J Barbour & Sons PR Student Placement
Blog 2- August
In my Second Month at Barbour, I was still settling into my new job and completing some tasks left on my handover from Maddie, the previous PR student placement. I continued to complete inductions with other departments, on 5th August I did an induction with Rebecca Purcell from the sales team. Learning how they do their job and how I will be working with her team throughout my time at Barbour. This was really useful as I learnt I will be ordering products through sales which then get sent to the press, celebrities and influencers as gifting to achieve coverage.
I also took part in an online Barbour workshop for new starters alongside all of the other placement students. This included a Q&A on the company to make sure we know the heritage and key info about Barbour values, and their core consumer. Some of the key things from this workshop included learning about how Malcolm Barbour started the Barbour catalogues 2nd generation, and how Dame Margaret started the Barbour foundation.
Barbour Catalogues
Throughout August I got more confident doing Press Round-Up, which is one of the PR Placement jobs which I need to complete weekly. Press round-up includes collating key press Barbour has got within the week through software called Cision. I then compile this into a PowerPoint deck presented in the correct format, get it checked over by my team, and then send it out to each department within the business. I find it interesting seeing all of the coverage Barbour gets and the impact the PR team has on how much press Barbour achieves each week.
During August I learnt about the partnership/ agreement The Gleneagles Hotel have with Barbour. Gleneagles put in regular orders to PR as they have an allowance of clothing. They regularly get in touch with the PR team to order product for special visitors and staff uniforms. Going forward I need to keep in contact with them, order their product/ collect it from the staff shop and send it to them via dpd. I also need to add what they ordered each time to a total excel to keep track of how much of their allowance they have used so far.
One of my other key job roles is collating research decks for the PR team. This month I have created research decks on fashion brands Roksanda and Ganni ahead of possible collaborations with each brand. This task included gathering key info on the brands as well as any recent press, both positive and negative. I also did a research deck for the head of PR about carbon footprint and offset, ahead of her meeting to help her prepare. I collected 10 impactful news headlines and presented them to her within the deadline.
One key job role I also got to grips with is creating drop boxes for the press. This includes renaming the correct high res campaign images both imagery and flat shots and uploading both the images and press releases in pdf format to the correct dropbox folder. I then send the dropbox link to my team and the relevant press contacts for that Barbour collection/ collaboration. In August I created drop boxes for the Barbour x Engineered Garments which launched on the 17th of August and the Barbour x House of Hackney collaboration which is set to launch on the Barbour website on the 27th of September.
One key job role I also got to grips with is creating drop boxes for the press. This includes renaming the correct high res campaign images both imagery and flat shots and uploading both the images and press releases in pdf format to the correct dropbox folder. I then send the dropbox link to my team and the relevant press contacts for that Barbour collection/ collaboration. In August I created drop boxes for the Barbour x Engineered Garments which launched on the 17th of August and the Barbour x House of Hackney collaboration which is set to launch on the Barbour website on the 27th of September.
Barbour x Engineered Garments Collab
Barbour x House of Hackney Collab
One of the things I enjoy about creating the dropboxes is I get to look at the campaign imagery ahead of the public as photography is something that really interests me. Doing this placement has really made me realize how much I want to go into photography. I know that I have started the PR placement so I will try and see it through and try to learn as much as I can.
On Wednesday 4th of August, the PR team hosted a virtual online press breakfast to celebrate the Re-waxing Centenary. The event was hosted by TV presenter Angellica Bell and she interviewed the Director of Menswear, Ian Bergin. During the interview, Ian and Angellica showcased the virtual platform that has been built to showcase Barbour’s Wax for Life initiative. Both national and regional journalists logged in to the event and a breakfast hamper was sent out to each attendee to enjoy while they watched the presentation. In total 16 guests attended the exclusive event from top-tier titles including The Daily Telegraph, Grazia, GQ, Country & Townhouse, Essential Journal, You Magazine and Drapers.
A lot of preparation was done ahead of the event which I got to help with. This included ordering products to go into the breakfast hamper, which me and Rachael, from my team put together and posted to each of the attendees. After the event, I helped collate a virtual press breakfast coverage deck. This included going through Cision and screen grabbing any coverage that we secured from the event attendees and presenting it in a PowerPoint deck for my supervisor.
It was interesting to see how the PR team had adjusted to the covid restrictions and found a way to still do PR events virtually to secure coverage for the brand.