A day in the life at a PR agency
An insight into my industrial placement at Ranieri
Often, when people hear that you’re an intern they assume that you are an admin machine. “Don’t interns just make coffee and arrange meetings?” — the answer in my case, is definitely not. For just over a year I worked as Junior Account Executive at Ranieri, a PR, Social and Influencer Marketing agency. Here is a day in the life of my industrial placement.
It is first worth noting a little background about the company. Based in Oxford Circus, Ranieri is a consumer tech, gaming and lifestyle PR agency, with Influencer and Social Media marketing capabilities. The team was made up of around 15 people, and senior and more junior members of the team all worked in 1 office, communicating with each other frequently. This was one of the best parts of my role — I was able to work closely alongside senior managers and learn a lot from them.
On a Monday morning, my first task would be to collect the newspapers from the previous week. We would then sit as a team to read them, collating any useful articles or journalist names that could gain coverage for our clients. The rest of my morning would then be filled with other admin responsibilities. This entailed reaching out to and sending product samples to journalists and gifts to influencers, clipping client coverage, emailing it to them and adding them to a document, and sending an email with relevant news articles to the Ranieri team. At times when we had campaigns to pitch, we would hold brainstorming sessions as a team to give creative ideas. This was one of my favourite activities during my time at Ranieri, as it gave me the opportunity to share my thoughts and ideas and learn from the ideas of others.
The bulk of my day would often depend on the needs of each client, so I had a wide variety of tasks to complete. Perhaps my favourite of these was social media content planning. I ran two social media pages during my placement with supervision from my social media manager Sam Williams, for clients Firexo and Wharfedale. As two polar opposite clients, the social media pages required different approaches.
For Firexo, the content would largely focus around fire safety. During my time on the account, I introduced weekly Fact Friday infographics, giving insights into both the company and fire safety as a whole. For Wharfedale, the most important aspect was community management — they have a loyal, knowledgable fanbase who adored the products, so we focused on nourishing this relationship in order to maintain the community feel. Getting under the skin of each brand was definitely one of the highlights of my placement.
I also worked closely with client JBL. For this client I would frequently reach out to influencers, liaised with the client once a month to write their monthly newsletter (supervised by my manager, Lawrence), clipped influencer coverage and researched potential influencer collaborations. The time spent on this client was fortunately supported by two of my brilliant managers — shout out to Samantha and Alex! Their passion for the industry and commitment to the client taught me many valuable lessons about the nature of PR and nurturing client and journalist relationships. Not only that, but they guided me in writing killer press releases and media alerts, teaching me everything I know. I also gained a wealth of knowledge about the world of influencers from my manager Jannic — from communications to creative gifting campaigns, he’s your guy! Working with JBL and the team was a brilliant experience, and I feel very fortunate to have been part of so many great creative projects and campaigns.
I greatly appreciated having the opportunity to write during my time at Ranieri. I would frequently write product blurbs, press releases and media alerts, newsletters, social copy and influencer gifting notes. Working on clients that I genuinely wanted to do well for ensured that these tasks were always enjoyable. While I was assigned hours on specific clients, I tried to maintain good knowledge of them all so that if my help was ever needed I was always available.
Every team member at Ranieri has taught me something different and equally valuable. I truly believe that if it weren’t for the dynamic, creative and intelligent minds of those around me I wouldn’t have gained so much out of the experience. From direct contact with managers from all leadership levels, to having the pleasure of speaking to clients, journalists and influencers, I have grown significantly professionally — and had so much fun along the way! I’d like to thank Ranieri for not only the experience, but for all the laughs and support during such a strange and difficult time.
