A Day In The Life of a PR Officer
Nicki Welding - The Manufacturing Institute
Everyone knows PR people spend their time schmoozing celebrities at glamorous showbiz parties and wining and dining editors, right? Wrong! It's much more interesting, challenging and satisfying than that.
As a PR officer in manufacturing my job's a lot more down-to-earth. But it lets me indulge my love of writing and it helps my company to do the job it's supposed to do. The Manufacturing Institute aims to make the North West economy as strong as possible by using the latest business techniques to boost productivity and improve skills in regional companies large and small. That helps everyone.
So join me on a typical day...
8.00am. Arrive at the office and grab a cup of coffee - vital to get the day going. The world is definitely a better place for coffee. First job, scour newspapers and media websites for their latest steer on manufacturing. It's crucial to know what's hot and what's not in the media so I can brief my colleagues on the news agenda and respond if required. In fact spot someone in the Financial Times having a moan about future hopes for manufacturing - amazing how often we get written off as past it. So rush out a response from our chief executive. Point out that manufacturing in the North West alone turns over £60 billion a year. We ain't dead yet!
9.00am. Weekly meeting with colleagues and a chance to catch up on what's happening within the organisation. I was trained as a journalist so I'm naturally nosy.
10.00am. Time to tackle one of the best bits of my job - scriptwriting. We've got a big conference coming up and Lucy Meacock from Granada TV is acting as host. But she has to know what to say. She needs to put across all our key messages to the audience. Writing a script that doesn't sound corny and rehearsed, that comes across as natural chat, is not easy. But it's great when it all comes together - I still get a thrill when I hear well known celebrities speak my words as if they're their own.
Noon. A couple of hours of sheer concentration and my brain's about to explode. Time to grab a working lunch with our PR consultant and recharge the creative batteries. Goats cheese and red onion pizza should do the trick. Lovely!
1.00pm. We've got a big photo-shoot coming up at an aerospace factory, so it's time to book a photographer. And we can't simply turn him loose - he needs to be fully briefed about what we want. Best to work backwards - decide where the pictures will be used and take them accordingly. Serious national newspaper? The chairman. Popular daily? A glamorous apprentice! Technical magazine? The latest equipment. Local weekly? Lots of happy smiling workers.
1.30pm. That conference just won't go away. This time it's a 10-minute speech for our chief executive. Sounds easy? It isn't. Priority No 1 is to keep the audience listening. We've all fallen asleep during dull lectures. No long complicated sentences. No difficult words. Ten minutes doesn't sound much but it demands lots of research. This could take two days.
4.00pm. Promised to help a journalist who is writing about a complicated theory of manufacturing. Getting our message across in the media is bread-and-butter for a PRO. So one or two quick phone calls and he's got an interview with a Manchester bakery where they put this theory into practice to good effect. Result - happy journalist, equally happy bakery, and we've got our message across, too.
5.30pm. Time to go home? Not on your life. I'm going to a black tie dinner for the food industry tonight - and I need some shoes! So dash to shoe shop.
7.30pm. Quick change into the glad rags and off to the dinner with some of our customers as guests. I only know them via phone calls and emails so it's nice to put faces to names. Tonight we're sponsoring an award for innovation. There's plenty of innovation in the North West so the competition is tough. But it's a great night and as you can imagine the food is wonderful.
Late! So you see, we do get the glamorous jobs after all!
Nicki loved English at school and trained as a journalist before switching to PR and marketing. She's promoted big name companies and products from Shell and Zurich to Guinness, Heineken and Tropicana. Besides A levels also took the NCTJ journalism certificate and the CAM certificate in marketing.
