyone!

After what felt like a long and excruciating search for a PR placement, I'm glad to announce that I've finally found one – and it was hiding right under my nose this entire time!

Earlier this year, I attended a lecture entitled Women in Media: The Future of Journalism held here at Curtin University. The event featured a panel of three who knew the current climate of journalism in Australia better than most in regards to the ever-growing popularity of social media. The panel included the Sunday Times Chief of Staff Anthony DeCeglie, health and medicine online journalist Melissa Sweet, and Style Voyeur blogger Marcia Ball. The talk itself was incredibly interesting and thought provoking, and made me wonder about my future career prospects as a Journalism and Public Relations  student. Of the three panelists, Marcia Ball interested me the most for a number of reasons – we both stumbled into an interest in fashion in a similar way (through the wonders of the internet during our pre-teenaged years), and like I am now, she was once a Public Relations student (here at Curtin, too!) who worried about finding a PR job after she'd graduated. It was comforting to know she had found her way in the industry by herself, and was now happily working in multiple jobs doing what she loved, which just happened to be a combination of PR, journalism, fashion and more.

After the event, I decided I would approach her for an PR internship but never got around to doing so as I was in a rush to leave. As luck would have it, she posted a call-out for a business intern on her Facebook page, which my friend and fellow PR Internship 393 coursemate Jessica Cummins forwarded onto me. One very cheeky email (which she tells me she loved) later, and I was 'hired' on the spot and happily undergoing an internship with Marcia. A number of months later, however, the internship had all but died off due to my rigorous workload and exams from last semester, and Marcia's involvement with several productions and films, and I had almost forgotten about it entirely.

Last week, just before the census date, I had frantically called our placement coordinator Ali about my inability to find a placement and was just about ready to give up and try again next semester when I remembered about this business internship. Talking it through with Ali made me realise that what I had done with Marcia in my previous internship was very PR-driven and that it would not only be the perfect internship for me, but it would be great to continue the work cycle I had already gotten used to.

As a Journalism and Public Relations student, I've often struggled to find a good balance between the two. I've had lots of experience writing for a number of publications, but found I never really had the chance to delve into the world of PR other than what we do at university. My biggest concern with this internship is that I won't be working in a hugely PR-driven environment like many of you are right now, and that it would maybe diminish my experience and result in me learning a lot less about the industry. In addition to this, I must be one of the very few people in the history of this unit who is working for one person, rather than one corporation or an organisation. However, Ali has assured me that Marcia was once a student who had also undertaken this unit and would be "on the Ball" ("No pun intended!" Ali had said over the phone) in making sure I would have the appropriate experience needed.

Today was my first day back with Marcia, and it was great to be back in her home office once again. We had a long chat about what I wanted out of this internship (and also what this unit wanted, of course), and discussed both of our expectations regarding my role and where we would like to be once my 20 days is completed. While it feels just like old times, I know there is a lot ahead of us and lots more to do this time around. Perth Fashion Festival is around the corner, and as one of Marcia's many jobs includes being Production Manager for local fashion label Jaime Lee, this would be a big time for us and everyone else in the industry. There is much to do for the upcoming fashion show, the live campaign shoot and the live designer Q&A – so I'd better get off and get started! I'll keep you posted, and I look forward to reading about your placement experiences.

Nicole