Talk PR Open Day

As I am in my final year of Uni, it is coming up to that scary time in my life where I need to start looking at what the next step within my career is going to be, and start applying for jobs!

My aspirations are to have a career within PR, so I recently attended an open day with 'Talk PR'- a public relations agency situated just opposite Tottenham Court Road Station in London.

The open day was an excellent experience, giving us a great insight to the industry. The day began at 9.30 am where myself and 8 other aspiring PR enthusiasts were introduced and taken into a beautiful meeting room where tea and croissants laid awaiting.

We were then greeted by CEO Jane Boardman and Beauty Board Director Kelly Reade who gave us a introduction to the company which began in 2001 backed by M&C Saatchi. They specialise in Beauty, Fashion, Global and Technology PR with an impressive list of clients under each sector, with the aim to generate great coverage for them.

After this, we were given talks from each individual PR field in deeper depth from their account managers. Here, we learnt about all the different clients they work with (listed below) and about some of the inspiring work they have put together in order to create the appropriate coverage. We looked at different briefs they have previously worked on- including their most current Christmas campaign for client Selfridges - and what their strategy is in order to attract new customers, drive sales / trends and for profile building.

It was extremely interesting to learn how they achieve this coverage, from creating exciting events for launching new products or advertising them in magazine articles but most importantly we learnt you must always have constant communication with your clients and be thinking practically and strategically. I really enjoyed listening about each different PR sector, when I first came I didn't know too much about the technology side to PR and was certain I wanted to do either Fashion or Beauty but to my surprise I was extremely intrigued to hear about the technology sector and found it especially fascinating watching a video they had created for the new James Bond 007 fragrance. 

After a yummy lunch at Pizza Express where we got to know more of the team account executives, we had guest speaker - Ursula Lake talk to us about her career and how she got where she is today. Ursula was so lovely and truly inspirational to listen to; from beginning her career as a fashion assistant she built her way up in the industry and has been working as a Fashion Editor for 10 years contributing to a number of renowned publications such as GQ, Instyle and Wallpaper* whilst also working as Fashion Editor for the Sunday Telegraph Stella Magazine for seven years until 2011. She is now currently Fashion Director for Country and Townhouse Magazine as well as also launching her own swim-wear line called 'Violet Lake' in 2010. 

She explained to us how privileged she has been in her career to be able to travel to shoots all over the world, however ensured us it wasn't without a huge amount of hard work! This was really motivating to hear and to know that hard work really can pay off! We also got to see some of her beautiful shoots she has produced from Harvey Nichols- to her most recent with Net-a-Porter.

Ursula Lake

For the last part of the day we participated in a live brief, we were split into two teams and worked within the brief we had been given, which was to create a campaign in order to engage more men with the brand Figleaves. It was really interesting to take part in this- to be able to all put our ideas forward as well as being creative and to get a taste of what it is like to complete this task in the real world. At the end we then presented our ideas to the other team and it was great to get feedback after that our ideas were extremely similar to what Talk PR actually pitch to their client's!

To conclude, the day was really wonderful, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and learnt so much about the company and how each sector works. All the team were so friendly and really interested into getting to know us which was so nice to experience and am so grateful I got the opportunity to be part of it!