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“You must not be afraid to talk with new faces,” as our alumnus unfolded her views, her friendly smiled made perfect coherence with her words. We can relax and form a picture of a PR specialist.
Work as a PR specialist
Carrie Lam, a PRA graduate from 2004, is now working as an Account Executive in Brand Practice, Ketchum Newscan Public Relations Limited. Her main duty is to establish and maintain media relations for clients. She ensures that the media go smooth with the client and report positively about the client. Carrie got her first job as a Media Buyer in OMD. When making a comparison between these two jobs, she brought up an interesting fact. “In every single PR project, there are always various unpredictable, yet inevitable obstacles to stop you implement your plan. As a PR staff, one must find out a perfect solution that best suit the situation of the ongoing activity. It seems harsh, but when you solve the problem smoothly at the end, you will gain great sense of satisfaction. I don’t get this feeling when I worked as a Media Buyer.”
When being asked whether she met any challenging clients, Carrie got amused. “Actually, vast majority of our clients are challenging. Whenever a client calls for a PR events, they do have certain expectation. After an event, they will check the quantity and quality of the PR coverage. Sometimes they will find the coverage to be lower than expected, and they do complain. At that time we will try to figure out if it is really our fault, or it is out of some uncontrollable circumstances. We should try to explain to the client accordingly.”
Roller in the rain
In clarification, Carrie recalled the first event she had participated after getting the PR job. “It is the opening of a restaurant. To establish a young and trendy image of the shop, we hired several inline-skaters to distribute balloons and coupons. In the original plan, the skaters would play tricks in the public areas. However, to everyone’s surprise, it rained suddenly. At the end, we decided to cancel the tricks session. Despite the defect, the event received good publicity. After all the full-geared inline-skaters did draw attention from the street without playing tricks.”
Life as a PR
Carrie commented her job life as both interesting and boring, both heartening and depressing. “It is interesting when you confront and beat challenges one after the other. Yet, it is boring when you have to do tedious reports. It makes you happy when everything is under control and client’s coverage is good as well as positive. But it is depressing when there are tones of works but you just have 24 hours a day.”
What makes a good PR professional
“First of all, you must not be afraid to talk with new-faces. This job requires you to communicate with people from all walks of life. You use two different communication skills to talk to higher staff and to talk stage workers.” Carrie went on, with her friendly smile, to the next point, “good interpersonal relationship is another essential criteria. This industry is quite narrow. You may find difficulties in preparing and conducting PR projects if you don’t have a good interpersonal network.” Having known that communication skills and interpersonal network are particularly important, we expressed our doubt. ”Does work as PR staffs count less on creativity?” Carrie shook her head. “Not really. Marketing situation nowadays becomes more and more challenging. There are so many brands for the same product. You must think of a way to help your client’s product stand out from the crowd. You must find out what is so special about the product and show it in the PR events in order to draw attention.”
Advice to PRA students
“Get some internship experiences in PR / Ad agencies during your U-Life if you are really interested in the industry. Even you are just assigned to do some routine jobs only, you can learn by observation. You can also get a feel of how the industry is like. Also, seize your chance to join a student exchange program. It is really worth. And it helps you to create a sweet memory during you U-Life.”
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