diary my days.

Merry Edelmas

So it’s the end of another rotation and the whole of 2011. I can hardly believe that us grads are half way through the program, it is absolutely flying by, but I guess that means we must be having fun along the way.

I finish my stint in JCPR today and it’s been a hectic but really enjoyable 5 weeks. As with every department in Edelman the people are wonderful , the atmosphere is always buzzing and the clients are incredible. As the year winds down the End of Year reports have been winding up and although this has meant that my time in JC was much more excels and power points than events and press liaisons I have still had a great time and learnt a lot.

There is no denying that Christmas is well and truly in the air at the Edelman offices, music is playing, decorations are hanging and festive jumpers are being worn with pride. I simply can’t sign off for this year without saying a huge thank you to both JCPR and Edelman for hosting such amazing Christmas parties and in particular to the catering team for providing bacon sandwiches the morning after. Evidence of the aforementioned parties can be found below.

Cheers to JCPR!

The Infamous Grads!

Typical work party entertainment?

More Alpine fun!

 

Rosie and Me at Circus!

Pre party mirror scrabble!

Pop-up Edelman Salon pre party!

My final thought is this. One of the very first things I did in 2011 was hand in my application to Edelman’s Graduate Scheme (on the day of the deadling actually!) and with hindsight and a lot of other experiences behind me over the past 12 months, I have to say it was the best decision I ever made. The first 3-and-a-bit months have been a steep learning curve but a great adventure and I can’t wait to see what next year and my next departments have to offer.

All there is left to say is Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year. Roll on 2012 and Public Affairs!

The Healthcare Treatment

Well it may be too little to late (considering I left 4 weeks ago) but I’ve been meaning to add my thoughts about my time in Healthcare to the blog for too long. It was the Edelman Christmas Party last night (more on that later) so I’m feeling a little fragile sohave decided to write this post in a simple and easy to process list of all the reasons I loved my Healthcare Rotation.

1. The genius people. I went into healthcare thinking it would all go way over my head but thanks to the fact that everyone who works there are so friendly, patient and helpful (not to mention so much fun) I felt like I learnt an unbelievable amount and could really get stuck in.
2. Media monitoring and report collation manages to be interesting. When you are doing 3 different daily and weekly monitoring reports you would think it would become an almighty bore. Quite the opposite, searching Google News and Factiva for all the latest news on the clients, their competitors, recent drug approvals and rejections, good and bad press and breaking news around relevant diseases is so interesting and really feels valuable.
3. I got to max out my organizational skills. I love logistics, planning, printing, scheduling etc.etc. and helping teams get themselves organized for medical congresses, conferences, message training and so on is common place in the Healthcare Department and it was really great to lend a hand to this and produce materials that are truly useful.
4. The clients. Healthcare works very differently to other forms of PR and although the clients aren’t well known brands, they are massive, in size, revenue, influence and importance. Getting to work on such a variation of clients and doing such a broad range of tasks from monitoring, to new business brainstorms, to media analysis, to reporting, to sell-ins to pharmaceutical trade media (not as daunting as it sounds) was a real pleasure.
5. It was great to be just a tiny part of a team that is helping make a difference to the health and well-being people worldwide.

For all the amazing things I loved about Healthcare there is one big negative. Treats, treats, treats! EVERY single occasion imaginable warrants a barrage of snacks and I think I managed to triple in size! That aside, I really and truly enjoyed every day I spent getting the Healthcare treatment!

How to: predict the Future

This really interesting thought piece fell into my lap at work. The agency Euro RSCG has produced ‘The Big Little Book of Nexts’ which outlines what (in their opinion) will be trending in 2012 from Fahion to PR to Education to Social Media to Africa to Colour and so on and so on…

Click here to give it a read. Enjoy!

Edelman Apprentice Scheme Opens Today!

So when I applied to Edelman, I gained a position on their 2011 Graduate Scheme, but with the rising cost of going to university and constant difficulty for young people to find jobs, Edelman is taking a big step in a positive direction by changing up their employment process with the introduction of the Edelman Apprentice Scheme for 2012.

You no longer require a degree and university education to apply. Edelmans is looking for candidates from all backgrounds, graduates and non-graduates, to apply for the scheme. They are searching for candidates with the best creative talent, ambition, commitment and enthusiasm for PR.

THE SCHEME OPENS TODAY - December 1st 2012.

I wanted to post this to reiterate Edleman’s message that if YOU fit the above criteria, don’t hestitate (even for a second) to apply.

Me and the other 2011 Grads were lucky enough to get the amazing opportunity to start our careers at Edleman, you never know, it could be you, and we may all end up as Edelman success stories.

 P.S. Happy 1st of December a.k.a Christmas Music Day! (give it a listen)

Diagnosing Healthcare

Having very nearly finished my 5 weeks in Healthcare, I thought I’d pre-empt the standard farewell blog post with some interesting stats and insights about the healthcare industry. These really put into perspective for me what an unimaginably important industry healthcare is (aside from the fact that because of it lives are changed and saved) and even more eager to get stuck in to Edelman’s Healthcare department.

Did you know that…

On average a whopping 9% of Global GDP is spent on healthcare alone

Pharmaceutical sales amount to approximately $880billion every year, one, single top selling drug made its company $11.7 billion in 2010 alone – and the combined total of the top ten selling drugs in the same year came to $76.2 billion.

The National Health Service is the world 4^th largest employer, it has over 1.3 million people – that’s 325 times as many as Edelman’s 4,000.

It takes 10-14 years, multiple phases and trials and several further complex, logistical processes to get a drug to market at an average cost of over $1 billion and even then there is no guarantee that it will be successful. They don’t make it easy!

What makes healthcare different?

Unlike traditional PR that targets public media and the consumer, healthcare PR is much more restricted. Due to pharmaceutical regulations product promotion to the general public is strictly prohibited (apart from in the US and NZ). As a result education becomes central to the role of healthcare PR professionals. The pharmaceutical industry spends more time and money educating their “customers” than any other industry for example through physician led patient education, online learning, medical congress meetings, medical meetings, disease awareness campaigns. Edelman is involved with all of these aspects for a variety of international pharmaceutical clients. It’s all very impressive and it’s been amazing getting involved with lots of different areas of the business and healthcare is a great department to have been a part of, but it’s not goodbye quite yet!

Work Hard: Play Hard: Sing Hard

So far my limited number of blog posts have all been quite “work” focused– but life at Edelman is so much more than that. Take last Thursday night for example. The ‘Edel-Spook X Factor Karaoke Competition’. My current department, Healthcare took on Spook, my old department in the karaoke competition to end all singing contests. Forget X-Factor, Edelman is where the talent is (well maybe/probably /absolutely not).  In a private room in a Chinese restaurant near our office, the finger food and white wine was flowing. All the classics came out from Spice Girls to Stevie Wonder to MC Hammer, and even I, who despises karaoke joined in on as many songs as I could and belted Bonnie Tyler until my voice had disappeared. Fortunately, no photographic evidence of the night has surfaced…yet, but watch this space in case it does!

It was an amazingly fun night and just another reason why I am loving life as an Edelman Grad so much; having worked with both departments I knew pretty much everyone there and had just as much fun chatting with my favourite intern as I did the MD. In and out of work the people and atmosphere at Edelman are second to none.

No one has the same opportunity us grads do to try so much and meet so many people. We’re pretty lucky I guess.

Some other quick examples:

Pedalo racing in Hyde Park with Spook:

Halloween Decorating Competition with Healthcare:

Now back to planning the next big night out working hard.

349

Well, yet another huge congratulations to Edelman…last week we won PR Week’s Large Consultancy of the Year Award 2011. This is a massive deal and an amazing achievement for the whole London team (I wish I’d been around longer so I could pretend to take some credit…but here’s to hoping I’m still here next year and we win again.) The whole office shared in a toast and a glass of champagne which was great and we all also received an email containing the following very complicated looking equation. However, every number means something to Edelman and I thought it was an excellent thing to share on here.

[Ok - so for some reason this blog hates me and won’t let me load a copy of the equation, I promise I will add it as soon as this starts functioning. It is basically made up of a series of numbers, mathematically manipulated in different ways to total 349…below shows why each is significant in reaching this magic  number!]

147: The number of new pieces of new business won during the past 12 months alone including assignments from Hilton, Pepsico, Best Buy and AstraZeneca

17%: Revenues increasing by 5% from £25.1m to £26.4m in 2010 and forecasted to increase by a further 17% during 2011.

100: An increased ranking on the Sunday Times 100 Best Places to Work for – the highest placed PR Agency on the list

97.35%: we have a client retention rate of 97.35%

18%: Staff turnover of just 18%, (a decrease from 24% in the previous year)

11: Trust Barometer in its 11^th year

1: The issue of Diversity is now critical in the industry and Edelman hosted the first industry conference in July 2010 to address this issue

10: Time magazine described our MTV campaign as, “one of the top 10 Twitter moments of 2010”); just one of the many outstanding campaigns Edelman has delivered

349:  the number of people who make all this happen and deserve this award

Thanks Digital, it’s been Spooktacular!

So after 6 wonderful weeks, I have finished my Digital rotation and I am writing this post from my desk in the lovely Healthcare department (more on this later),  but for now I have to try and sum up my time with Digital…not an easy task.

I have definitely discovered a passion for social media and digital marketing that I never knew existed. When I see Facebook, I now see beyond status updates and photos of my friends. I see engagement analytics and insights. I have not only become a regular Tweeter but I actually enjoy it, those 14o characters a more powerful than I ever thought, those few words could make or break a brand or campaign in an instant. My LinkedIn profile is now up-to-date and I may even venture onto FourSquare and Flickr in the near future! I am truly a digital convert and I credit this to a number of things I experienced n this department that I just don’t have space to get in to but two in particular.

1) The wonderfully nice, fun and helpful characters who grace Spook Media, First42nd and Edelman Digital from Account Execs, to my lovely line manager all the way up to the amazing team of Directors. They were all always there to talk me though tasks, answer my questions, get a drink with and in the case of TFI Fridays engage in a pedalo race. Digital creates a unique atmosphere that makes working hard all day never really feel like work.

2) The lengthy list of clients I had the pleasure of working on.  My experiences alone are enviable let alone the entire client list! This is a brief (well I tried at least) run down of who I worked for and a taster of the sort of tasks I was lucky enough to undertake.

• Leading Tech Brand: With a social media presence of over 20 million fans, it was a great learning experience to help manage, monitor and write content for this brand’s platforms and assist with pulling data to analyse and create insights about engagement rates, fan profiles, commerce drivers and so on for reports and conducting research into new strategies and general social media insights every week.
• Best Buy: A huge social media presence in the US, the UK are hoping to follow suit and I got involved with writing content for all their platforms and the admin for their ‘Thumb’s Up Price Down’ deals tab on Facebook.
• Allen&Overy: I would never have put social media and leading law firm together but as I’m quickly discovering digital marketing applies to anything and everything. For Allen&Overy I was responsible for running and reporting on a whole Twitter campaign for the launch of their 50 Degrees East survey. I wrote some Tweets, posted them daily, monitored and reacted to responses and pulled and analysed data which I used to report on the success of the campaign.
• Anglo American: This mining giant was another very unexpected client but they are in the process of launching themselves across several social media platforms and I helped in drafting ‘About Us’ sections for them and starting to build albums for Flickr.
• Ballymore: Yet again, a corporate client in Digital surprises me. For this property development company I helped conduct a landscape analysis which in (very) short involved looking at social media activity and conversation that could relate to this client and their purpose and drawing practical insights from what I found.
• Dove: As one of my all time favourite brands it was a pleasure to work on Dove. I assisted with building sections of the Dove Development Deck including a profile of ‘The Dove Woman’ based on fan data from Facebook and ‘truths’ about how the Dove Women (from their top 5 markets) engage on Facebook, and how they respond to different content. This was a really interesting task for a truly iconic brand that’s made me love Dove even more.

So, that wasn’t as concise as I hoped it would be, but I wanted to make sure I did my time in Digital justice. All that’s left to say is a huge thank you to the whole team, I loved every second. And here’s to my next rotation in Healthcare!

Stick at it

I’m feeling very bad about the fact that I have neglected my blog for so long (both this and my Edelman Graduate version) - this is about my new job after all, so that is coming first and my lovely littel blog is having to take a back seat but I am going to stick at it.

On that note…some light entertainment. Just because.

Courtesy of Draw a Stick Man.

If this tickled your fancy and you want to know more about how it was made check out this blog from Hitcents, the geniuses behind it.

CongratuWellDone Edelman

The Holmes Report’s first annual Global SABRE Awards competition was held this week…

“The Holmes Group is dedicated to proving and improving the value of public relations, by providing insight, knowledge and recognition to public relations professionals…providing the most sophisticated reporting and analysis on public relations trends and issues.”

Check out The Holmes Report Website

The SABRE (Superior Achievement in Branding and Reputation) Awards  are “the world’s largest awards competition for the public relations industry, the SABRE Awards celebrate PR campaigns that demonstrate the highest levels of creativity, integrity and effectiveness.”

…its kind of a big deal. And guess what? WE WON!

Edelman won Global Agency of the Year, beating Burson-Marsteller, Fleishman-Hillard, MSL Group, and Weber Shandwick for the competition‘s top honor. Not only this, we also shared the Platinum Award and Social Media Campaign SABRE with Weber Shandwick, both for Pepsi Refresh, which was named the best campaign of the year in any region. Not bad going.

So this is just a little shout out to Edelman. Big thumbs up! I’m very proud to be an integral cog just a tiny part of this amazing, multi-award winning global agency!