PR EXPERIENCE
Throughout my University experience I was lucky enough to work with lots of organisations to gain first hand experience of the PR industry. In my first year of university I worked with three live clients: The New Forest Outdoor Centre, NATS and The Red Box Project. You can see some of the work I created for these clients in my portfolio of work. In my second year, I created a launch campaign for a new product created by skincare brand Dermalex. In my final year, I worked alongside ActiveMe 360 in order to promote their girls only football camps in April 2022. Working in these environments has allowed me to practice and develop key skills such as teamwork, creativity and innovation; but also practical skills such as Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator.
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In my final year I also planned a university wide event called Spring Forward to the Future. In November 2021 a course mate and myself were asked to organise a university wide event called Spring Forward to the Future. The event itself consisted of a one hour panel session from 6 industry professionals who are Solent alumni, followed by a two-hour networking session. The organisation of the event consisted of communicating at director level to create and run a communications campaign throughout the University to drive student engagement. As a result of our social media campaign, over 150 students attended the event which resulted in the event gaining publicity across LinkedIn from students and industry professionals.
In October 2021 I secured a role as the Student Rep on the CIPR Wessex Committee. This role entails me working closely with the board to organise events and various other CIPR initiatives promote these across social media channels. I consider the needs of students and young PRs starting their careers to ensure we are being supported.
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​In April 2021 I begun a voluntary role at Careers Springboard, a registered charity helping professional individuals get back into employment. In this role I am undertaking PR and Marketing work including create digital content as well as schedule and manage Careers Springboard’s Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles, as well as assisting with a re-design of the charities website to offer a better service to current and future members. This role has allowed me to develop my skills by applying knowledge learnt at university into real world situations.
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In addition to this, I also attended three extra-curricular PR events set up by my university.
The first of these was the 'E-campaign in a day'. Here we were split into groups and tasked with developing a digital campaign promoting the idea of lowering the voting age to 16. Though we didn't win this competition, my group learnt a lot and was praised for its innovative and creative ideas.
Secondly was the networking event 'Meet the professionals'. This event allowed me to speak to various PR professionals, learn about their fields of work and solidify that PR was the right thing for me.
Lastly, the 'Crisis Simulation' day was my favourite event. Here we were again divided into groups and tasked with managing a crisis. This taught me how to think effectively under pressure.