J Barbour & Sons PR Student Placement
Blog 11- May/June
May was a relatively quiet month due to all of the PR press events being over. I mostly dealt with research tasks, press requests and general admin tasks.
I was given multiple images from old Barbour photoshoots, I was tasked to find out which year and collection they were each from and when they were used. I did this by looking through all of the old Barbour archived catalogues. Luckily they had been digitised so I could look them quite efficiently on my work laptop. I really liked this task as I found it interesting seeing all of the old photography and how the product, brand and photography style have changed and refined over the years. I especially liked seeing the change in going from using film photography to digital and the difference in results in campaign imagery.
I completed a task for my supervisor Sue which was to find a Hotel available with 5 rooms for the 16th-19th of June near Thirlstane Castle. This was because is going to be visiting Thirlstane Castle as part of a work trip in June with other colleagues. The hotel needed to be within a 30min drive of the venue and have enough rooms available for the dates and numbers needed. It took me a long time to find places which fit the criteria, this was due to how last minute the booking was. I phoned up and contacted around 20 hotels until I found one available to which Sue then booked for herself and the other marketing department employees attending the event.
I helped assist in a few press requests during May to which I had to organise product either from our sample storage or via Barbour store. During May we got an Image request from Ben Palfreyman from Sporting Shooting Magazine, he needed a product image which could be featured in the next edition. I supplied Ben with a renamed high res image of a shirt which was suitable after discussing the request with my team. I didn’t think that Barbour would still want to be featured in a shooting magazine, however, Sue decided it was ok as it aligns with Barbours aim to still keep their country wear image.
A Press request came from the Television show ‘Meet the Richardsons’, I helped supply them with product needed from our SS22 sample cage and posted the items to the stylist's address, then made a note for the PR Team to watch out for our product in upcoming episodes. The most exciting Press request, in my opinion, was from ‘The Laterals’ magazine. Arranged product for Actor Ben Walker to wear for a photoshoot for the Magazine. The shoot was based in London and was needed urgently for the following week. This meant I had to ring up the Barbour store in Covent Garden London and talk to the manager to select products which could then be couriered to the shoot. I had never heard of ‘The Laterals’ magazine before this press request came into the Barbour email. I researched the magazine and really liked its aesthetic and photography style.
Finally one of my final tasks for May was a research task for the global marketing director, Paul Wilkinson. The task was to find out and record what other brands are doing for the platinum Jubilee, and what they had on their websites, social media and store windows. This task took a lot of time and research but was interesting to compare each brand and see how they chose to promote the platinum jubilee.
During June I got covid, I got affected quite badly by it and had to be off sick for a week of my placement which I missed a few things during that week. Besides that June was a somewhat quiet Month. It consisted of my usual weekly tasks, such as press round-up, generating press packs, and updating global coverage decks. I have been doing a lot of admin tasks, ordering stationery for the department and helping print off important documents and contracts for the head of marketing. I have also been preparing handover notes for the next placement students. This year there are going to be two placement students taking over my role, and there will be a week cross-over between me finishing my placement and them starting theirs. I am going to try and teach them as much as I can in the short amount of time we have together in order to prepare them as best as possible for the year ahead.
I am really looking forward to having the summer to explore gaining more experience/ internships and freelance photography jobs. I think overall doing a year in the industry has really prepared me for going into the fashion industry and has prepared me for going into my final year of Fashion Communication with knowledge and experience within the industry to touch upon. I am really grateful to Barbour as well as University for giving me this experience and look forward to going into my final year in September.