I hope all of your placements are going well and you are all learning a lot.
I have recently finished my first week at Professional Public Relations (PPR) in Perth and have learned so much already. I am really enjoying my time at PPR! For those of you who don’t know of PPR I’ll give you all a brief rundown. PPR is the largest public relations consultancy in Perth with over 100 clients. Their client lists includes well known brands such as MacDonald’s, Bunnings, HBF, Chevron, Landcorp, Perth Fashion Festival, Emirates and Murdoch University. PPR consists of four different teams in house including corporate communications, consumer, investor relations and digital public relations. During my placement I have not been placed in a specific team rather, I have been given the opportunity to work across all teams which furthers the diversity found in consultancy.
I have been given a number of different tasks over the past week but I wanted to reflect on some of my main tasks. One of these has been media monitoring. On my first day I was given a crash course in how PPR completes their media clippings for their clients – there was a lot to remember! I’ve learnt how to clip both hard and soft copy articles along with calculating the Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE). You still need to know maths to work in public relations! I managed to work it all out and successfully completed my first few clippings with only minor mistakes. After a full week of practice, I can safely say I could take this skill to a graduate position. I find it interesting that we are not taught how to complete media clippings at university. I understand that every organisation does media monitoring differently but we could have had a small amount of time dedicated to media clippings in one of our PR units to assist us when we complete our placements. I picked it up quite easily but it would have been beneficial to have done it previously.
As the title of my blog post suggested, I have used a lot of Excel spreadsheets since starting my placement at PPR. I have used Excel previously but not to the extent I have this previous week. I have slowly learned how to be more competent in using Excel but I am sure there are many more functions within the program that could make my use of the program more efficient. Many of the tasks I’ve been asked to complete have included the use of Excel such as several media lists for different clients and a forward features list. My eyes have seen so many lines, rows and columns that I’ve been dreaming about Excel. Somehow I think I’ll need to go to the optometrist after my placement is completed!
The forward features list was a large task requiring information for around thirty different publications to be gathered. Without completing this task I would have never had known that it was possible to get a list of features that the publication was going to run in the next year. A forward features list is a great source of information for a consultant assisting with the implementation of a media placement strategy. Although the downside to updating a forward features list is that it is very time consuming, I could feel myself becoming stressed as I felt I wasn’t working fast enough. I was however reassured by one of the consultants that I was doing well and not to stress over it.
Three main things I learnt during the first week of my placement;
1. Time Management – Being able to allocate time to a specific task and complete the task efficiently is vital to the success of a public relations consultancy.
2. Team Work – When working in a consultancy, you are not alone. A single client account may be covered by several consultants so it is important to communicate well with others about your own workloads and how much capacity you have day to day to complete necessary tasks.
3. Microsoft Outlook – This program has saved my brain from being fried to pieces this week. I was able to enter in all the tasks I needed to complete and allowed me to set reminders for meetings. This is truly the best friend to any consultant or anyone in general!
This first week has allowed me to put into practice what I have learnt at uni and I hope to transfer this knowledge into the workplace upon graduation. Here is a great article from PR Daily explaining what skills employers’ desire from PR professionals today.
http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/10077.aspx
I look forward to reading more PR393 blogs.
Deanne
Bentley Campus
