Week Three: 21 - 25 June

It is week three of the first Brunswick Internship programme for 2010. The interns talk us through what they got up to day by day in a busy week that included a trip to the Home Office, financial insights from Miranda Lane, plenty of networking, presentation and press release tips, and an evening with Mrs Moneypenny.

This is the fourth blog entry from the 2010 Brunswick Six,
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Monday 21 June (Keosha)

I am starting to believe that weekends no longer exist, because the time span between Friday evening and Monday morning seems to get shorter every week!

This morning included the only ‘restful’ moment we were due to have this week. With no more ‘free sessions’ but an awful amount of work to do, I really cherished those first two free hours; as I’m sure the others did too.

But it was soon time for our weekly Monday morning meeting with Sarah, which has already formed a routine; first up, what happened at Brunswick on Friday? We tell Sarah and each other what we did and learned at the previous week’s session at the Brunswick offices. And then Sarah delivers her own session. This week it was all about teamwork. Sarah also told us we’d been far too diplomatic when we’d had to pick our teams for this week on Friday – putting our teams together by drawing lots – and she insisted that this coming Friday she’d put us on the spot and make us pick our team mates more strategically!

After lunch, Chris’ first session on press releases – which was one I was really looking forward to – lived up to all my expectations and more. He reinforced the basics I already knew and told me so much more. We were able to view several actual press releases, and by discussing the good bits and the bad bits, we learned the dos and don’ts of writing releases for the media. In particular, we learned the importance of covering all the basics in the first paragraph – ie the six Ws, the who, when, where, what, why and how (yes, the last one is an H!). It was a good session and I learnt a lot from Chris, as usual…

…Now all I need is practice.

Tuesday 22 June (Brenda)

Today we met with Miranda Lane from Finance Talking. She was here to give us some basic knowledge in the way the City and finance works. Crucial knowledge for us to have!

We all had a different level of understanding of how the City operates, some of us being very new to this world, others having studied some of it already at university. I fell within the first category – my knowledge of City and finance being practically non-existent. But Miranda covered all the basics for those of us starting from scratch, explaining basic principles like shares, securitisation and market capitalisation.

This knowledge should really help when it comes to reading ‘Too Big To Fail’, the book about the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which we’ve been given by James Olley at Brunswick. We all have to write a review of that book before the end of the internship. Miranda also helped us to read and understand the Financial Times, and explained how to extract all the really important information without getting too caught up in the minute details.

After this session I already felt more confident about reading and understanding information about a company’s financial circumstances, a skill I put into immediate use in preparing my group’s presentation on Inmarsat Plc.

The second half of the day was another very useful session with Chris, this time on the Sunday Newspapers. This session was originally going to prempt our visit to The Observer, which was going to take place the following day, though – thanks to an important England game being played! – that was subsequently postponed. Nevertheless, it gave us lots of food for thought to digest in the weeks before our Observer visit.

We discussed how the Sunday papers differ from those printed during the week, how there were more retrospective pieces, more investigative journalism and, in the case of the tabloids in particular, more chequebook journalism.

Reading The Observer the following Sunday I looked out for all of these things. That’s what I really love about the sessions we have with Chris, Miranda and all of the other people – being able to identify and understand the things we are taught outside of the classroom.

Wednesday 23 June (Nahidur)

Wednesday was originally going to be a jam packed day. Starting at the Taylor Bennett offices, half of us were then due to go to attend a political conference at The Observer. But the Observer trip got canceled because of the England game; but we didn’t mind, not least because it meant we got to watch the match too. Anyway, the Taylor Bennett session was brilliant, and we finally got to meet internship founder Heather McGregor.

Heather gave us a unique introduction to herself; she told us to walk around the building and ask the Taylor Bennett staff about her, and then come back and tell the group what we had learned. We found out some very interesting stuff about her, including that she shoots, flies and writes for the Financial Times. We also found out that she had tripped down a pile of steps and managed to network her way through to the Sheikh of Dubai.

This exercise led us into a session on networking where Heather taught us the science behind this important business skill. She told us how to network and explained why it is so important. All in all it was a brilliant morning.

The afternoon was pretty brilliant too, but mainly because we got to watch England beat Slovenia 1–0.

Thursday 24 June (Ataur)

On Thursday morning I woke up excited, because I was really looking forward to the trip that had been organised for us today – a visit to the Home Office!

We decided to travel to Westminster Station individually and originally agreed to meet there at 8.45am. However, those of us living in London know how reliable our state of the art transport service is, and as a result of its excellent reliability some of us arrived quite a bit earlier than others. We hastily changed our plans and decided to meet outside the Home Office itself.

We arrived with time to spare and were immediately struck by the amazing design of the building. After going through the security checks we were met by Kay, who took us to the Home Office’s press floor. I didn’t really know what to expect from an office full of civil servants; I had a vision in my head of workers conducting meeting secretly in booths that you could only enter by scanning your retina. But (to my slight disappointment), it was nothing like that. Rather we entered a large, open plan office just like any other, with several plasma screen TVs showing BBC News and Sky News.

We were told that we would get to listen in on the ‘cuts meeting’, which was a daily meeting involving the whole press team where everyone would be updated on what the newspapers had written on issues regarding the Home Office that day. Because the recent budget had announced cuts across many government departments, many newspapers were speculating where these cuts would fall, and some of that speculation affecting the Home Office. The meeting was conducted in an informal but efficient manner, so that people could soon return to their desks.

Next we spoke to Simon, who told us about some of the areas that his team cover and what their roles involved. Then we walked around the office meeting workers on each ‘desk’, including the people dealing with news, crime and community safety, immigration and equality amongst others. We really appreciated how they all took time out of their busy schedules to give us a detailed explanation of their role, as well as taking questions. We got the impression that some desks weren’t even expecting us but, despite this, they alll took time to explain their jobs and answer our questions.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the Home Office, and got a real insight into how government communications worked. It was interesting to see PR from a non-financial perspective and I must admit, as I left I thought of a career in the civil service as a real possibility.

After lunch, we had another session with Chris where we discussed the business press, including titles like City AM and the Wall Street Journal and, for the first time, some of the broadcast media that PR people might target. But a big part of the session focused on one media in particular, the Financial Times.

Although it focuses on business and financial news, and is clearly aimed at City workers, I was interested to see the other sorts of news stories it covered. It has lots of world news, and Chris explained how the FT and Wall Street Journal were as close as you get to international newspapers.

I recalled it being mentioned in the book we are all reading – ‘Too Big to Fail’ – when Lehman CEO Dick Fuld agrees to give an interview to the paper in a bid to reassure the financial community about his company. This just goes to show that, despite having relatively small UK circulation figures, when it comes to big global and business stories, the FT is still high up many company’s priority lists.

Friday 25 June am (Akila)

Friday morning was an early start for all of us. Our normal working day starts at half nine, but today everybody was in the office by 8 o’clock to prepare for the big presentations we were due to give this morning.

The pressure was on. We all wanted to out perform our fellow interns and give the best presentation. It was a bit manic in the office as people argued over who got to use what equipment when, and who should get on the colour printer first. But the competition was healthy and kept everyone on their toes.

The morning session seemed to fly by and before we knew it, it was time for our presentations. All in all it went really well, and we could all see the improvements that everybody had made regarding their own presentation skills. The feedback from Sarah and our fellow interns was mainly positive, and much appreciated.

Friday June 25 pm (Thandi)

Upon our arrival at Brunswick, the receptionist escorted us to one of the meeting rooms where we waited patiently for our session to begin. A few minutes later, Simon Leigh and Charlotte came into the room. Simon, who heads Brunswick’s Analysis And Research Centre (ARC), gave us some very useful information on how to implement research strategies and offered some practical tips on giving presentations.

It seemed as if Simon had read my mind with his tips. In the group presentations that very morning I’d let my nerves get the better of me. Within the first few seconds my voice began to shake, along with the paper in my hands. I had done all of my research and practiced the presentation, but I just got so nervous in the moment. I was in desperate need of some advice so that I could control my nerves for the weeks ahead.

Simon said that we should know the first thirty seconds of our presentation back to front, because if you do well in the beginning, everything else should flow from there. I will definitely take his advice on board for next week’s presentation.

He then set us a task to complete by the end of July. We will work in two groups of three to write a report answering the question: “How will the media landscape change over the next three years and how will this impact businesses?”

After our session with Simon, Claude came down to speak to us about his role at Cantos (Brunswick’s sister company). It was really interesting to hear from him because Cantos is quite different to Brunswick and, while both companies handle clients’ reputations, they work in very different (and complementary) ways.

In the evening, five of us attended Heather’s practice session for her Edinburgh Festival show. This is the first time Mrs Moneypenny – Heather’s alter ego in the FT – has been seen on stage. Sandy and Sarah from Unicorn joined us at the AGA Shop in Knightsbridge where the show was being performed.

I took my seat in the front row, slightly hesitant because I was scared that I would be picked on being so close to the front. Luckily the only thing Heather asked of me was to pass out some of the lovely food that her AGA chef had made.

Heather discussed her views on women in the workplace and the importance of her career, family and staff. Her performance both inspired me and made me laugh at the same time. My favourite part was when she spoke candidly about the night her son’s friend accidentally snuck into her bed and fell asleep after drinking too much! It was a great experience and I am so happy she invited us; the fact that she offered us some great AGA food didn’t hurt either.