Well, I’ve kept pretty quiet about my news, but I’m ready to announce that today I will be leaving my role at Thornley Fallis Communications – not quite ready to announce where I’m going or what I’m up to, but that will come soon enough. But I wanted to publicly say goodbye to those who have become more than colleagues – you are my friends. You are a fantastic group of people and a great team. I will miss you all.

I struggled with this decision because I love my job and I love the people I work with – both my colleagues and our clients. But there comes a time when you realize that its time to leave the nest and spread your wings – it’s time to fly alone. With this change, I look forward to new challenges, new beginnings and new experiences. It has also allowed me to look back on my time here and truly reflect on myself as an individual and how far I’ve come since I walked into a green foyer, with purple trim and red leather chairs – which by the way is now a whole new office with very chic red, gray and beige with steel accents.

My point however, is that I have come a long way. I’ve learned so much in my time here. The last 18 months have been an incredible rollarcoaster of both personal and professional proportions and everyone in this office has supported me through all of it. As a result, I’ve become more competent in my abilities and more confident in myself. I couldn’t have asked for a better place to begin what I hope is a long career in digital communications. And for a little nostalgia, check out my very first PR Girlz post.

So with that, I say goodbye and thank you to everyone at TFC for what has been a fantastic experience.

PS: Planning meetings will never be the same without me – FYI.

So you may have noticed that the PR Girlz have been a bit slow with the updates lately and while we luv all of you who read and support us, we have good reason: We’re crazy busy!! It’s been nutty around TF this fall – we’ve got some great new clients on top of our fabulous existing clients, some new staff to welcome and we even launched our new website.

Don’t get me wrong though, we’re still hopping so this post won’t be a long one – promise to start jamming out our regular thought-provoking and insightful commentary in the New Year though. But as a quick update:

New Website – If you haven’t seen it already, you’re missing out! Our new web presence is super awesome thanks to our design guys in Ottawa at 76Design. The new site incorporates some of the great features from the original but adds a bit more ’social twist’ with LifeStream feeds and people profiles.

New Staff – We’re happy to welcome Andrea Pietkiewicz to the TF team as a Senior Consultant. You can follow her on Twitter @Scubagirl15 and hopefully we’ll get her blogging for PR Girlz shortly.

Happy Holidays – Once again, our brilliant 76′ers have pulled together a fantastic holiday e-card! Please be nice as you enjoy our festive holiday sweaters from Value Village – although ’some’ staffers seemed to already have such awful attire in their possession. (Hmmmm…

ENJOY! 

Guest post by Sarah Laister, TF’s Administrative Coordinator:

This past weekend, the PR Girlz at TFC had the pleasure of taking part in the 20^th Scotia Bank Toronto Waterfront Marathon.  It’s the biggest in Canada and held right here in Toronto every September.

The marathon is great opportunity for runners of all shapes and sizes to come out and push themselves to their personal best.  In fact, this year a new record was set for the fastest marathon run on Canadian soil by Kenneth Mungara.  Kenneth ran the full marathon in just 2 hours and 8 minutes!  Incredible.   But the marathon also provides the chance for participants to raise money the charity of their choice through sponsorships.  Over, $1.8 million was raised this year alone for dozens of different charities  around the country.

Now, for the reason I’m writing about all of this instead of just providing a link to the Marathon website…

At 8:00am Sunday morning, I rolled out of bed, grabbed a coffee and navigated my way through the maze of re-routed streetcars to meet up with some of my fellow “PR Girlz” at Union Station.  From there we were heading down to the starting line at the CNE grounds to walk the 5km in support of the Canadian Pain Coalition’s first fundraiser “Pennies for Pain.”  The Canadian Pain Coalition is a patient association we’ve had the privilege of working with through one of our clients.

Naturally, we were more than happy to participate and walk in support of such a worthy cause.  I, for one, had a lot of fun on Sunday morning and I’m pretty sure the TFC ladies walking with me feel the same way.  It was so refreshing to be up on a Sunday morning (walking on Lakeshore Boulevard under the Gardiner Expressway!), when I would usually be fast asleep.  But as I watched the marathon runners cross the finish line I felt both lazy and completely inspired.  Perhaps I’ll work my way up to the half-marathon for next year.  Until then, here’s a picture of myself and the TFC “PR Girlz” between the crossing the finish line and breakfast at Fran’s.

It feels too soon to say goodbye, but sadly that is what I’m here to say.
This Friday is my last day here at TFC.

I have decided, after much reflection, to go back to school to pursue a degree in Nutritional Science. I know I know, quite a change! I realize I am straying very far from the PR world but this is something I think, for many reasons, is right for me.

Of course leaving will be bittersweet. I am excited about the challenges and new experiences ahead of me, but I will miss a lot of things about working here. Mostly, I will miss the people. It will not be easy to leave such a kind, smart and talented group.

I have learned a lot while working here at TFC. And even though I am not continuing on in PR, I feel like I am equipped to face new challenges wherever I may go with the skills and knowledge I have gained here. So, thanks guys.

I also wanted to thank you all for reading PR Girlz. I have really enjoyed writing on here and hope to continue my blogging adventures on my own in the near future. Keep reading!

Farewell!

My First Impressions of PR and Social Media

Many of you have asked me some really great questions on Public Relations and social media from the perspective of a new PR practitioner. I will try and answer them now as best I can and give some insight into my first impressions of the PR world.

The transition from school to the workforce

I totally understand the fear of leaving school and entering the PR workforce. I was especially nervous making this transition because my background wasn’t even in PR and I had not had any experience with social media. The biggest thing I found was that there is truly nothing more valuable than actual hands-on experience. Even though you may have a degree, that doesn’t mean that you have learned everything there is to know about working in PR, or any field for that matter. I also found that people are always willing to help, which makes the transition a lot easier. And it doesn’t hurt that I work with some of the most creative and intelligent people in the industry! Yes, being a psychology student and then transitioning to working as an Account Coordinator at a PR firm was a little tricky. But I wouldn’t worry too much about the transition because I think you’ll find that if you have the right attitude and are willing to dive in head-first and learn everything there is to know, the transition will be a much easier one.

What I’ve found the toughest so far and how I’ve overcome it

Throughout the learning process that was starting this job, I have found a couple things to be a bit challenging. But I think the biggest thing that I struggled with and still struggle with is media pitching. This was something I didn’t start until recently because it honestly made me a little nervous! Even after my first couple attempts I still felt pretty lost. Right now I am actually in the process of resolving this issue. I decided to talk to someone about it. I asked if maybe I could sit in with someone and watch them pitch or perhaps have a colleague set up a work shop on the subject. There are a lot of things you might find difficult in your first PR job and the point is to ALWAYS ask questions and think of ways to make things easier on yourself. I’m sure that by having a workshop on pitching and seeing how another person does it, I will improve my skills and I’ll feel a lot more comfortable.

My thoughts on all this social media stuff

Social media was something that I never thought I would be interested in. However, a couple weeks into my job when I found myself passionately discussing it while out for dinner one night, I realized I might be slightly fascinated by it. It may seem overwhelming because there are so many ways to engage in the social media world… maybe too many! For some people, they are able to participate in many forms of social media easily and effectively. For me, I have chosen a couple tools to focus on. Social media started out as something I participated in as a job requirement but then quickly grew into a major part of my daily life. Reading and commenting on blogs and podcasts that you find interesting is a great way to start interacting with others in the PR and social media worlds (if you’d like some suggestions let me know).  Also, you don’t have to have your own blog, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts are a good step in creating your online presence, not to mention they are easy to create and maintain. In terms of staying engaged with twitter, I post things about my daily life, PR specific stuff or simply things I find interesting. The point of social media is to share and discuss, so find the tools you like best and contribute as much as you can to them.  And if you really feel like you don’t know anything about social media, I suggest going over to Common Craft and watching their videos .They discuss everything from Wiki’s to RSS to Twitter, all “in plain English”.

So those are my first impressions of PR and social media. I’d love to hear your thoughts! And for any other newcomers to PR and social media, what have your first impressions been?

Miley Cyrus dominates the entertainment news, again. This time, the teenage star of “Hannah Montana” created uproar because of a portrait by Annie Liebovitz that appeared in Vanity Fair. Even if we have seen more of High School Musical’s Vanessa Hudgens, even if Anne Hathaway can play a dirty rich girl in Brokeback Mountain, and even though novelists and artists have been documenting the sexuality of teenagers for millennia, this is deemed “newsworthy”.

Again, we are confronted by the elastic boundaries governing the ethics of publicity and public relations.

According to Wikipedia, “Ethics is not limited to specific acts and defined moral codes, but encompasses the whole of moral ideals and behaviors, a person’s philosophy of life.” So let’s apply this — let’s pretend that Miley is your client. How would you go about promoting her? To what end would you go to promote her?

We know that Miley is a well known brand. She’s completed a huge tour. Hannah Montana is a well-known Disney brand. She has a new movie coming out in 2009.

Anything current? Nope. So whaddya do?  You find the story or make the story.

You see,  the media are hungry. Feed ‘em or they go hunting. So, that sort of brings me back to the second consideration: To what end would you go?

- Would you create a controversy? We know that controversy sells, especially in the US and the national bias towards the reactionary. She would gain top-of-mind name recognition with an expanded audience, and maybe lose a few more conservative constituents. However, a well-timed, well-worded apology would take care of that.

You see, the thing that is not sitting well for me in this controversy is that I think that it was good PR for Miley Cyrus regardless of age. My husband, who would not have known her name before Sunday, emailed this to me from a photography web site. And by using his case example of one, this tactic worked. Now he knows who she is.

I also believe that it was executed ethically. Values are fickle in North America. As a society, as quickly as we condemn the girl for demonstrating her burgeoning sexuality, we will forgive her. We find the reason (“it was the photographers fault”) accept it and move on. She is Hannah Montana after all. We the society that Brooke Shields asked “What comes between me and Calvin Kleins?” and then went onto Princeton and now is a spokesperson for all things mother-positive. And didn’t Drew Barrymore weather her drug scandal well?

To say that this was anything other than a ethical publicity ploy would be hypocritical and you needn’t look further than the catwalks and editorial photography in fashion magazines. They are filled with teens. These are the teens that peer down from billboards, act in TV shows and commercials have the ability, rightly or wrongly,  to inspire girls as much as a Miley Cyrus does.

Fundamentally, I have a hard time believing that she did this against her will. I don’t believe she was misled in anyway. (Neither does Jamie Lee Curtis, apparently.) The result is an artistic image. The interpretation by its audience is the less wholesome thing.

The Miley Cyrus brand footprint was extended with a controversial and beautiful photo by a modern photography icon. She was vindicated by a seemingly heart-felt apology. She still works for Disney. Tell me, where is the downside?

Make sure to visit http://torontogirlgeekdinners.pbwiki.com/ and sign-up to attend the Toronto Girl Geek Dinner on October 17th.

 If you are a female technology student you can attend this event free of charge, as Thornley Fallis Communications and 76design are sponsoring this month’s dinner and are paying for 12 students to attend.

 Hope to see you there!

Would it be overly cliché if I said “I’m baaaaaack!”?  Probably.  But that’s how I feel.  I returned to Thornley Fallis at the end of July after being away for six months, exploring other career opportunities in the world of public relations.  So why did I come back?  Because this is where I belong.

On a basic level, I decided to come back to Thornley Fallis because this place feels like home to me.  I enjoy working with my colleagues and clients, and am met everyday with new challenges. These warm and fuzzy feelings translate into the quality of work I deliver and allow me to be a better senior consultant.

It didn’t take very long for me to realize that in order to be satisfied with your job, you need to enjoy working with your colleagues and feel comfortable in your workplace environment.

Now having said that, over the years I have held positions at other companies that had a less than positive work environment. However, I still managed to learn a lot and develop a strong work ethic because of the tough environment.

My six months away from Thornley Fallis (yes, it was at another agency) was a great learning experience – I won’t kid you about that.  I learned a lot about the business and about myself and am looking forward to bringing all of that new knowledge to my work here. 

I know I may sound like a broken record, but when I get up every morning, I am enthusiastic and happy to be going to work. I feel like I am really part of something great- it feels like I am part of a family.

How about you? Do you think a positive work environment is detrimental to delivering good work to your clients? Or does a tough work environment make for a better PR practitioner?

I don’t know if it’s just me, but as the number of my ‘friends’ on Facebook has grown, the less comfortable I’ve become about doing anything on the platform. I haven’t written a ‘note’ all summer and last night I started to think about why. 

I tell myself that I’ve been busy and that I’ve been adjusting to my new job … melding my personal and professional personas. But I’m not sure it’s that simple. 

Since January, people from all corners of my life (and the globe) have trickled in to my online existence. I joined Facebook to keep in touch with family and friends while I was away. Some people swore against it as I became a resolute fan. I welcomed the social experiment that would surely upset the balance of communication forever and I wanted to know the outcome of it: good or ill. 

It’s been exciting to hear from people I haven’t seen in years and to reconnect with people through photos and stories and video. But to try to conceive of them all together is next to impossible. It’s fine if someone else in my network puts up a photo of me in funny glasses, but to create and share something myself is becoming a daunting idea. And I’m sort of dauntless. 

I don’t mind when worlds collide a little bit. But two worlds at a time are usually enough. As Joscelyn said the other day, “You’re an open book.”

Is that a bad thing?