Bill Gates once said “if I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on public relations”. Such a statement, particularly from an entrepreneur so renowned in the business arena, is no doubt a sparkling endorsement for the industry. Regardless, it is only after two internships with Verve Communications in 2009 and the Sydney Kings in 2010 that I feel I have gathered the understanding and experience to realise how poignant such a declaration is – arguably even more so in a fledgling economic climate.
In the following report, while focusing primarily on The Sydney Kings resurrection, I will draw on the knowledge gained and lessons learned in the first few weeks of my internship in 2010. In doing so, I will consider how both theoretical and practical elements of the BA Communications (Public Relations) degree have impacted upon and assisted me during my experience at the Kings. It is these original understandings that have enabled me to be a part of the successful PR team, and hence understand the true value of public relations.
Be thrown in at the deep end and you will learn to swim.
When considering my first few weeks at Sydney Kings, it is this idiom that constantly reemerges. Within my first day at work in 2010, I had participated in meetings, written my first press release and helped allocate season ticket holders their seats. For someone who, at that stage, had not yet completed their entire public relations degree and had only little experience in a PR firm, I was pushed well outside of my comfort zone, and hence had to scramble to keep up.
In doing so, I gained the degree of independence required to participate successfully in, and gain the most from an internship process.
Throughout my three months at the Sydney Kings, I have been encouraged to understand and perform the full range of tasks required by a PR professional. As a sporting team rather than an agency, a lot of work was practical based. The Kings were continuously out in the community on TV, radio, newspapers; all in preparation for the upcoming season 2010/11. These can arguably be explained and analysed under three encompassing umbrellas – campaign/practical work, administration and networking.
The area which I was initially most familiar with, and the most interested in, was creative campaign design. This includes all aspects of press release writing, involvement in media focused activities and consideration of PR tactics. Of course, such facets vary significantly dependent on the specific medium, being largely broken up into two such arenas – event/’news’ pitching and community involvement.
In terms of the former category, public relations follow largely the same tenets as news writing, particularly in terms of the news values suggested by theorists such as Galtung & Ruge. While I was aware of the theoretical elements of these values, and had experience putting them into practice when writing a hard news story, observing their use in the PR world, and ultimately putting them into practice, was initially a task that I felt somewhat under-prepared for.
A news hook, I soon discovered, was crucial. More importantly, this hook was required to be specifically tailored to each publication. In terms of the Sydney Kings campaign, for example, email pitches and releases would have to be modified to ensure impact and proximity were heightened.
Working under the guidance of the General Manager and CEO, Bob Turner; formerly known as a Kings coach and through his marketing days and Mark Wells; co-founder of WMPR and now PR manager for Sydney Kings, I arguably learned more about the ins and outs of the media in my first month at the Kings than in my entire university degree. It’s amazing how much you learn from just observing the workplace and listening to the employees pitch stories, meetings etc.
From the outset of my internship, I was encouraged to ask questions and develop an understanding of the media, create my own tactics. While this was useful, perhaps the most important aspect of my training was the independence that I was granted. I was lucky enough to have gained a place at a company that were willing to put their trust in me.
Of course, while event coverage is one thing, the Kings team and their position in the community is a completely different story. Sydney Kings is an iconic sporting brand that had previously been out of the competition. The success of the PR staff falls directly on their anticipation to re-create this once much loved sport in Sydney. Community involvement, TV appearances, pre-season games, newspaper articles weekly- has let Sydney know the Kings are back and better than ever!
A university degree is not the be all, end all for any profession. I would by no means encourage entering the workforce with just a degree to your name. Ultimately, in terms of campaign construction, whilst theory and limited practice at university was useful, it is not sufficient training to enter a PR company. The primary amount of what I learnt regarding campaigns was that which I gathered on the job.
Whilst it may sound trivial, a crucial realisation made during my internship at Sydney Kings related to the importance of administration. In PR, as I soon discovered, the key to success is always in the details, and a slight lapse in concentration can lead to the loss of a story. As such, it was essential that records of publications, staff positions, player statistics and contact details were kept up to date, journalists’ names were always spelt correctly and a release was sent to media at an appropriate time. As time went on, through a process of trial and error, tips from the office staff and friendly advice from my boss, I came to understand a number of small yet essential secrets of media administration – never call radio or TV producers on the hour, always copy a release into the body text of an email and never use the ‘Blind Carbon Copy’ function, to name a few.
From my first day as an intern at Sydney Kings, phone pitching was a task that I found extremely daunting and attempted to avoid. This was largely because I had little practical experience in the area, and hence little knowledge of what a pitch entailed. I feel that the BA Communications (Public Relations) degree would benefit from the provision of more practical tips in this arena – everything from the best time to call a news room to length of a pitch and the manner in which to address a journalist. After watching Mark Wells, the PR guy for the Kings I picked up tips and have realised that what works for one newspaper in one area doesn’t necessarily work for another. For example in terms of the Kings team- we targeted the schools we visited to areas that there was a strong basketball support.
While public relations is primarily a practical arena, and thus arguably does not require a detailed understanding of traditional media theory, it can no doubt be related to both semiotics and Adorno’s work on mass culture, while also being closely connected to Galtung and Ruge’s analysis of news values.
In line with Saussure’s theories of power in semiotics, rather than reflecting reality, PR is primarily based around an attempt to create meaning via manipulation of the sign system. Throughout my work at the Kings, the aim has been to produce a dominant reading, which is passed on to a news room and ideally published in its original state. As noted by Volosinov, such meanings are always the result of ideological struggles, and are hence rarely accepted without question. In this respect, the journalist represents a ‘gate keeper’ of sorts, who is perhaps more likely to develop a negotiated, or even oppositional, reading of a release than that which was initially intended. And so the sign system continues to be shaped. Read also about my networking skills essay
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