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!
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