Week Six: 23-30 Oct

It’s week six of the Brunswick internship programme. The team takes you through what happened, day by day…

This is the sixth blog entry from the 2009 Brunswick Six, click here to return to the blog index

By Brunswick Interns

Friday 23rd October (Tina)

This week we didn’t have the traditional Friday morning presentation to give, because we had already presented earlier in the week to Victoria Tomlinson. This gave us valuable extra time to work on next week’s presentation.

Then, in the afternoon, we headed off to Brunswick; business as usual.

Andrew from the research team spoke to us about our perceptions of market research, and how it’s used in PR. He explained that companies need certain questions answered in order for management to make key decisions, and that that is done by researching specific target audiences.

Researching the right people is important. For example, if you are working for an exam board like Edexcel, the people you would need to consider would include children at school, parents and teachers.

It was another interesting session, and we also got to do a fun exercise pretending we were the research company acting on behalf of a client. It was a nice end to the day.

Monday 26th October (Junior)

Half way through, and we can see the finish line!

This internship reminds me a little of a race, where every runner gets off the mark at incredible speeds but, having reached half way, we all begin to slow down. It’s like we have an understanding, we look back on how far we have come (over the past five weeks) and then, simultaneously, we walk slowly to the finish line, savouring every step we take.

Today marks the half way line, and although the weeks have whizzed by, we have come to love being Interns here at Unicorn House.

That being said, emotions of today’s significance, as the half way point, are quickly out aside as we plan new ways to defeat each other in our Friday presentations. This week we are considering Kraft’s takeover bid for Cadbury, split into two groups of three, one presenting Kraft’s case for takeover, the other Cadburys bid to stop it. We see it as a competition, and nothing tastes as good as victory!

So Monday morning consisted of secret meetings, amid a slight state of paranoia regards to what your rival group was up to.

Monday afternoon, however, seemed to break the ‘thick’ but friendly ice between both groups, as we returned to the half-way point thing, with Chris providing a quick summary of everything he has covered so far.

Tuesday 27th October (Charlotte)

We had this morning to work on our presentations. For the first time we will be presenting in two teams, which I noticed has already changed the group dynamics. There’s a lot of whispering, gloating and computer screen shielding going on, and that’s just Ashka! But all in good competitive spirit. For now.

This afternoon we made our way to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR).

The CIPR, we are told, is a key trade association in PR, and a part of their role is to raise awareness of issues for the profession – such as diversity and enhancing the professional reputation of the industry. We were all looking forward to the trip and had lots of questions, especially about the lack of diversity in the sector, and what organisations like CIPR are doing that might tackle the problem.

We were met by Public Affairs Officer Elizabeth Bowen, Group Development Officer Vicky King and PR and Marketing Officer Andrea Moseley. They showed us to a lovely meeting room where, after a brief introduction of their roles, we were given the opportunity to ask questions.

We had many. To be honest, I was surprised that the Institute didn’t seem to know how many black or ethnic minority people currently worked in PR, or could even make an educated guess as to what the figure might be. In fact they seemed to find our questions on the issue challenging to answer.

After a brief tour of other rooms at the CIPR HQ we returned to Unicorn House. To be honest we were a little disappointed. It was very nice of the CIPR team to talk to us, but I think we had expected more. Still, the experience provoked a lot of thought and discussion within the group, which has to be a good thing.

Wednesday 28th October (Claude)

Our morning session was spent working on our presentations for Friday. And then, in the afternoon, back to Taylor Bennett, where we had simulated job interviews with Matthew Wall, Seri Davies and Jim McGlone, and were then told to interview each other – I was to interview and be interviewed by Junior.

During my mock interview with Matthew I was asked about when I ran my own performance workshops and what I learnt from those things. On this I had quite a bit to say.

However, during my mock interview with Junior the questions were a little more intense , and I was asked the dreaded question: “What makes you different from the other candidates applying for the role and why should I hire you?” As dreaded as this was, I was able to answer the question in some depth, utilising the advice I had been given by Seri that you should never answer job interview question with a generic cliché, such as “I am hard working and reliable”, but with actual examples that confirm everything you are saying.

We also had another look at our CVs, with the TB team pointing out parts of my CV that needed work and things I should highlight more, such as running a company, as these are unique points that separate me from other candidates

Over all this was a very useful session and I think we all feel a lot more prepared for jobs interviews now than before. I would just like Matthew Wall, Seri Davies and Jim McGlone for another informative and engaging session.

Thursday 29th October (Param)

On Thursday we had three sessions at Brunswick, and headed there late morning after some final preparation on our presentations for Friday.

At midday we arrived at the Brunswick offices and had our first session with Tim, the editor of The Brunswick Review. First he gave us a great history of the Financial Times, because he used to be a journalist there. Then we looked at some potential articles for the Brunswick Review and we chose which one we felt made it to the latest publication. We were all wrong; it taught us that editors look for significance and depth in articles rather than just a great written piece.

After that session we all went for lunch at a nearby Lebanese restaurant; we had lunch with a group of Brunswick employees and got great tips and advice while enjoying a great meal.

Our next learning session started at 2.30pm where Patrick Handley (a partner at Brunswick) gave us an in-depth presentation on IPOs; he managed to make IPOs sound extremely interesting!

Our final session was with Alison Poole, where we learnt how to run a PR campaign – important stuff. This was a hands-on session, we were split into two groups and given a Woolworths case study. We had to plan a campaign. Alison was extremely impressed with our ideas and gave us great feedback. She also shared a little secret with us on how to talk to journalists, which ended the session on a high!

Thank you so much to everyone at Brunswick for a productive and fun day!

Friday 30th October (Jenard)

Today is the big group presentation day.

All week both groups have been doing their secret research and having closed door strategy meetings, and today was the time to “show and prove’.

The location was the Unicorn Jobs offices, and in attendance we had Roberta Governale and Roberta Whitter from Brunswick, Faith Conley from Taylor Bennett and Laura Barkaway and Mark Faulkner from the UEL Employability Department. So we had range of people judging our presentations this time, rather than just the usual two people.

Both teams delivered their arguments on the subject – Kraft’s proposed takeover of Cadburys – armed with well designed slides and stats. It went well. We were all relieved to be finished, but most importantly, we also all realised how far we have come since we first started the internship over five weeks ago.

The way we now worked well in teams became very apparent through our delivery and the way we answered our questions. It was a little nerve racking, but in all a very good experience. The feedback our audience gave to us after the presentations was really helpful too, and also made us realise how far we have progressed.

Next on the programme today is our highly anticipated trip to the opera at Glyndebourne. We all have our preconceptions on what it will be like, check on the blogs next week to see what we all thought about it.

Still loving every moment of it!