Today we have a guest blogger: Jacob Cherry, a student from Durham University, who has spent the last week at Orchard HQ on a work experience placement – we asked him to blog about his first experiences of life in PR…
My week at Orchard PR surprised me. I was expecting five days in an office, sat at a desk, staring at a computer screen. In fact, I spent comparatively little time at my desk because of the very hands-on approach to PR adopted by Orchard’s staff; they are constantly liaising with the media and orchestrating effective public relations opportunities for their clients. I have gotten through a record amount of petrol this week!
Even when conducting research for campaigns they go well beyond what I had expected. I was asked to research significant events for a campaign to promote a business that was founded in the seventies. This involved trawling through newspapers at the Priaulx Library, which actually proved to be very interesting – there were an incredible amount of natural disasters on the island and shocking gun-crime involving the farmers from the western parishes and their unlicensed shotguns.
I was kept busy at Orchard with tasks ranging from folding towels to meeting the Lieutenant Governor and my experiences have given me a much greater appreciation of what the PR industry is all about.
With such a varied portfolio of clients much is expected of the staff at Orchard. This allowed me to observe the application of PR to a number of industries and not just the finance sector and really see the way different approaches are taken to each bit of PR activity. A one-size fits all approach is definitely not the way things are done at Orchard.
About halfway through my week I was pointed in the direction of Harry’s blog, written following her own internship with Orchard, as an example of the sort of thing that was expected of me. In it Harry (now a permanent employee) claimed to have learned a valuable lesson about the importance of flat shoes for Orchard media calls held on the beach. I began to understand what she meant as we both toured Guernsey Electricity during a media call. We scaled generators and machinery in various precarious locations, and needed to suit up in the hi-vis gear needed in a dangerous environment. Needless to say Harry had not heeded her own advice and was still wearing high heels, but it was good to see early on that PR would not just be about being in an office.
I have enjoyed my week at Orchard and have learned a great deal. I have seen behind the scenes at television interviews and attended meetings with BBC Radio. I have done some media monitoring, drafted a couple of news releases and helped out in brainstorming sessions for pitches and planning.
I will take away with me a sense of the importance of PR to all organisations and I feel that it is definitely something that I would like to gain more experience in. I will be looking out for more opportunities to work in this field as I work to complete my degree.
Posted by Jacob.
