J Barbour & Sons PR Student Placement
Blog 8- February
Although we aren’t fully into the SS22 season yet, it has still been a very busy month during my placement. I continued to do weekly tasks such as Press round and creating dropboxes to send out to press. This month I created dropboxes for the ‘55 Degrees North’, ‘Counrtrywear’ and ‘Coast to Country’ collections. I also created an easter dropbox, which had imagery and flatshots of products aimed to get into easter product round ups in media titles. I continued to assist with ordering product through sales for press requests and gifting. This month we gifted Barbour International Boots The Evening Standard, influencer Sian Lewis. I ordered through sales on an urgent order form and organised for them to be delivered straight to her address.
Barbour 55 Degrees Collection SS22
Barbour Coast to Country Collection SS22
The PR Team also prepared for the new collections to launch, I got told the Explorer Ben and Marina Fogle collection is set to be released on 14th March. It was quite a fast turn around for this collection as the imagery was only shot a few weeks before launch.
During February I made a few different gifting menus. Gifting menus are a powerpoint deck with flatshots of each product, the product name and price. I did menus for the Barbour x House of Hackney collection as well as Barbour x Ally Capellino. The gifting menus were then sent as a pdf for VIPs, influencers and press to decide which product they would like to be gifted by the brand. For the menus, I only selected product which the PR team think will be well received by the press because the products are eyecatching etc.
In February I did a research deck on Idris and Sabrina Elba. The research deck covered recent press and any brands they have previously collaborated or worked with. I got tasked with this research task as the marketing team at Barbour are considering using Idris and Sabrina Elba as brand ambassadors or possibly even having them as the face of a new collection. In doing this research deck, they got to see the background of the celebrities in order to decide if they are the right fit for the brand.
During February a lot of preparation for gifting was done. The Barbour x Alexa Chung seeding (gifting) got delivered to Barbour House. I had the job of organizing the product and sending half to Exposure PR Agency in London as well as 40 E-comm boxes to be used for gifting the Barbour x Alexa Chung product to VIP influencers and press contacts.
During the month the PR team went through a deck in a meeting with the Exposure PR agency on press events for the upcoming season AW22. This included ideas for Barbour collaborations such as getting a paparazzi shot of Alexa Chung wearing a Barbour jacket attending Glastonbury music festival. Other ideas included gifting fashion/art insiders some clothing from the Barbour x Roksanda collection. They plan to develop the event ideas for Roksanda and find a suitable location within London for the upcoming months. I find the event side of PR one of the more interesting aspects, but I also think it is very exepenisve, having to create bigger and better events each year in order for news titles to still have interest in the brand.