Faye Oakey PR.

Today I received the official results from the first year of my BA Public Relations degree at Leeds Met, I’d like to take the opportunity to reflect on the past academic year, and note my aspirations for the future – both with regards to my career and personal endeavors.

Firstly, reflections on the year; some modules it appears I’m much stronger than in others. I managed to achieve two 1sts, and two very nearly 1sts, but my individual module results varied, weaker areas therefore affected my overall for the year. My lowest result was a high 2:2 though, so I’m not complaining. I propose to spend equal time next year working on those areas less interesting to me, as I do on my personal ‘favourites’, in order to achieve a more well-rounded qualification. I am happy to achieve an overall 2:1 this year, although I aspire to get much higher results in year 2, which brings me on to:

What I hope to accomplish throughout the course of my life…

• To graduate with a 1^st
• To visit at least one of the wonders of the world (I hope to do this this summer, I’m working on a plan to visit the Grand Canyon)
• To travel Europe
• To secure a good reputation within the PR industry through work experience, networking on and offline, and maintaining communications in the PR world
• Flip a pancake  
  
• Write a book
• Be on TV - either as a presenter or games show contestant - not too varied
• To leave a positive impression on the world, or those in it
• Go to Thailand
• To climb a mountain
• To meet the Queen
•  To be content and fulfilled, with the family I’ll have, and the career direction I take
• Get married
• Own a treehouse
• To maximise my potential creatively, and spend time on things I’m passionate about
• To travel America  This is something I always wanted to do, last year I spent the summer working at camp in Great Barrington in Massachusetts, during my time in the US I visited New York, Washington DC, Boston, Miami and Atlanta, as well as Six Flags in New England. This summer I’m in Fort Collins, Colorado spending time with my boyfriend who has a scholarship here, so far we have been to San Diego and Denver for trips, so my dream of travelling in America, most certainly came true. 
• Own a house, and make it a home
• Buy a puppy
• Go to Disneyland Florida – I’ve been to the Paris version
• Go to Fiji
• Work a year abroad in Australia or New Zealand
• Visit a zoo  Denver Zoo June 2012
• Ride a horse, or an elephant
• Go skiing
• Learn a second language (I’m working on this one, my boyfriends 1st language is Hungarian, so I’ve been studying a lot)
• Swim with dolphins
• See the White House  September 2011
• Stop biting my nails
• Go dragon boat racing
• Go to Mexico
• Become a blood donor (I’m terrified of needles, so this is a huge one, but I’m determined.)

Now, I know this list may seem a little extensive, but I never said I wasn’t ambitious!

Please see my portfolio of development, which aims to follow my progress as I develop PR skills in five main areas; creativity, presentation, organisation, writing and management.

My current experience ranges from working as Account Executive / “Curator of Good Noise” at creative agency Two Birds One Stone; the youth division combining Ptarmigan Bell Pottinger and Magpie Comms, to writing for online student newspaper The Met Online, and organising charity events and other independently.

http://fayeoakeyprportfolio.wordpress.com/

On this website you will find not only my achievements from my first year studying BA Public Relations at Leeds Metropolitan University, but my CV, contact information, and links to other social media platforms with which I engage; Twitter, Linked In, Pinterest and Facebook, and of course Tumblr (here) and Wordpress (portfolio). 

Last night I took part in an online conversation: Comms Chat, with Richard Bailey, senior lecturer at Leeds Met and editor of Behind the Spin. It was the first time I’d come across this initiative, which is endorsed by Wolfstar PR, and what a great idea. It is self defined as “the home of Europe’s most popular communications conversation”. I really enjoyed the opportunity to converse with likeminded people; other students, professionals and educators. Plus it was very easy to use and follow, I simply joined in via the Twitter app on my iPhone. The discussion centred around the topic of learning. One of the questions offered was “How useful is a qualification (degree level or otherwise) in PR?” to which I gave my opinion. I tweeted (abbreviated for Twitter): “As a PR student, I see my degree as essential education not only of the industry but in life skills. I’d have had no idea where to start with gaining experience without it. Education allows for exploring our interests for our future career.” Personally I feel this time in education is extremely important for my development; school is a whole lot different to the working environment and university prepares us for that. It’s about finding your strengths, interests and working out what you’d like to pursue in your career. As well as allowing for making mistakes, making friends with people with similar interests and enjoying being young before the world of work. There was also a whole host of other discussion which gave me food for thought and made for an interesting evening. I’m always looking to learn and this is a nice way to network with people who can teach. I look forward to joining in another topic soon.

Last week I had my first professional pitch to a potential client, which made me very nervous! I had no need to be, as soon as we began I felt at ease and ready to go, confirming to me again that this is exactly what I want to be doing in my future career. This week we learned that we won whoo! Go Birds! Giving me a 100% success rate so far, let’s see if I can keep it that way! Challenge to self. There was nothing more fulfilling for me to prepare the pitch, present, and eventually WIN, and I am excited to do it all over again, many times! Later in the month I have been given the opportunity to travel to London to pitch to a new client, success number two? Only time will tell.

Yesterday marked our first staff meeting at Two Birds One Stone, and what a great way to embark on my experience in PR. When I decided to look for a placement I imagined the opportunity to gain insight on PR surroundings, how it works, what goes on in/out of the office, and a few tasks to complete, maybe as time and experience progressed I’d be given more responsibility, which would act as a stepping stone to my future career. However this is certainly not the way I’ve started out, we’ve been given a great chance to be creative here and offer real input to the accounts. Myself and Jonny were brought up to speed on each account the company holds so far and up coming pitches that we will help to prepare and also present, how exciting!! Already we took part in brainstorming ideas, and as I type this I am mid research for a few campaign routes that we want to look into. I am very much looking forward to our first pitch as part of the team next week, and hopefully we will come up with an amazing presentation to win the client over, watch this space. 

This week I’ve also had good developments with my personal endeavors. Along with three fellow PR students I worked on a hypothetical campaign pitch as was required for a tutorial activity. A few weeks ago, as we prepared the idea we took the initiative to contact NHS Blood and Transplant (the ”client” in our pitch) as we decided it would be amazing to actually raise awareness for the cause. We was put into contact with the Leeds Donor Centre to discuss the event and got the ball rolling for this to go ahead next semester, great news! This was confirmed further on Monday when we presented to the class and of course our tutor, who gave us amazing feedback! We were told that had it been assessed our group would have achieved a first for the campaign(whooo!), and that he would like to discuss it with a contact he has. So, once again I can’t wait to see how this one plays out…

As well as this I’ve been working with the same group of three friends on another project to run a charity Christmas event, all will be revealed as we start to promote over the next couple of weeks!

As I already mentioned, over the past two weeks I’ve been taking part in a competition called Student Apprentice to earn a part time placement at Two Birds One Stone.

Friday arrived: pitch day. The morning began with a press meeting with online student magazine Behind the Spin, I took part in the interview as a contestant and student representative alongside members of the judging panel; Alex Epstein, BBC Apprentice candidate 2010 and Shane Castle, business development manager at King of Shaves and Adam Burns, co-founder of Two Birds. I was very excited and intrigued to take part in this, it was a brilliant experience, insight and practice for me, both on conducting an interview and being the recipient.

Next came the pitches, my team: Early Birds get the Worm, presented third which was probably a slight woe for me personally. I was very excited for the final and looking forward to sharing our campaign ideas until the actual day when I began feeling pretty nervous! I was keeping up to speed as the day progressed via Twitter and the hashtag #StudentApprentice and seeing how high the standard was set made me feel apprehensive, luckily I had every faith in our idea and my team so when our time came to present I decided to just go with it and enjoy the pitch. We received a pretty hard grilling post presentation and managed to spark interesting discussion which looking back now probably gave us an edge as we had the opportunity to give answers and reassurance on any issues the panel could see with our campaign. During feedback comments at the results later in the day we received in my opinion the best compliment I could have wished for, they said what was most apparent from our pitch was our passion for our idea which is really the angle we went for. We decided what the panel were looking for from us as students was creativity and ideas not a business pitch, we all knew our idea by heart from all of the preparation so we didn’t memorise a script we went in there with a clear view of our ideas and discussed them, and it paid off!

The final chunk of the day came that afternoon with results at 5pm, which went amazingly for us with the result we were all hoping to achieve. Early Birds get the Worm are the student apprentice for Two Birds winners, amazing considering there were initially 89 competitors! I for one am extremely eager to get going and learn first hand how to work in PR. Jonny and I will be beginning our placement positions for the company in the Bell Pottinger office whilst Ben gets going with design at Magpie Comms. I’m sure updates will follow. This was also a great chance to network and get to know the panel, the Two Birds team and the other contestants, great fun and overall the whole process was fantastic! It really was the best experience, and brought out the enthusiasm and creativity in all of us.

The Leeds Met TV team oversaw and documented the entire program so I’m sure all teams will gain some great exposure, I can’t wait to see the finished product!

Of course all of the Early Birds were feeling celebratory and enjoyed a bottle of champagne, great start to the weekend!

:)