Coach: Week Three - Back on Track

This week has been all about recovering from the blur of New York Fashion Week. The cupboard looked atrocious, if only I'd had a 'before' photo to compare it to its current state as pictured above! This has been a lot to do with the fact that the Coach UK Showroom, which is housed just next door to the head offices, is currently out of bounds while another department make use of it. Since the showroom is usually home to half of the inventory of clothing samples, we've had to make room to keep them in the cupboard instead. 

In terms of coverage, there's still a lot to be had as weekly magazines are keeping up the momentum of articles and show reviews by playing catch-up on the week's events. This means that mine and the other PR intern's workloads are still huge and we still have an awful lot of newspapers and magazines to scan through each day, but even more in online articles to keep a record of. A daily coverage report has still needed to be completed everyday this week which is a huge time drainer, as it basically means repeated one task that's usually completed progressively over the course of the week every. single. day. It will be a huge relief when we (hopefully) get some respite from the frenzy of fashion week.

I undertook a huge task this week in the form of the weekly report, which actually consisted of two weeks worth of non-NYFW related content as we fell behind and simply couldn't make time to complete a single week's report last week. In total, the report consisted of 220 slides of Coach coverage from all international platforms. It was my responsibility to arrange the UK & Ireland coverage and then liaise with interns from the international teams to consolidate their reports into one large report, ultimately for submission to high management. I was so proud of myself for completing this under such an immense amount of pressure and feel that it has definitely been my biggest achievement in the first three weeks here. FINALLY, I'm starting to feel like things are getting back on track.

Look Magazine: #NiveaOneToWatch Internship Competition

While interning at Look last month I found out about a competition that the magazine had been running since the beginning of the year in conjunction with Nivea and The Voice, which involved a prize consisting of a two month paid internship as a Beauty Writer Intern, a £1000 shopping spree, £2500 in prize money and paid accommodation for the duration of the placement. Obviously I applied - not just because of the impressive and seriously life-changing amount of prize money to be had - but because I loved my time at Look Magazine so much and have really cemented my decision to pursue a career in fashion journalism, starting (hopefully) with my next internship after Coach. 

I was initially invited for a face-to-face interview one day last week but was unable to make it due to the demands of New York Fashion Week, since I have barely had time to eat my lunch this week - let alone take 2 hours out of the working day to commute 45 minutes across London to Canary Wharf, complete a lengthy interview and commute 45 minutes back to the Coach office at Oxford Circus. So frustratingly, I had to reschedule. This involved a lot of waiting on 'tenterhooks' as the Look/Nivea teams had initially only scheduled to carry out the interviews face-to-face on that one specific day. Therefore, it meant a lot to me that they were able to accommodate a phone interview the next day and it kept me feeling positive that my difficulty in meeting at their initially proposed time hadn't completely diminished my chances of being considered for the placement. I left for lunch early on the hunt of a quiet location to take my phone interview, selecting The Royal Institution of Great Britain Museum as the best possible choice since I assumed it would be very empty on a Thursday lunchtime! Thankfully I was right, so I rather awkwardly carried out the half-hour interview in an empty stairwell under the watchful eye of the museum staff before awkwardly making a swift exit! The interview, carried out by a member of the Beauty team at Look - as well as the Project Manager of the competition and an independent adjudicator in the form of a beauty blogger - definitely went well. I made some really confident and well thought out answers which definitely is no easy task during a phone interview and the interviewers kept letting me know that they agreed with my points which was reassuring! 

I was nervously awaiting my fate when I found out on that same afternoon that I had been invited to the next stage of the interview! I actually wasn't aware that there would be another interview stage (definitely my fault for not asking) so this was a bit of a shock. I had been feeling scared about having to confess to Grace at Coach that I was being considered for another internship, despite having only been at Coach for a week and a half. The next stage of the interview would unavoidably have to be done face-to-face so I bit the bullet and explained to Grace that one day next week I would be going for another interview for a placement 'after this one' but that of course, I would make the time up that I missed. The interview involved bringing some pre-prepared tasks with me in the form of Instagram stories featuring Nivea beauty products and a feature of approximately 300 words to write about any products I liked. I decided that since I had found out during my phone interview that the internship role would actually overlap with beauty and fashion writing, I would write a fashion feature for my submission to show my strengths in both sectors. I also wanted to demonstrate my graphic design skills as I think that this is something that could set me apart from the rest, as well as my knowledge and interest of bloggers as this is something I was asked during my phone interview. I'll be printing out several copies of my feature for each of the interviewers to keep, hopefully leaving a positive impression!


Edit: I left the interview beaming from ear-to-ear about how well it had all gone! It was an extremely daunting interview process which consisted of me sat at a table surrounded by 5 interviewers. Conversation flowed well and was extremely engaging; I had plenty to say with each question asked and gave honest and passionate answers in response. They were all very impressed with the extra effort that I had taken to arrange my writing piece into a LOOK feature article layout and I was secretly very happy that I had printed off extra copies - there were a lot more people conducting the interview than I had expected! Sadly, I didn't get the internship. The whole application process was the best I have experienced so far; I felt like I had been genuinely considered with care and time invested into my candidacy. I received helpful feedback and plenty of words of encouragement and praise, plus a hamper of beauty goodies which is always a bonus! After enquiring, I found out that the competition had received over 600 entrants. Despite not being successful at the final hurdle, the whole experience has definitely increased my confidence to continue pursuing big career-related challenges even if the odds are stacked against me.

Coach: Week Two - New York Fashion Week

I've seriously been thrown straight into the deep end during my second week at Coach, which has coincided with New York Fashion Week where the brand has showcased their Coach 1941 Fall/Winter 2018 collection.

On Tuesday, while still feeling pretty lost about the new tasks I was still adjusting to, myself and the other intern were briefed on our New York Fashion Week tasks for completion on Wednesday and the next four working days thereafter. The main difference in our tasks for this particular week in comparison to the rest of our time at Coach is the responsibility of collecting a much more significant amount of coverage. Each day for the next week, we will be collating a report of the brand's print, online and social media coverage while will be double-checked for any amendments by Grace, the PR Officer, before being shared with the brand's international teams in New York and Europe.

Each day we will alternate the collection of newspapers and magazines to scan for coverage, however we will be collecting every single daily issue of each publication rather than spreading them out over the course of the week which will drastically increase our workload. In addition to print press, it will be our shared responsibility amongst the rest of the PR team to search routinely for coverage online and on social media. We've been given a list of journalists, photographers, bloggers and VIPs to monitor their social media posts at regular intervals. Coverage is to be labelled accurately in order to make the process run as smoothly as possible, so each piece of publicity will be categorised as Dedicated Show Review, Show Coverage with Runway Image, Show Mention, and so on. 

Wednesday was a very busy day and I was exhausted by the end of it. We were asked to arrive at the office for 7.30am and were warned that we most likely wouldn't get time to have lunch. This is something that I felt quite bitter about to be honest, since I'm not getting paid to intern here so I don't necessarily owe the company additional hours of work. Nevertheless, I need to show how dedicated I am to the role so I powered through despite feeling like a walking zombie by the end of the day! Because Coach show their collection at New York Fashion Week, we had to essentially work to the New York time zone in order to meet deadlines for the day. By 12pm GMT, we needed to have searched for, saved, recorded and arranged all of the coverage received to be sent off the the New York team and then the process was repeated in time for the next deadline at 4pm GMT. It was quite stressful and time just seemed to fly by which was very worrying but Grace praised me and the other intern for our hard work, saying that this was possibly the smoothest that this day has ever gone! 

On Thursday, our day was taken up largely by preparing and packing up samples to send to Coach's VIP press list, made up of journalists and celebs like Nick Grimshaw, Harry Styles and Dua Lipa. Don't get me wrong, the act of wrapping gifts is very therapeutic and quite relaxing compared to the pressures of the rest of my role - but it is somewhat degrading to know that the limits of my responsibility here at Coach involve wrapping presents and sealing envelopes. Frustratingly, because of the sheer scale of this task, we fell behind with our preparations for Thursday's daily NYFW coverage report. This meant that I had to stay late to complete the task in order to meet the deadline and yet another late night getting home. One day Fashion Month might be a bit more glamorous for me, but currently it's just exhausting! 

Friday was a catch-up day where, in addition to the day's NYFW coverage report (which by this point was much smaller and more manageable) we focussed on getting back on track with returns and send outs, something which had to be neglected due to our demanding workload this week. The fashion cupboard is A MESS but the chaos doesn't really affect me, having already experienced the seriously dysfunctional carnage in the Fabulous magazine fashion cupboard last year! I hope that next week we'll be able to properly organise the cupboard by matching the shoes that are currently strewn all over the floor into their allocated shoe box and arrange the clothing samples into their categorised runway looks.

Look Magazine: Look Fashion Pages

Coach: Week One - A Lot to Learn

Halfway through completing an assignment last year about the use of PR by a brand of my choice, I literally said the words "I hate PR" and meant them. Admittedly, my understanding of PR at the time was a lot more vague than it is now as I struggled to come to terms with the concept of it. Since then, my exposure to PR has been much more positive as I have interned at Fabulous and Look magazines and truthfully really enjoyed working in both positions. While these roles were basic with often mundane and administrative tasks, emailing PRs back and forth all day became a familiar task that I took a lot of pleasure in doing. I think my work ethic and organised nature compliment a role in PR quite well, so I was curious to see what interning in an actual PR role for an in-house company would be like as at this stage in my placement year, I would really like to narrow down my career ambitions to find the perfect path for me and by doing that, I feel that I need to get exposure in plenty of different areas.

My first week at Coach was extremely overwhelming. Although I've had plenty of experience with checking samples in and out as well as using couriers to arrange for collections and deliveries, I've never used Fashion GPS before. Knowledge of Fashion GPS seems to be a very desirable trait so I've been looking forward to getting to grips with it, but it certainly seems like I have a lot to learn in a very short time. At Fabulous and Look, the process of checking samples in and out was very relaxed and didn't take very much time at all - whereas, at Coach, the process is much more laborious and requires a much closer attention to detail which will take some adjusting to.

Collecting coverage is also a new task which I have never completed before. It requires myself and the other intern alternating the task of collecting magazines and newspapers each morning before sharing the role of scanning for any coverage of the Coach brand within them. I'm quite a perfectionist and have a good level of attention to detail so I think that the task of scanning for coverage will begin to come naturally to me. I really enjoy getting to read magazines and newspapers everyday as I feel that they will make up a component of my future career path; it's definitely become clear to me in the past week that my career will need to be media-facing with a lot of interaction between myself and journalists, stylists and PRs - in what capacity though, I am still unsure! 

While I'm so excited about representing a designer brand that I love, and getting an impressive name on my CV, I do have some concerns about the level of variety and responsibility that I'll be getting during this placement. I had so much responsibility at Forever Unique but didn't enjoy the largely graphic design based role - while this placement as PR Intern certainly seems like it's going to be a busy one, I'm worried that I'll start to feel despondent about being treated 'just like an intern' in a room which offers little room for creativity or independent thinking. Nevertheless, I'm interested to see how my feelings change and develop and I'm looking forward to building on the skills I've already started to gain this week. PR seems to be a very rewarding role, and since I work well under pressure, I hope I'll find that its a great match for me!