J Barbour & Sons PR Student Placement
Blog 6- December
December has been a very quiet month in comparison to November when there were multiple launches and events. December mostly consisted of keeping track of Press Coverage of all of the collections and Christmas advert, Barbour managed to gain and record within a Powerpoint deck.
At the start of December, we sent product to a stylist for the Elton John and Ed Sheeran Christmas song music video, which the PR Team were very excited about. The stylist wanted the product for the fitting with the Musicians ahead of the music video. The stylist ended up keeping the product even though when the music video they didn't use the Barbour product. This really showed me the risk of PR gifting and how it doesn't always guarantee success.
Throughout December I needed to keep track of all of the Barbour Fragrance press coverage and put it into a coverage deck in Powerpoint. As Barbour has just launched for the first time ever both Men’s and Women’s fragrance.
In one of the main Barbour, marketing meets the PR team discussed the new Barbour x Ally Capellino collaboration which is set to launch in February. I got to attend the meeting which was exciting. The PR Team discussed the launch and the PR aspects such as the possibility of a promotional Q&A with the Ally Capellino brand and the inspiration and thoughts behind the clothing collab.
One of the most exciting parts of December was getting to preview the photography for the new Barbour x Alexa Chung SS22 collab. The images got mixed reviews throughout the office. The shoot consisted of a model wearing the Alexa jackets in a festival style setting, a muddy field with fencing and plastic seating. The photos were very different to Barbours usual style photography which was probably the reason a few people were unsure. I personally really liked the images and it was interesting to learn that a lot of the photos were captured on 50mm film, which I am noticitng a lot of brands are doing at the moment.
Barbour x ALEXACHUNG Campaign Imagery SS22
Before Christmas break, one of the main tasks I did was put together Valentine's day gift guide. This meant collecting flat shots and imagery of each product which is most likely to be bought by consumers for valentines day, e.g red tops, pink dresses etc. The images were renamed with the product name and retail price (RRP) and images were then compiled into a dropbox which got sent to press. This is done in order to get press coverage on valentines day of our products.
Because we are coming to the end of the AW21 season, we have been doing a lot of preparation for SS22. I find it strange preparing so far in advance but though doing this placement I’m beginning to understand how brands work behind the scenes. I got to see the new SS22 Range directories and filled them in the office. I was told the range directories (sort of like a lookbook) are made for the purpose of giving to retailers to pick which products they would like to stock for the upcoming season. They have the same purpose as the Barbour showrooms, for buyers to pick out what they believe are the most stand-out products.