Be a PR volunteer!

In my years at university I had the chance to learn about PR. From media relations to PR strategy and planning campaigns I even dipped my toe into advertising and publishing in my first year, but the most experience I’ve gotten was in “the real life”.

Now, my PR work placement was great, but I didn’t just rely on that. It was only a few weeks and I didn’t get the chance to go through everything. Being at university should be about gaining experience and learning about one’s chosen course from as many perspectives as possible so I tried more things.

If I were to give an advice to a PR fresher it would be “Go for as many internships, freelancing opportunities and work placements as possible.”. Especially if you could go out of your comfort zone. You could discover you may like corporate communications after a few weeks in house when you never even thought it possible. And if you don’t it’s better you found out while you’re still at uni.

I have done “a few gigs on the side”, not just in PR but advertising and marketing too, but looking back I wish I had done even more. Some of them I did as a volunteer and it was great – I learned so much and gained experience working towards an objective I believed in.

I believe it’s much more likely that you will come up with a great idea working on something you love. So, try and get involved with an idea you believe in and who knows? It could be your ticket into “big league” PR. You can’t lose with volunteering or freelancing. Not only will it improve your skills but it also looks great on your CV and it gives you something to talk about in your next interview.

ROManian PR. In English.

However creative your adverts are sometimes they’re just not enough. Everyone may remember the jokes and their punch lines, but are they buying your product? Sometimes innovative and fun just doesn’t cut it. That’s where PR comes in. You want to show your product around, you have advertising, but if you want to change people’s attitudes and behaviours you have to go with PR.

This is what a Romanian brand did. They manage to create a debate out of nothing and outlined a bigger problem. For some time now, most young people are leaving the country for better opportunities, hoping for the “American dream” so to say. They decided to address the issue in an original way, by linking it with their chocolate brand, which until then had been advertised as being Romanian to the core.

Here is a video on the campaign. It’s in English, so no worries.

They had a huge response, even my friends sent me the adverts as they were being launched and there was talk about this move of Americanising our Romanian chocolate everywhere. They got people talking about them, and genuinely creating a demand for their Romanian-flagged product again.

Personally, I love this campaign. I like how it attacked the problem head on while still maintaining a fun aspect to it and the ability to go viral.

From what I gathered working there, the Romanian PR industry, even though still developing, is on the right track. Brands are starting to realise more and more there is a need for PR professionals rather than just advertisers and they’re finding that they can get creative with their tactics.

I actually got the chance to work in the PR department of a Romanian publishing house, Polirom having as my mentor a very bright and creative PR professional. She won a PR award for excellence with her creative 2009 campaign “Ask me about Firmin” and I learnt a lot from her.

I believe that it’s a good moment for our PR industry and it’s this creativity that will make an impact on an international plan. But then again I could just be biased because of my nationality so what do you think about ROM’s campaign? Do you like it as much as I do or do you believe it was just a bad PR stunt?

Behind the Spin

I wanted to let you know I contributed to Behind the Spin, an online magazine for young PR students and professionals. I wrote an article about Tumblr. If you want to have a read, you can find it here.

The ethical battlefield

Today in our ethics unit we had our first example of a facilitated discussion, which is something me and my group will be doing in a few weeks time too. The whole idea is to get a topic and, without imposing any views, discussion has to be encouraged by presenting arguments from both sides of the coin. I found this highly interesting especially since I am a huge fan of impromptu brainstorming sessions.

What we talked about today was food labelling and the two ideas we were presented with at the beginning were: would it be enough if people would be getting the information to make a choice or should the food manufacturers have control over the choices and be forced to make their food more healthy or remove it from the market?

The class was got divided into two sections; there were the observers as well as the “fish bowl”, where the idea was actually debated. A chair was left open in case one of the observers decides to express a different opinion or pop in with an idea. Our lecturer then got the ball rolling by asking people to vote for their preferred option which she followed by showing the “fish” some milk labels and started the dialogue from there. Although quite shy at the beginning, the exchange of ideas and opinions later got heated up when from milk and cereals the debaters got into the problem of fizzy drinks. By the end the discussion almost took a turn into the field of freedoms and censorship and what’s most important in the conclusion is that the vote had changed. Which showed that when presented with strong enough evidence people will change their beliefs.

I found this to be a good way of exploring the opinions and ethical values of others as well as facing mine and I believe that in such a random and spontaneous discussion you can actually see other options and beliefs you probably haven’t even though of. Seeing as our ethical values are imprinted within each of us in such a subliminal ways, this is a fair enough method to realize what one stands for and evaluate what lead to those ideas.

A facilitated discussion makes one reflect on things but in a quite quick and easy way. Don’t know if other people did psychological or any other sort of testing when they were younger but I distinctly remember the tutors usually telling us to put down the first answer that comes to mind. I feel this has real value here because when you think about an issue the first response or idea that comes to mind then must be based on previous experience, ethical beliefs and just our way of looking at things. Our internal “organizational culture”.

I believe this lead to us seeing things in a different light, from different perspectives, like a PR professional should when communicating with different stakeholder groups.