Before joining work in a Public Relations consultancy, it is important to know, understand and learn things from the client’s perspective. I was very fortunate, to get the opportunity to work at Turner International India, under their Corporate Communications team. It gave me a better clarity regarding the consultancy side and the client side and regarding the functioning of Corporate Communication team. In Turner, they have an in-house communication team that handles the PR for their channels like WB, HBO and HBO HD. Since, they don’t have a huge market in India, they don’t require a consultancy separately to handle it. The kids channels – Cartoon Network and POGO are completely handled by the consultancy. During the ten days of immersion, I made internal reports mentioning the coverage for their cartoon channels, contributed some ideas for an upcoming campaign, wrote an article for one of their new show called Kalari Kids which got posted on Mompresso. Though, the duration was short but this experience was definitely needed before joining a PR firm.

My two takeaways from this experience were:

• Clarify your doubts: Often, we are hesitant to ask questions to the client thinking how stupid it might sound or assuming it to be a totally irrelevant one but unless you ask how would you know, if its correct or not? Ask questions until and unless you are clear about the idea because one assumption can make the entire plan go haywire. So, don’t hesitate and just ask the questions.
• Understand the brief: I understood that PR professionals mostly make a mistake in misunderstanding the brief and with that, start planning for the campaigns which again doesn’t help in the long run. No matter how great the campaign is but if it doesn’t align with the brief, would it even make sense? Thus, it is very important to thoroughly understand the brief and not divert from it.

It was an amazing experience, full of learning and insights.

– Sushabya Pradhan

Sushabya is a part of Class of 2019 in the Post Graduate Programme in PR & Corporate Communications at School of Communications & Reputation, Mumbai. She holds a degree in B.A with specialisation in Journalism and Psychology from M S Ramaiah College of Arts, Science & Commerce, Bangalore. Her love for meeting new people and desire for learning drove her towards the field of Public Relations. She completed her internship in PR at Avian WE, Mumbai.

She can be reached at @Susavya and as Sushabya Pradhan on LinkedIn