If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like as an account executive in a PR agency (or you’re one of my many friends and family who still ask me, ‘what is a PR account exec again?’), here is a day in my life as a PR AE at Tonic PR.
By Stephanie Bercich.
7am: need coffee a.s.a.p. A session of F45 (if I’m not feeling too lazy), shower, banana and run out the door.
8am: thoughts on the bus: what’s going on in the world of social media and news this morning? Checks Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
8.30am: arrive in the office. “Good morning team!” I turn on my laptop and load emails.
8.35am: media monitoring time! Have any of our clients received coverage overnight? We use iSentia to check this. YAY! Olio Kensington Street was featured in Gourmet Traveller. I send any coverage across to the client with a brief description of what it is.
Did any social influencers visit our restaurant/bar clients last night? If so, I send across a social media wrap-up of their visit including total Instagram impressions (no. of posts x no. of followers).
9am: check emails. I respond to any media enquiries that have come through overnight.
9.30am: print my task list, check my calendar, and have a quick catch-up with my account manager (AM) to touch base on our priorities and activities for the day.
10am: newspaper summary of either the SMH, BBC, Daily Telegraph or ABC. Share with the team so we can all keep up to date with the news.
10.30am: time to get stuck into pitching for a client who has just opened a restaurant. Spend the morning carefully crafting tailored pitches for each journalist.
1.30pm: lunch in Surry Hills – so many options! Do I choose Mama’s Boi, Cook and Archie’s, or if I’m feeling naughty, Brooklyn Burgers? Head back to my desk and read over my emails while munching on a burger (guilty face).
2pm: meetings, meetings and more meetings. My AM and I head to the CBD for a meeting with one of our pub clients. We talk the client through what coverage has come through since our last meeting, get updates from them about how everything is going and hatch plans for what activity we can action in the next fortnight.
3.30pm: back in the office. Emails arrive in my inbox continuously throughout the day. At every opportunity, I check to see if they contain any urgent actions.
Two more hours till I finish work! I print out my task list and make sure that I have met all my deadlines for the day.
4pm: tea time. “Would anyone like a tea?” Two English breakfast and one green – off I go.
4.05pm: time to update the meeting notes and send them to the client and my other team members.
4.10pm: Ahh, emails are coming in from the pitching I did in the morning. Must get back to all of them a.s.a.p. Never leave a journalist waiting!
4.45pm: another email about a media opp with Good Food. Quick, on the phone to the client/chef – “I need you to answer these questions by COB tomorrow, thanks!”
5pm: read through newsletters from all the key online publications. Send around any stories on PR, social media or the hospitality world that I think my colleagues would find interesting.
5.30pm: check if any clippings have come through during the day, send them off.
6pm: if I’m feeling really organised (less often than normal), I print off my task list and number them in terms of priority for the next day.
7pm: have any urgent emails come through? Briefly check my emails.
10pm: Time to clock off. Good night.