Blog – First two weeks as an intern

Over the next 12 months I’ll be working at Advent as their intern during my placement year. I’m a marketing student at the University of the West of England, Bristol. This will be a weekly blog about my time at Advent. 

My first two weeks at Advent have definitely been an eye opener to the world of PR, and to the fact that people actually get up at 6am, rather than my student life routine of waking up at 11. I never knew that breakfast could be eaten before lunchtime.

I accepted the placement at Advent back in May when I decided to take the plunge into PR. As a marketing student, we were advised to try and secure a year’s work placement in a company to boost our CVs.

From my experience, securing an interview and a placement for an undergraduate scheme is 10 per cent luck and 90 per cent hard work, sweat and tears, but saying that, nothing worth having comes easily.

My first week consisted of finding my feet, learning about the clients and making sure you do at least one tea round, otherwise you get shamefully called out on it by your dangerously dehydrated colleagues.

I began to realise pretty quickly that twitter is a popular platform of engagement for many of Advent’s clients. Luckily for me, I know a bit about social media, as I’m sure everyone from my generation does, so I could get to grips with clients twitter accounts pretty quickly, the first being a well-established law firm in Coventry.

Towards the end of the week I started going to photoshoots and writing press releases. At university, everyone tended to bulk out their essays and write in a ‘flowerly’ style, we are marketers after all, but I’m quickly learning the newspaper style of writing which is a lot different.

During the second week I was given more responsibility; writing draft press releases, and helping look after the @InpressImages account for the photographic agency we work with.

The account has now accumulated 80 new followers in four days and I have even got a follow from Dion Dublin. What can I say, @InpressImages is the most up and coming account of this century (even though I’m not paid on commission!).

Overall, based on my short time at Advent so far, I’d say it definitely appears that I’ve made a good decision by having my work placement here. The work is interesting, my colleagues have been helpful and welcoming, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what challenges they have in store over the next year.

I’ll keep you posted!

Olivia Wynne 

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