A challenge and lesson in fashion...My first week at the Holyrood PR

By Oier LLinas Villasante

IT’S been just a week since I started my adventure as an intern here in Holyrood PR but it feels like years. In a, believe it or not, sunny day in Edinburgh, I crossed the office’s doors for the first time without knowing what to expect from an internship at a PR agency.

After less than 30 steps into the office, I found myself sat in front of in my desk and ready to start creating tweets to support some of the client’s accounts. New technologies are everywhere nowadays and, rather than seeing them as everlasting source of problems, the key is to turn them in to your best ally. How a keyboard and a screen can be a powerful PR instruments is one of the first things I have learnt during my short time at Holyrood PR.

The second key learning I discovered was why it is so important to tell the world how and why a story was reflected in the media. At Holyrood PR, the website is updated daily with coverage gained for clients, something most PR agencies don’t seem to do. It’s a great way of not only celebrating the coverage we got, but a way of showing potential future clients the various avenues used to get a story told.

Monotony is probably the word least used in this job. Working in a PR agency means that you will have a broad range of clients and in my first four days at Holyrood I had already been introduced to everything from golf, renewable energy, property and courier clients. This fast-paced, ever-changing environment has given me a great insight to how a busy PR agency works with clients, handles media enquiries and ensures all campaigns are on track.

Now, from PR account handling to PR fashion. As the week progressed I observed that a neat shirt or a blouse and, sometimes a tie, were essentials for the workers. Coming from the Basque Country, where most of the journalists left the suit aside a long time ago, I tried to keep the profile as best as I could. By Friday, I had the style absolutely stuck in my head so I chose to go smart. My surprise was immense when I discovered that everyone was wearing casual clothes, following a fashion that I thought it was only reserved for the Hollywood movies. Hello “Dress down Friday.” This final lesson has well and truly been learnt and this Friday, I swear, the squares of my shirt will be the biggest in the office.