Imagination, Interaction and Inspiration
Greetings from Felix in the Digital Team. It is really a great experience and honor for me to work in Edelman, a professional worldwide PR agency. It has already been 2 months since I started my relationship with Edelman. It’s been amazing, fantastic and even playful. But before that, let you know more about me!
I am a boy with a dream. A dream to inspire and cheer people around me, to grab people’s attentions while communicating with them. Being a second year business undergraduate, majoring in finance, I have less chance to learn things about PR. Until the time when I first took courses about introduction and crisis management in PR, I was fascinated by how things could be in the sense of communication between companies and the public, and how my dream could be practically applied in real world. This was the reason I decided to minor communication studies and learn hands-on experience in Edelman. I would describe my internship in three words - Imagination, Interaction and Inspiration.
Imagination
To me, the first impression of PR before joining Edelman was press releases and event management. Apart from writing, it was still writing. When I was informed to attend the interview, I immediately thought about what I should prepare and talk about in the interview, for instance ‘how to write a good press release?’ or ‘how to develop good relationships with your audience?’ etc. Remember the day of the interview. I have expressed lots of opinions and my interpretation about PR. One thing that I could remember strongly was that our Associate Director, Roman told me, ‘Working in Digital Team is not just about “PR PR” all the times.’ Since then, I began to think about this when I was going back home. “Is there any contradiction occurring in my imagination of PR industry? What are the real practices of a digital PR team?” The answer is Interaction.
Felix (first row from right) with his digital team mates.
Interaction
Interaction between the clients and the public is undoubtedly important for a successful PR agency. Yet, interaction among the team is the building blocks for the whole communication channel. As an intern, I’m grateful to work with such energetic teammates. They do NOT just simply tell me what I have to do and the deadline of it. But they will tell me all the background information and brief me patiently every time they give me a task. This can ensure that I can get the full picture of the project and contribute all my ideas right away. I have learnt a lot from them through what I called ‘interaction’. During my internship, I have gone through different kinds of work too. From media monitoring, prepare reports to clients, develop creative content on social media, they are very interesting and inspiring to me. It is a great opportunity for me to find out methods to tackle those tasks efficiently.
What’s more? As we need to make use of social media in our daily work, I realize that the social media is gaining more influences than we can imagine. When analysing the data and statistics about the engagement of the Facebook pages of clients, the data is really surprising. Although I am interacting with my friends, my peers through social media every day, I never think of a business can utilize the social media fully and successfully in this way. It is already influencing and interacting with you once you surf on the website or open the apps in your mobile. This interaction leads me to inspiration.
Inspiration
In the past two months, I was working as a part time intern. Starting from this week, I begin to work in full time for the next few months, it will be a new challenge to me again. Advices and insights from my team can surely improve my performance and enhance my learning experience. Playful and relaxing environment can also boost my creativity and imagination. Now, thanks to all my colleagues, I can assure that I am more capable to deal with the upcoming tasks. I realize that the digital team in PR is really not just about public, but also the relations among the team.
Let me use a quote to conclude my days in Edelman - I want to inspire, and be inspired by Sam Mendes.
By Felix Kung