University student Alice Norman spent a month with us at hopwood public relations. Here’s what she thought of her time as an intern…

Before I started at Hopwood, I can honestly say I was a little lost when it came to choosing a career. Like most people doing History at uni, you reach a point when you realise that your degree really doesn’t help you chose your career path. Public Relations had been recommended to me by quite a few different people, so naturally, I started asking around. But the thing about public relations is that no one really knows what it is (no matter how many people you ask, I can guarantee you won’t get a straight answer from anyone – that’s part of the charm). So I decided to do some work experience while back home in Leicester to help me judge the true meaning of Public Relations for myself. After just four weeks, Hopwood has helped me map out my future.

Like all new interns, I had no idea what to expect. All I hoped was that my job wouldn’t entail simply fetching tea and coffee, or sitting doing research all day long – the sort of things most people do on an internship. I had no idea that I’d be writing my own press releases within the week and conducting phone interviews and organising photo shoots within two. It’s been amazing to get stuck in to all the work and actually be trusted with writing and organising. I feel like I’ve really gained an insight into the world of PR while actually managing to make a difference along the way. After a week, I was totally hooked (and was even getting used to the early mornings!) More

hopwood have been hired by the National Youth Agency (NYA) to promote projects aimed at improving the lives of young people.

We were selected from a shortlist of consultancies and will work with the NYA on national projects in areas such as financial education and citizenship. Here at hopwood, we will deal with the media, produce publications, set up social media campaigns and recruit young people to projects. More

We’re all familiar with that vid of Rebekah Wade peering over the shoulder of Andy Coulson at what I imagine is a lurid tale being cooked up for the News Of The World.

But there is another – perhaps even more telling – VT running behind the phone hacking chronicles.

More

If you’ve been following our happenings via our social networking sites, you’ll have seen our musical PR countdown to Christmas.

In case you missed any of the daily posts, here’s the twelve days of public relations in full:

On the twelfth day of Christmas the PR job for me…

Twelve LinkedIn requests
Eleven award entries
Ten feature ops
Nine networking events
Eight newspaper cuttings
Seven important emails
Six telephone calls
FIVE CUPS OF TEA
Four client meetings
Three photo shoots
Two press releases
And a media enquiry

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the hopwood team

Checking in at #measurepr this week, and it occurs to me that one of our New Year’s Resolutions here at hopwood PR must be to get our heads round the tricky business of measurement.

There are some massive challenges here:

1. All our clients are different so there’s no obvious one-size-fits-all way to measure results – have a look at our case studies and you’ll see we’re results oriented but that our projects have hugely varied outcomes

2. Clients’ priorities (and their people) change over time (but they might not tell you) so it’s easy to find yourself measuring the wrong thing

3. Assuming clients’ media profile matters to them, how do you evaluate that profile in a rapidly-evolving new media world?

More

As winter draws in, we have to say a fond farewell to all our wonderful PR interns who have kept us bright from June to October.

Armed with tons of public relations experience from hopwood, this is what they have been getting up to since.

Daraca Lehane has returned to Leicester University to do the final year of her Media and Communications degree.

Jessica Ward, a graduate from Nottingham Trent, has successfully gone on to a new job at a PR agency.

Harriet Barker, a Masters graduate from the University of Exeter, has gone to London to chase her literary dreams working at a publishing company.

Sophie Heffernan has returned to complete her management studies degree at the University of York.

We wish them all the best for a bright future.

Having just completed my Masters in English at Exeter, I returned home to the Midlands wondering which direction my career was heading in. I knew I needed practical experience and wanted to gain an insight into the PR industry. So to be intern at hopwood was an ideal opportunity. After all, I wasn’t quite sure what PR was – I knew it was outward facing and involved communications, but how did it interrelate with other industries? What was its relationship to journalism? How was it different to marketing? These were all questions that were to be answered in my time at hopwood.

Welcomed by the friendly team and abundance of tea, I was soon thrown in to writing press releases. Having to adapt my detailed, analytical style to informative, concise facts was challenging, but it was intriguing to learn that so much of journalist’s material is inspired and indeed written by those in PR! I enjoyed sitting in on meetings – though more of an observer than a contributor – and revelled in the fact that they called it “the board room”, very ‘The Apprentice’!

What I enjoyed most about hopwood was the diversity of their clients. One day I would be researching a women’s charity, the next writing for an MP or a leading corporate clothing company. I was immersed in business, politics, the public sector and not-for-profit organisations. Having always had an interest in the environment, I particularly responded to their property and urban regeneration clients and the projects which are transforming our towns, cities and landscape today. More

The hopwood team will be out in force at the East Midlands Property & Business Investment show this November.

We’ll be showcasing our experience of PR and marketing in the regeneration and property sector, with case studies of work with clients including architects, developers, inward investment managers and regeneration agencies.

We’re also launching a brand new service so watch out for more information.
 
Entrance to the show at the East Midlands Conference Centre on Friday November 11 is completely free, so why not pay us a visit at stand 60 and say hello. We would love to see you. For more information click here.

 We took full advantage of the silly season and generated dozens of pieces of coverage for clients across finance, B2B and not for profit sectors around August.

Incorporatewear, the premier corporate clothing company co-founded by celeb designer Jeff Banks and others, featured in national print media 11 times.

We successfully managed media around an affordable housing plan for East Midlands Housing Group, for whom we’ve also just finished penning annual reports and autumn magazines.

Other clients have achieved coverage in regional media in the East Midlands and in high-powered national insurance and property publications.

Our digital media activity continues to grow with clients extending their reach into social media and online news outlets.

Daraca Lehane, a student from Leicester University joined us at hopwood public relations for four months’ work experience during the summer. Here is her story:

I decided to take up an opportunity to intern with Hopwood during the summer break after I finished my 2^nd year of university. I intended find out more about how the public relations industry works because, although we’d covered it at university, very little information was given about what goes on behind the scenes in the world of PR. Here’s what I learned while working here:

When I started back in early June this year, I had absolutely no expectations. It was the first time I had any work experience in dealing with the media so everything was very new to me. One of the first things I discovered was that PR plays a very significant role in the print media. From writing a press release, to sending it to various editors and then seeing it published; it made me realise that journalists and PR rely on each other for material and coverage. I was given the opportunity to write numerous press releases, which sometimes involved interviewing people! This was something I hadn’t done before and to see my work published in the press was very satisfying. More