Working in Public Relations | All About PR

Hi, I'm Kay Choi. Welcome to my channel. Last month, I started a new job as a consultant at a change management consultancy, but I actually don't have experience in the specific line of consulting that I'm doing now. All of my previous work experience was in public relations or PR. I had one specific comment of somebody asking me to share about this and talk about what PR is because they were interested in it. So I hope this is helpful to you and I hope this is helpful for anyone else who is just curious about the industry or maybe just wants to know what kind of jobs are out there because they just, there's so many. We'll have a few sections in this video. So first I will talk about what PR is. Then I will talk about my experience in PR and with that go into potential responsibilities you might have in a job in PR. I'll then talk about some of the things that I liked and some of the things that I didn't like about PR and then end it with some things that you should maybe think about if you are considering going into PR. So what is PR? On Wikipedia it says it's the practice of managing the spread of information between an individual or an organization and the public. I'm going to define it by explaining what PR is not. One thing that PR is often compared to or grouped with is advertising and advertising is something that is pretty simple to understand. You pay an amount of money to get a placement in a form of media on a platform. So whether that is a magazine or newspaper which are traditional forms of media or something digital like a website or an Instagram ad. You pay a certain amount of money and then you get your ad with a certain amount of space for a certain amount of time. This is why advertising is a form of paid media because you are paying to get that media exposure. PR on the other hand is earned media. If you take a magazine for example you will have some pages that are advertisements. So brands have paid money to get their image in the magazine but then you will have some articles maybe the cover story with the actor who is on the front cover of the magazine. That was probably placed there through the communication between the actor's publicist who is working on the PR side with the magazine who is the media side. Generally in PR you don't pay anything to get these placements. It's more about the relationship between the publicist and the journalist or whoever is the writer or creator on the platform. So that's the main difference between advertising and PR. It's that payment piece. But as media has been developing and like on YouTube people have sponsored content that also kind of falls into PR. So you do get these payments now that are happening but in general that is not what traditional PR is but it's just been morphing over time. And going along with the sponsored content thing on YouTube there's also non-sponsored content but that YouTuber or blogger has been sent some free products. So technically there's no payment but they received something for free. So as you can see, it's kind of gray but you can understand why the relationship between that brand or that publicist and the journalist or the blogger is really important to create genuine content that is helpful on both sides and for the public. Moving on to my experience in PR. So I majored in English literature during my undergrad education. And then I didn't really know what I wanted to go into but I decided to go into PR because I didn't wanna go to law school. I didn't wanna teach. I didn't wanna study more English. And that's like, those are like the typical things that an English major does. But I knew that public relations involved writing of some sort. And that is what I liked to do. Right out of college, I interned at a fashion PR agency. It was really small. So I had a lot of different responsibilities because we all had to carry a lot of weight. Two of the main responsibilities I had were writing press releases and creating media lists. So a press release is a blast essentially that you would send to journalists to whom it's relevant or you can use like a distribution service as well. And they have a whole database of journalists that are subscribed to it. It's basically like an announcement and it reads somewhat like an article but it's more for journalists to take and have information about something. And then they could either use that press release to fashion an article out of, or they can see the contact information that's placed on the press release and reach out to the publicist or relevant PR representative. As an intern, I would write a lot of those press releases. So making announcements about a client having a new spring summer line coming out or opening a new store in so-and-so city. The other thing is making media lists. And that is like the contact list that an agency or a publicist might have. And we had media lists that were divided across all different kinds of subjects. So by region, so these are LA editors, these are New York editors, these are Chicago editors, or there were ones about people who write about fitness clothing specifically or write about beauty products specifically. And these media lists become very important because they have to be kept up to date and then they have to be accurate in terms of what that journalist or blogger actually covers. Because one thing that media and journalists hate is getting emails or getting information about stuff that is not relevant to what they actually write about. So in making these media lists, a lot of research goes into them because you have to see what kind of previous writing the journalist has done, in addition to keeping their actual contact information updated. Those are like the bare bones of PR, having media contacts and then having newsworthy things to tell them. After I worked at the fashion PR agency and kind of got a wide view of PR because I was in a small company, I then went to a larger agency and I worked with a video game client there. So I had to switch from fashion to video games, but all of the concepts were still the same. However, at my second internship, I had a lot more vendor relationship responsibilities and event research and planning responsibilities because sometimes we would plan these events for our clients whether it was a launch party or like a breakfast with mommy bloggers, all different kinds of things that could happen. So I had to do stuff like researching venues and talking to those salespeople and catering representatives about that, getting information, doing trends and market research that would be passed along to the client, as well as doing media polls. So that is compiling all of the media hits, whether it's online or print or broadcast, putting them into one document and seeing what kind of results you have had for a certain product or announcement. For example, if a video game had launched, then on that day, I would probably do a media poll to see who all is writing about it, what they have said and about how many people might have seen these articles based on the traffic on those websites. After that internship, I worked for about a year and a half at a mobile game company and the shift there was going from an agency to in-house. If you're working at a PR agency, that means that that company, what they do is PR and everyone's role has to do with that. Going in-house, it means within a company itself, I was in the PR department. There are pros and cons to working in-house. Some of the pros are that you get a lot more freedom because you are kind of calling the shots from within rather than working for a client. One of the cons is depending on the size of the PR department, there is far less structure than an agency because at an agency, you have all of the structure built out to do and execute PR but when you're in just the PR department in a larger company, you don't have as many resources. Going in-house to that mobile game company was an interesting experience for me because I was essentially a one-person PR department. So I kind of took stuff that I learned from the fashion PR agency in terms of just the base of doing PR and then taking some of the processes and structure that I learned from the second PR agency because that was a bigger agency and trying to build those in to the processes at my new job. Something I got to do in that job that I didn't get to do before as an intern was have much more contact with media because I was the one representative. So I would be the one to reach out to mobile game, video game reviewers and journalists and I would be the one to meet with them. Because of that, I got to go to trade shows and conventions where these journalists often come. So it's a great time to go there and get meetings scheduled to make it convenient and be able to meet with a lot of people at the same time. After a year and a half at that job, I then went back to the agency I had just come from where I worked for the video game client and I had much more of a project management role at this time. So rather than having a lot of media outreach and media contact, I helped more with just managing a project from start to finish and making sure everything gets done. I also had a little bit more of an analytics type role, which was basically just the doing the media polls again, but helping out with the analysis of those numbers and things like that. I was in that job for about a year and then I went to London for grad school for a year to get my master's in management. I'm gonna talk now about what I liked and what I didn't like about PR and that will help explain why I went to go get my master's in management. So the things that I liked were the writing and communication aspects of it because I love to write and I did get a lot of those opportunities in PR. I also loved the meeting new people and going to those trade shows and conventions. I found it really, really fun. And it was always cool to see products before they are released and especially video games. Some of the things I didn't like, I don't like the schmoozing you kind of have to do as someone in PR, especially if you have that journalist contact because you really wanna get on their good side so that they will write about your client and your products that you're trying to get placements for. But the main thing I didn't like about PR is that essentially you are given this product that is fully made and fully developed and then you gotta find a way to sell it. Not literally sell it, but sell it to the public or sell it to media. And the thing is, if that product is just not actually that good, there's not so much that you can do as a publicist. You can spin it only so much. I realized that I wanted to have a bigger role and a bigger say in the strategy of something before it is finalized and rolled out. This isn't to say that I wanted to go into product development or anything, but it's just that I wanted to be more in the beginning strategic development side of things. I realized this about six months into my job at the mobile game company. And that is when I started doing research on grad schools and things like that and just other job options. And I realized or decided that I wanted to go into management consulting. Consulting in general is about solving problems and that just seemed much more interesting to me. I saw it as being able to have more control and more say in a consulting role versus in a PR role. So after about a year back at that PR agency, I went to London, got my master's in management. It wasn't something that was necessary for me to get a role in management consulting, but it was something that when I combined it with my PR experience and project management experience and things like that, it really helped transfer all of my skills and create this picture and this story of why I could be a good consultant. That's just my story and one person's view on PR and what worked and what didn't work for me. In terms of whether you should go into PR, I would think about whether you like writing or you want to improve your writing maybe. Do you like talking to new people or are you comfortable just cold calling or cold emailing people? Maybe there's a certain market or industry that you want to get into. For example, I worked in fashion and in video games and you could get into PR for like almost any industry out there. Overall, if you like to communicate and find ways to say things in a clear and engaging way, whether it's about a product or a service or whatever, then maybe consider going into PR. Again, if you go into a PR agency, there's generally more structure and more resources and because there's more resources, there's probably more opportunities as an intern if you're just starting out. And going in-house, you generally need more experience because they have fewer resources, but once you're there, you usually have a lot more freedom. In terms of education, there are people who major in PR or communications. As I said, I majored in English, which has a connection in terms of writing, but I know people who've studied all different kinds of things and got into PR. It's more about the experience that you get, whether it's during college as an intern in the summer or during the school year or right after college like I did. Also, as I mentioned a bit earlier in the video, the PR industry is changing a lot, especially in terms of social media and influencers. So there's now work in PR that is just specifically towards influencers versus working with traditional media. So there are lots of different things that you might be doing in PR. So I hope that this video just gave you a quick picture of some of that. I really, really hope that this is helpful for you. I think even if you aren't even thinking about going into PR, hearing about other jobs and other industries is always helpful to help you narrow down, especially if you are just starting out on your career path. I know that it can be really hard to not know what you wanna do. So just getting information from different places, it helps you piece together what is out there. I hope to do a video in the future, more about consulting and what that's all about. But of course I just started, so I need a bit more time to do that. But in the meantime, I hope that this was helpful. Please let me know if you have any other questions about public relations or about being an English major maybe and I will do my best to answer everything in the comments below. With that, thank you for watching and I will see you in the next video. Bye.