Shortly after being accepted into
the Mohawk public relations program, I applied to the jobs available on campus.
I knew I wanted to be immersed in college, which is something I was not able to
achieve during university. Working as a marketing assistant while studying
public relations at Mohawk has been a wonderful challenge for me and allowed me
to learn and grow professionally. In many ways, I was able to apply concepts
from the program into my work. I was even lucky to submit work I did for my
position as assignments for a class (two birds, one poster). There were some
differences, however, since my position was marketing-focused.
Working with the Hospitality
Department and Mohawk Food Services, I was able to do different aspects of both
marketing and PR. My responsibilities included social media management, event
marketing, event planning and design. The biggest portion of my work was
focused on social media management, where we had to create a bigger following
for the Mohawk Food services as well as the McIntyre Performing Arts Centre. Getting
more followers meant more student engagement and better awareness of the events
and services offered by the department. Increasing the following was a big
challenge on all platforms; for instance, in September our followers on Twitter
for the MohawkFood account were 53, whereas now they are 102. The increase was
not as big as I would have liked it to be, but I am still very happy to have it
going up.
During this semester we learned marketing relates to selling a product,
while PR is all about promoting awareness and a positive image of a company or
organization. In my mind, you cannot separate the two: you cannot sell a
product if public is not aware of or has a negative image of your organization,
and a company cannot survive on reputation alone with no revenue. Especially
since working on social media management, I saw the importance of creating a
good image to achieve larger following and engagement, which then helps us
promote events and sell products. We need to create awareness of the Mohawk
Food accounts on social media, because we need to market sales and products to
students.
Another aspect these two worlds
share is design, where you can find yourself asked to create posters to market
an event or a product. A recent example is the Holiday Market event, which is
on next week (Thursday and Friday 10am-3pm). I was asked to create a poster on
short notice for the event. Luckily, our print design instructor, Shane Tiley,
showed us how to use Photoshop just a week ago and I was able to make up a
poster for the event. Not only was I able to create the poster but also prepare
it with appropriate settings for printing, which is something I thought very
little about before this class.
Here is the poster I designed for the event:
Here is a promotional card I've made for the Mohawk Market:
I do think I made the right choice for me with PR. As much as I enjoyed
marketing, I feel like working in public relations gives me a chance to connect
with different individuals and other organizations on a personal level. As a
communicator you get to see different levels of any organization you work at
and create a connection with your audience. As a consumer, I definitely value
products and services from companies that take the time to connect with me. I hope
one day I’ll be able to create that connection between a company and its
audience.
Here are the links to the social media accounts mentioned above:
MohawkFood
McIntyre Performing Arts Centre
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