 Close your eyes and think of how creative you are. Give yourself a number from one to ten as one meaning you don’t know what creativity is. Now that you have evaluated yourself, I can assure you that the number doesn’t matter. The importance is not how much creativity you have, but in a what way you are creative. Last evening, I attended the PRCA event with Mark Simmonds, founder of Creative Creatures, to learn more about the creative archetypes and the fundamental behaviours critical to the creative process. As the talk was about creativity, Mark decided to lead an interactive session instead of a boring presentation, and I’m glad he did. Divided into teams, we were given a challenge to help Marks & Spenser make a profit of all waistcoats they have ordered in advance of the World Cup semi-finals. I guess the football fever hasn’t passed yet. We started by brainstorming ideas on sticky notes and we were presented with the first archetype – The Stimulator. This phase of the creative process is all about fresh thinking and exploring diverse ideas. And seniority doesn’t link to creativity. So, if you have a meeting at work (or at University) invite people with different experiences as they will generate a multitude of initial thoughts. Who knows? You might actually find the Big Idea!  Once we had a dozen of sticky notes with ideas, we had to find interesting connections between them and unearth the big, valuable ideas, which leads to the next type in the process – The Spotter. Being this person in a team is very valuable. You might not have hundreds of initial ideas, but once you go through several “sticky notes” you can spot the potential in one of them. The third archetype is The Sculptor – the person who can bring the big idea to life by creating tangible solutions and presenting them clearly to the team. Some people have the great skill of turning one thought into a great masterpiece. And in a team, you don’t necessarily have to be the person, who came up with the idea in the first place as long as you can make it happen. After all teams had written down their big ideas on a piece of paper, we had to go around and vote for the best idea (and no, we couldn’t vote for ourselves unfortunately!). We were in The Selector mode. We had to choose the idea with the most potential considering the commercial impact and the brief. Usually, in an agency or a company, this person would be someone who can make hard decisions and have a view of the big picture. And finally, the fifth archetype is The Supporter – trying to support the team and facilitate the meeting during the creative process. And this doesn’t mean making tea for the colleagues but keeping the team on track and encouraging them to be as bold and creative as they can be. Because as Edward de Bono said: “Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in different way.” According to Mark, people can be a mix of few archetypes and a given situation affects which one dominates. It’s essential to remember that we are all creative and we have a different role in our teams. So which archetype are you? 
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 First business card Today marks one year since I started my placement as a PR & Marketing Intern at Red Setter – B2B agency working across the design and creative industry. In the beginning, I managed the business database and worked alongside the Editorial Director on the marketing and SEO plan of Red Setter. I was glad that my recommendations were well received and appreciated, and since then I have made an impact on the agency. With time, I started managing the agency’s social media accounts and website. I increased the Twitter followers by 26% and LinkedIn followers by 110% so far. (yay!) I achieved this by following relevant people in the industry, writing blog posts and promoting those on social media. In September I was interviewed by a journalist from Response Source about my experience at Red Setter – it was a great way to look back at the past few months and reflect on my internship. One of my biggest projects so far has been the research and analysis of social media channels. These included the platforms Design Week and Campaign Top 100 agencies as well as interviews with 50 leaders in the industry via a survey (which got us a new client!). The findings were used in our “Guide to Agency Growth through Social Media”. I also presented them to second-year digital communications students as a guest speaker at Bournemouth University. In January, I was promoted to PR Account Executive and I started working alongside the PR Account Directors on our clients. I am tracking coverage, creating media lists and quarterly reports, building forward features calendars, finding relevant newsjacking/media opportunities and drafting press releases. As we work with clients from all over the world, I gained valuable knowledge about the American, Australian, Italian and Asian media. I’ve been talking to events’ organisers to find speaker opportunities for our clients in the UK and the USA. I have also pitched press releases to the design and marketing media and have secured coverage in The Drum, Creative Boom, Transform, Marketing Communications News and several packaging publications. The overall readership of the coverage was more than five million. I often go to conferences and industry events, representing the agency and then write posts for our website. Writing blog posts for the agency’s website encouraged me to create my own blog and capture my experience during the internship. Few of my posts have been featured on PR Place and the PRCA website and it was very exciting to be recognised by such respected organisations. 1. Three words to describe your placement search: Preparation for graduate-research (almost three words!) 2. What did you find the most helpful in your placement search: Talking to final-year students, who have already been through this. 3. Three words to describe your placement: Such A Blast! 4. Most interesting part of your placement: Aside from writing press releases and pitching stories to journalists, I really enjoyed going to industry events and meeting not only fellow PR people, but artists, designers and illustrators. 5. Most enjoyable aspect of your placement: Representing the agency at industry events and then writing blog posts about them. I went to Brighton SEO, TEDxBrighton, several Glug and PRCA events. 6. What gave you the most satisfaction during placement year: Securing coverage for our clients in top-tier titles. Seeing that all those hours spent researching publications and drafting press releases paid off – an amazing feeling! 7. Two tips for future placement students: Don’t be afraid to contact agencies, which are not advertising placements (I secured my internship through LinkedIn) and don’t sell yourself short – you probably have more experience than you think. 8. How has your placement helped focus your future plans: I LOVE working with a variety of clients, so I will probably stay in the agency side of PR for now. I cannot wait to see what will happen in the next three months before I go back to University. “Having Yana on our team has been brilliant. She has constantly demonstrated enthusiasm to explore new ideas and a desire to learn. PR is ever evolving and having an intern who has embraced all the facets of PR from social media, to pitching, to research and to writing has been great. I think as an agency we’ve learnt a lot from Yana and I hope she’s seen the learnings and value of hands on experience too.” - Vicky Stoakes, Client Services Director  Red Setter Berlin trip  PRCA published the latest PR and Communications Census yesterday and I couldn’t miss the opportunity to attend the launch event in the office of Golin London to learn about its findings.
The Census covers an industry that’s in good health – there are now more than 86,000 PR practitioners in the UK – but it also reveals some disturbing trends. The PR industry remains predominantly female. Danny Rogers, Editor of PRWeek, talked about the 90s stereotype that if you are a woman in the PR industry, you will organise parties just like Absolutely Fabulous. But it’s not the 90s any more. Our industry has made significant progress since the social media boom, he said. PR ideas transform businesses now – just look at the Fearless Girl female empowerment campaign. But even though the industry has moved on – and 66 per cent of PR practitioners are women – there is still 21 per cent gender pay gap in the sector. Another finding that struck me was that 12 per cent of PR professionals still use the relatively outdated AVEs to measure their activities. If we cannot accurately measure what we do, how can we expect people to invest in us? I am happy that Red Setter, where I am currently on placement, is in line with 24 per cent of our fellow practitioners (according to the census) by basing our evaluation on the Barcelona Principles 2.0. Francis Ingham, the Director of PRCA, pointed out the increasing diversity of the industry, with more representation from the LGBT, minority and disabled communities than ever before. He said the PRCA is working hard to provide a good working environment for this diverse community, as well as tackling the gender pay gap and creating a measurement system that proves PR’s worth to a sceptical world. Francis concluded by celebrating the balance he sees in the PR industry, with traditional PR – which includes media relations and reputation management – working hand-in-hand with the ‘new’ PR centred on digital channels and social media. What a time this is to be working in the PR industry!  Established around 60 years ago, Cannes Lions is the world’s biggest festival and awards programme for the creative and marketing communications, entertainment, design and tech industries. When we heard they’d be announcing some big changes, we were intrigued to know what was changing and why so we went to find out.
Co-organised with the PRCA and held in the amazing offices of Ogilvy PR – with its stunning panoramic view of central London – the event was hosted by Fiorenza Plinio, head of business development at Cannes Lions, who ran through the big changes that everyone was waiting to hear. The worlds of PR, advertising and marketing must constantly change to stay relevant. Cannes Lions must change with them to reflect the creative communication industry properly, she said. For agencies thinking of entering the awards, it will come as a relief to learn that the 120 old sub-categories have been removed, so the process of applying has been greatly simplified. Instead, the awards are split between nine ‘tracks’, within which you’ll find all the award categories. So, for example, the PR Lions fall within the Reach track as they focus on building engagement and influence. One thing that particularly impressed me was the new Sustainable Development Goals Lions. As you may have heard, the United Nations introduced 17 Sustainable Goals in 2017 to tackle world issues such as poverty, gender inequality and climate changes. The Cannes Lions have introduced the same categories to encourage brands and agencies to raise awareness about them – and all fees paid for these entries will be donated to the UN to support their work in these areas. As the event was co-organised by PRCA, there was a particular focus on the PR Lions. Fiorenza called PR “the hottest industry” and said it stands for building engagement. She said the three most important things for a PR campaign are purpose, brand value and offline content that goes viral. She cited the “Fearless Girl” statue in Manhattan, which she described as a simple and brave, but effective idea. She encouraged more PR agencies to enter the Cannes Lions Awards because, she said, creativity in PR matters and should be celebrated. Here at Red Setter, we couldn’t agree more – creativity in PR really does matter and we strive to include it in everything we do for our clients. During the Q&A session, this year’s head of the PR Lions Jury, Stuart Smith, global CEO of Ogilvy PR, and director of social media at Hill + Knowlton, Candace Kuss, discussed the future of PR. No one really knows which way the wind is going to blow or how the industry will change but Stuart said something that was music to my ears: “PR should be part of the whole creative process, from gathering insights and analysing, through creating the strategy, to executing the campaign.”  The title of this event at the PRCA Creative Group event intrigued me. Are women held back in PR? After all, I work in a PR agency where our MD is a woman, our Head of PR is a woman. It's a predominantly female organisation, and a quick straw poll in the office before I left revealed that none of us feels held back.
It turns out we’re unusual. Harriet Minter, journalist and a speaker on women’s rights, kicked off the session with a striking fact: women fill 70% of the entry-level positions in PR, but only 12% of the creative director positions. Lotte Jones, Creative Director at Teneo Blue Rubicon, suggested that PR is a relatively new industry, therefore there are not many women role-models yet. She also added that explicitly in the creative sector, women are not encouraged to take risks with their ideas as much as men. And in the end, success comes from taking risks. Mentoring and peer coaching are good ideas to bring more women in the creative industry explained Rebecca Grant, UK Managing Director at Cohn & Wolfe, one of WPP’s best-performing agencies. She advised the audience to hire on potential, not on experience. In her view, women are less likely to push themselves and they only take a job if they “tick all boxes". Kat Thomas, founder & Global Executive Creative Director of One Green Bean, recommended women to stop calculating risks, but actually, take them: “What’s the worst that can happen?”. It was a wide-ranging debate that covered a host of questions such as: Is it simply that PR is a relatively new industry? Do we just wait for women to make their way through their careers and it will all even out in time? Or do women need to be encouraged to take more risks? Do companies need to encourage women to apply for jobs that they might worry they’re under-qualified for? Would mentoring and peer coaching help? Do women need to rethink their perceptions of ambition, and stop being afraid to ask for promotions and pay rises? The panel agreed that women should not “act like men” to fit in, but they should be aware of the environment and stay true to themselves. Rebecca Grant finished the discussion by saying that it is more important to foster a creative culture within the company than having ‘creative’ in the titles. It was a fascinating and inspiring debate. My favourite piece of advice from the night was to “Have fun and just add creativity to everything you do.” It’s an approach I try to adopt in my life and that I see happening every day in my work at Red Setter. |
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