Well, it's been a busy one this week! Wednesday in particular with a 9am lecture, 11am guest speakers from Bucks based PR agency, Ranieri, and a 2.30pm agency visit to Cirkle PR in Beaconsfield.
To kick things off we had a two hour lecture on event management. At the moment lecturers have my 200% attention as events is a sector I'm seriously considering going into. I kind of feel this is a natural choice for me, I'm always the organiser within groups and I actually quite enjoy it.
Then at 11am came the guest speakers from Ranieri, a local PR agency in Aylesbury- Ranieri Communications.The two speakers that came to see us gave us a general overview of the company and what their day to day routine is like. Then they gave us a brief to work on for half an hour; just brainstorming ideas really. It was great fun and it's also encouraging that your ideas are approved of, as being a student, you're never too sure whether your train of thought is always along the right lines. Our brief was to think of a UK launch idea for a headphone company that has already established their market in the US and Europe. Ideas that were thought of were silent discos/ headphone parties, product demos at universities and gyms, etc. It was great to bounce ideas from one another and to develop a campaign idea also. I also learnt about press tours. Something I hadn't even thought about or even considered as a possibility. It just goes to show that as much as getting a degree is important, university can't teach you everything.
The afternoon visit to Cirkle PR was amazing to say the very least! The founder of Cirkle PR, Caroline Kinsey, has been a guest speaker as part of our PR lectures in 2012. Even though that experience was great, as we got to interview her and see how a PR person should handle an interview, you don't get a feel for where the person works until you actually step through the doors of the agency. Immediately when we all arrived you could tell what culture was being adopted at Cirkle. Everyone was friendly, obviously it was a mostly female dominated agency, but everyone was so welcoming and lovely.
We were split into three groups and each group spent 20 minutes with a member of the team then rotated and so on. My group saw Cirkle's apprentice first and she showed us what she does on a day to day basis and how she balances her work load with her work at the agency as she is currently doing a foundation degree equivalent qualification. When Caroline first visited us and told us about how she really believes in the PR apprentice scheme it made me think, if only I was a few years younger... An apprenticeship has always appealed to me but at the time of making a decision, PR apprenticeships weren't so widely available or heard of, but I'm glad that times are changing.
The second team member we saw was an Account Executive. She took us through her day and what it is like to work at Cirkle, as she as been there for nearly two years. We also helped her brainstorm some ideas for an upcoming event for one of her client's. Both of these team members work in B2B and that too is something I hadn't really considered until visiting Cirkle. At university the consumer side of PR is more dominant and by visiting Cirkle our class were able to be presented with a more balanced view on B2B PR. Cirkle's account executive also homed in on making sure we get as much experience as possible during our tie at university.
The third team member was an Account Manager and she works on the B2C side of PR. We helped her go through a brand's media coverage book and pick out what coverage we thought would make great highlights/ features to present back to the client. It was amazing to see how much coverage the agency had got for just one client in a year. Cirkle's apprentice also showed us another brand's media coverage book and that too was impressive that so much had been achieved. It clearly shows that the agency is very productive and efficient.
To finish off the visit, Caroline gave us a quick presentation and talk on how to become better PR people and become more attractive to potential employers. Being one herself she knows what she wants in an employee. From this came some extremely useful tips such as making a Twitter account and using it for professional reasons rather than social. I didn't even have a Twitter account until yesterday, but I took on board the advice given to me and started following my course mates and lots of other accounts such as: news, PR professional bodies, etc that could come in handy and give me regularly updated 'need to know' information. My account name is on the 'About Me' page of this blog. She also focused on having employees who are able to completely utilise their initiative and being able to think for themselves and on their feet.
Caroline also explained to us about the culture of her agency. She has put so many strategies in place to make work better for her employees, it's incredible and unlike any other workplace I've ever come across. Some initiatives include hot-desking in the office meaning no one has their own desk, it allows everyone to be around different people and integrate more wholly with all the team members. Another is that anyone that is account manager level or above can work from home on Fridays and they also don't have a holiday limit or have to fill out a holiday form as they're mature enough and responsible enough to take holiday where appropriate. It all sounds amazing and to top it all off, Caroline even got them all an iPad mini for Christmas each!! She sounds like an amazing person to work for and the culture that Cirkle has is definitely somewhere I would love to work once I graduate. All the team members work extremely hard but their hard work pays off and the rewards make it all worth it!!
Cirkle has definitely given me a lot to think about and I would like to thank Caroline and her Cirkle team for giving us the opportunity to visit the agency and spend some time getting to grips with what working in an actual PR agency is like!
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