Thank you.
All right, so, my name is Jordan.
I'm a junior.
I am majoring in English, with a minor in Japanese.
I spent my summer doing an internship with a PR firm.
So, the PR firm's name was Evil Genius Group.
It's been around for about a year,
and it's based in Manhattan, New York.
It was created by Victor Cipolla, who
has been working in the PR industry for about 25 years,
and co-managed by business partner Daries Allani.
Because it is only a year old, we had a variety of clients.
I worked with restaurant owners, fashion designers,
Pilates instructors, everything under the sun.
And the rest of the staff consisted of other PR interns
and graphic design interns.
And, essentially, we would collaborate together
to create campaigns for our clients.
So entering the world of social media
was really jarring at first.
It's really weird to go from using Facebook and Tumbler
as, like, a leisure activity to a means of business and profit.
And public relations, itself, is a really unique department
because it's all about saving face.
You know, in this day and age, you
can pull out your smartphone, pull up
any company on Wikipedia and learn all about their history.
So not only is it about helping your clients get
a really good consumer base, it's also about doing clean up.
For example, like, if a restaurant
had a bad article or bad review about it, we would have to,
essentially, cover that up and leave
all this other positive stuff to sort of smooth it over.
And it's definitely not your average office.
The equivalent of your cubicle and desk was your smartphone.
I spent most of my time, like, plugged into the wall,
cycling through all my apps, checking my notifications.
Keeping up with trends was also super important, especially
with the weekly trending tags on Instagram.
And every single time I got a new client,
I would Facebook stalk the heck out of them.
I would go all the way back to their page's creation
so I could figure out what they're all about.
And then the availability-- just because I
left the office didn't mean I was done for the day.
I would get messages at, like, 1:00
in the morning from my boss, asking me to,
like, proofread this or tag somebody in this.
So, essentially, like, always on the clock--
always on my smartphone.
All right.
So the place that I worked in was also pretty unique.
We didn't have our own kind of office space.
It was this building called We Work.
And We Work is a corporation that rents out,
like, large skyscrapers in metropolitan areas,
and it rents it out to, like, private small businesses.
So we would be sharing the floor with, like,
up to 10 other businesses at once.
And it was really interesting because we
got to collaborate with them.
For example, there was a wine company
down the hall that ended up sponsoring us for an event.
And they eventually became one of our clients.
So it was, like, this really great networking space
for startup businesses like ourselves.
And then, interning in New York.
So, I'm from Connecticut.
And I've been to New York a bunch of times,
but you know, just to see Broadway shows,
not to actually work there.
And after spending my summer working in New York,
I understand why everyone in New York
is really angry all the time and always in a hurry
because it's really stressful getting from place to place.
I had a two hour commute.
I spent about 16 hours a week on the train.
So that was really difficult because I
was the farthest away.
Everyone else, who was living in New York,
just took the subway in.
I got really good at using Google Maps
because I have no sense of direction.
And I always had to leave myself a huge time
cushion for getting to the office on time
because of, like, Metro-North delays and stuff like that.
So, if you're considering doing an internship more than an hour
and a half away from your home, I
would say reconsider and try to find a place closer by where
you live.
I chose not to live in New York because rent was super high,
but, yeah, the commute was pretty brutal.
All right, so, skills I used during my internship--
the big thing was interpersonal skills.
I did a lot of, like, one-on-one interaction
with clients because I only had two supervisors.
So it's not like my supervisor was being a third party.
I was just directly interacting with them.
So the main method of communication we used
is this app called Podio.
It's a social media platform that
allows small businesses to work one-on-one with their clients.
It has a social media calendar app.
It has an event planning app.
And, essentially, it's like Facebook,
where everything pulls on your client's page.
They can see and comment, which is really great,
but sometimes clients critique every little thing you do.
So I definitely grew a really thick skin for rejection.
And a lot of times, what you want, as a PR firm,
and what you know will work, will not line up
with what the client wants.
For example, there was an older gentleman,
who was in charge of a southern hospitality restaurant,
like, a pretty classy establishment.
And on the front page of his website,
he wanted to put the "I Can Has Cheezburger?" meme from 2007.
And I had to explain to him many different times why
that was not a good idea.
So, essentially, kill them with kindness, be super patient.
And maintaining contact after the internship
is also very important.
A lot of my fellow interns, who had already graduated college,
actually went on to become full-time workers
for the clients that they worked with.
So that was a great opportunity for them.
All right, so, a day in the office--
when I was filling out the paperwork for the funding,
I emailed my boss, and I was, like,
so can you walk me through what my daily tasks will be--
what am I going to be doing?
And he just laughed and said, there's
no such thing as, like, a day in the PR world.
And after interning there for about a week,
I completely agree with him.
Every single time I came into the office,
I had no idea what I was doing.
I may be meeting with clients, I may be searching for sponsors,
I may be running errands around New York,
I might be casting male models for a fashion show, which
is going on down there.
So, more on the fashion show, this
is definitely the most exciting thing I did over the summer.
It happened in mid-July, and I was essentially
in charge of micromanaging everything.
I cast the male models, I found makeup artists,
I found sponsors for that step and repeat banner,
I did all the budgeting for the show.
And, like, as reality TV might have shown you,
fashion shows are really crazy, but they were also super fun.
And these pictures are from the very first event
I did-- it was a vodka tasting event.
And essentially, our job was to go around
with, like, these cute little cardboard signs with hashtags
on them and take pictures with whoever
came to sample the vodka.
And tell them to, you know, post them on Instagram,
tag the vodka company, stuff like that.
And I checked their Instagram the next day,
and they actually had a pretty significant increase
in followers, so it's really cool
to be, like, a part of that.
And then, finally, expectations versus reality--
so I applied for this internship in January
because they said they needed someone
who was well-versed in social media and can speak Japanese.
And I was super excited because, essentially,
they had a Japanese J-pop client,
and I would be the translator, and I would
help bridge the language gap.
I got there in May and she wasn't a client anymore.
So I didn't get to use my Japanese at all
over the summer, which was really disappointing but I
made the best of it.
Aside from that, I was expecting a private office, a larger
group of supervisors, a much more formal setting,
and more training.
But as I explained earlier, it was, like, a crazy busy office
space.
I only had two supervisors, so a lot of the interaction
happened between equals, the unpaid interns.
It was very casual.
Apparently everyone in the PR world knows everyone.
My boss is friends on Facebook with Hugh Hefner
and went Seth McFarlane's birthday party.
So that was a little surprising.
I was a little starstruck at first.
And then, my boss was also a big fan of the "get into the water
and see if you can swim" method, so I
got a lot of, like, very hands-on experiences.
And then, of course, there was the fashion show, which
still, like, blows my mind.
It's always been on my bucket list to go to a fashion show.
But I, like, made a fashion show.
So that was crazy.
And that's it.