Week Five: 5 - 9 July

It is week five of the first Brunswick Internship programme for 2010. The interns talk us through what they got up to day by day.

This is the sixth blog entry from the 2010 Brunswick Six,
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By Brunswick Interns

Monday 5 July (Akila)

It was the start of another busy week for we interns as we arrived bright and early at our office. In the morning, we had a couple of hours free to try and work on our weekly presentations, but yet again the minutes just flew by and before we knew it, it was already time for our session with Sarah, who gave us some use full tips on improving our CV: we all found this really useful, and it’s given us that extra impetus to try and achieve greater things in life to add to those all-important documents.

After lunch, we were plunged into an afternoon session with Chris Cooke, who explained how to go about organising an event; we all gleaned a fair amount of useful information. As the day grew to close, we remained very much aware that work was not over, as we all still had lots to do for our weekly presentations for Friday.

Tuesday 6 July (Brenda)

This morning we spent time working on our presentations, and catching up on work that was needed to be completed for the week. Free sessions are always sacred, and we try to get the most out of them.

Later, Andy Green came in and talked to us about internet memes and personal brand-casting; he has made a career out of specialising in this area of creative PR, and offers a different perspective on how to communicate your brand in a way that makes people remember you. It made us reflect on our own personal attributes, and endowed us with a bit more confidence to promote ourselves – otherwise, who else will?

We also had a session with Patrick on writing succinctly, especially in the context of press cuttings and report writing for clients. The scenario used was that we were briefing a senior client on the emergence of the iPad on the market, and writing up a summary of the reception of this by critics and columnists.

Patrick’s session was really good, as per usual. He has a great personality and makes us all feel at ease. I always look forward to his sessions, as quality creative writing is one of the areas I have earmarked for improvement.

Wednesday 7 July (Keosha)

Today five out of the six of we interns got our degree results (Brenda had hers from February), and we all did extremely well, if I do say so! During our few hours free time in the office this morning, we were therefore all trying to contain all our excitement so we could fulfil task we had to complete; in other words, a few hours of presentation work and then we were off out…

Today we were given the amazing opportunity to attend the Diversity in Public Relations conference for senior executives in the PR industry. Not only did I have the chance to hear from people who have conducted research in this field, I was presented with a perfect networking opportunity.

There were a range of speakers at this event, from Dr Lee Edwards from the University of Manchester, who discussed her research into Diversity of UK PR, to Heather McGregor, who spoke about the Taylor Bennett Foundation and of course our internship programme, and how she is aiming to create a diverse talent pool for the future. We arrived in the afternoon and were able to hear from Dr Nike Folayan, who created the Association for Black Engineers, and Kenton Lewis from St Georges, University of London, whose team have adjusted entry criteria in order to enhance diversity.

Hearing these professionals in talk about their different areas of speciality and the problems with diversity within was a real eye opener; I guess PR is not the only industry that has to change its ethos.

Furthermore, participating in a variety of workshops gave me the chance to look at hypothetical work situations from a new perspective, to voice my opinions, and suggest what I might do in given circumstances – a real exercise in thinking on one’s feet! After giving feedback, we also had the chance to interact with the professionals who came along for the talk; it was a whole new experience being able to interact on a one on basis with them.

Two things I took away from this day were:

One: The industry has to change and it starts with me (or should I say us!).
Two: One has to change the industry from both the bottom up and the top down.

Thursday 8 July (Thandi)

Today we had a meeting with the McNair’s Scholars from America at the University where we all just graduated (UEL). The McNair programme is somewhat similar to the internship we are on, but instead of focusing on entering the field of PR, their scheme is targeted at bringing those on it closer towards their goal of obtaining a PhD.

The morning commute took me on a trip down memory lane, back to my days at university… although I was still on campus and in class just two months ago, it already seems like ages since I was a student! I realised how much this internship has forced me to grow up, and to do so as quickly as possible.

Upon arriving at the Docklands campus we headed up to the meeting room in the Knowledge Dock building and were greeted by the current McNair’s scholars, who are in the UK doing research on diversity within Britain’s different universities. It was quite convenient for us to go back to UEL to speak to them; hopefully we gave them some insight into how the University works, as well as the way in which Brunswick and Taylor Bennett are tackling the issues of diversity within the field of PR. We also left with a better understanding of what it is that they do on the McNair’s programme and why they wanted to be on it. I feel that I walked out of the meeting with a better understanding of how the issues of diversity manifest themselves throughout the world.

The lesson learned is that a lack of diversity in the workplace occurs throughout the world; people from every walk of life have experienced degrees of limitation where they have felt marginalised or incapable of achieving success in their career. Although I find it upsetting whilst looking at the statistics that support the lack of diversity within in PR, I have also realised that it is a much bigger issue that has affected almost everyone at one point in their life, no matter where they grew up, whether they were rich or poor, or went to the best or the worst schools. After our talk with the scholars I realised the importance of having employers adopt a culture of acceptance no matter what demographic one falls into. I am now even more passionate about tackling the issue of diversity, not only referring to the limits set to those who come from ethnically diverse backgrounds, but also for those who are from less privileged backgrounds in every field; if you give people a chance, they might surprise you.

After our meeting with the McNair’s Scholars, the six of us headed down to the university’s cafeteria for lunch – which triggered another wave of nostalgia – and then hopped on the DLR and headed to Taylor Bennett.

At Taylor Bennett we met Chantal, who taught us about interview and workplace etiquette. The session was really useful because I got the chance to ask all of the small questions that had been on my mind, such as what to wear to an interview and what questions to ask the interviewer. Although I made reference to my questions being ‘small’, by the end of the session I realised how important these ‘small’ things are. Chantal offered us tips on how to do well in an interview, teaching us everything from how to give a proper handshake to how to make a good impression whilst meeting the interviewer.

Chantal has a lot of experience of interviewing applicants for various roles and her insights really made me understand what it is like to be in the interviewers’ shoes. I can see how important it is to be polite yet personable with the interviewer, and also realise the importance in finding the right balance between exhibiting enthusiasm and excitement for the role one is up for, and showing a serious side that the employer can appreciate. I am sure that I can speak for all of us by saying that we ended the session much more prepared for the job interview process which we are currently embarking on.

Friday 9 July am (Nahidur)

Presentation day! We had a week jam-packed outings and hardly any free time to work on our presentations, so we were all rather under prepared and ever so nervous. This week’s task was to research and present our findings on media companies: Thandi and I worked on BKYB, Keosha and Akila worked on Pearson Group and Ataur and Brenda worked on ITV ( though in the event, Ataur was slightly unlucky this week as Brenda had an interview, so he had to go it alone). In the morning we had 2 hours free time to do some last minute preparations.

Faith from Taylor Bennett came along with Sonal to watch our presentations, as did Sarah, who is there every week. We then had a surprise visit from two of last year’s interns, Claude and Jennard; the new audience members didn’t help calm our nerves at all!

Keosha and Akila presented first and provided us with an insight into Pearson group and its subsidiaries. The also gave us an overview of their companies’ finances and their PR activities. After that came Thandi and I: We weren’t fully prepared, and the thought of having people in the room that weren’t regulars didn’t help but our presentation went well and we had the same outline as the first pair; the only issue we had with ours was the visuals, they were absolutely poor.

Ataur presented last, all alone. However Akila did act as his lovely assistant and hold his slides up for him. In comparison to the rest of us, Ataur held it together and gave a brilliant performance.

As a whole our presentations this week had much room for improvement and we all felt disappointed in how we performed. We have promised ourselves that we would improve for next week and present to the best of our abilities. No excuses!

Friday 9 July pm (Ataur)

After a quick lunch, we rushed to Brunswick. There were only five of us this week as Brenda was having an interview to study for her PhD.

We were due to have sessions with three different people this week; Sheila Robinson, who we met in the first week, Borbala Nagy, who we are told can speak several languages, and Claude Peters, one of the interns from last year.

It was great to see Sheila again, and it was hard to believe that five weeks had gone by so fast. When we first met her, she gave us some questions that she wanted us to think about, and we reflected on our progress so far. We spoke about what has surprised us the most, how our understanding of financial PR and corporate communications has changed, and what sessions we enjoyed the most. It was really interesting to hear Sheila’s views on what we said, and she summarised by telling us the key points that she understood from our discussion.

I was looking forward to Borbala’s session; unfortunately, Borbala was unable to do a session with us, so our buddies joined us instead. It was nice to see them all again (and I’m sure that seeing us was a welcome break for them as well!) We had a good discussion with each other’s buddies, and Nahidur, Akila and I challenged our buddies to a game of football.

Our final session was with Claude, who works at Cantos. We watched some interviews that several CEOs conducted, and observed their different styles and how it changes according to the audience they are trying to speak to. Jenard, another former intern was also present, so he was able to explain the background issues from a PR perspective, while Claude spoke from a media perspective.