Ever wonder what life is like working as a PR? Here is your chance to find out. This week Senior Account Executive Jo takes you through a typical day in PR.
Mornings…
I’m a night owl. Early mornings aren’t natural for me so I’m on my first coffee by 7.20am when I head for the station (and I do my mascara on the train to steal an extra five minutes in bed). My journey into to the city takes around 45 minutes, so I take this time to catch up on emails, check coverage for my clients and start getting my to-do list for the day ready.
My client portfolio is quite varied but I work heavily on festivals and with our music based clients at Carousel. My background is in music and it’s my passion. I will check through music news to see if any of our clients or affiliated artists are being mentioned in the news and if there are any stories we can react to or news we need to make out clients aware of. I also use the train journey to curate my Spotify playlists, it’s much easier to be productive with the right soundtrack.
Once I arrive in the office I’ll eat my breakfast whilst reading one of the day’s papers. Again, I’ll check for any news stories that might be relevant to any of clients.
Mornings go super quickly, I always work from a to-do list but priorities often change throughout the day. Working in PR means you’ve got a be flexible and a good multi-tasker, no day is ever boring!
Festivals are always announcing news, so many mornings are spent selling in stories to media and organising features and interviews.
We’re based in the Northern Quarter in Manchester and the lunch options are endless. I try to keep it healthy at the start of the week but we’re all notorious for a Friday treat, Northern Soul mac’n’cheese is my favorite local delight.
Afternoons…
We’re five festivals down with two still to go, so this is a really busy time of year for us. There’s lots to do prior to a festival so many afternoons are spent getting things ready for the event.
One of my non-music/festival accounts is The Bentall Centre. One of my main responsibilities is to liaise with bloggers, influencers and press to organise visits to the centre for various campaigns. There is an amazing Garden instillation in The Bentall Centre at the moment, with an even more impressive schedule of events. I’m currently working on getting bloggers and press to The Garden to experience some of the exciting activities.
I usually leave the office between 6pm and 6:30pm (We do have our very own bar in the office that open at 6pm, so if your ever need to put in a late shift it has its perks!).
On the train home I will often catch up on small tasks I have outstanding from the day and start to que jobs for tomorrow’s to-do list.
Best piece of advice…
Be nice to everyone. Whether it’s the fresh-out-of-uni assistant you meet on a media visit, the intern at your offices or the person answering the phone on a newsdesk. PR is a people industry and you never know where someone is heading or when your paths will cross again, it’ll serve you well to make friends everywhere you go.
