The agency that I interned at during the fall semester decided to open a new firm, one floor below, to accomodate their smaller clients. I was given the oppurtinity to make the move as an intern to a smaller but fast growing agency. I jumped all over it.

The difference in size was the first difference I noticed. The previous internship has around 75 people working. The new office employs 8 people and 4 interns. The atmosphere is extremely team oriented. My past experice allowed me to hit the ground running.

I am one of four interns currently working. My first thought was that I would need to do something to seperate myself from them because in the long run they are my competitors.

Each morning when we arrive we are asked to research our clients and find any media impressions that have been published in the last 24 hours. This task is relatively easy when utilizing "Google Alerts".

Our first day consisted solely of myself and another intern putting together press kits for a client launch. This task should of taken us 1 hour at the most but because of a spelling error we needed to undo all of our work and start from the beginning. Twice! What are you going to do?

Throughout the week we kept a close eye on the coverage of our client's launch. We scoured the internet, compiled a clip book of all articles and called newspapers to request print versions of these articles. Mindless work but definitely necessary.

During my last internship I was fortunate enough to pitch different media. I quickly became very comfortable doing this and actually enjoyed this. Unfortunately I dont see myself getting this oppurtunity this summer.

The agency is in the process of planning a launch for a new sports drink. I was asked to compile a list of different fitness/sports websites that could possibly help publicize the podcasts.

As for reading I came across an article in Brandweek that was definitely relevant to the direction that public relations is heading. The article explained how Sprint sent new cell phones to top internet bloggers along with six months of free service. The article questioned if this was just another form of payola or clever marketing. Sprint did not ask for a necessarily favorable review and the bloggers said that they would only give an honest review. In fact one blogger said that if sprint responded to his unfavorable review by rescinding the gift he would post that letter on his blog. This proves that the public relations industry has yet to crack the blogosphere. Pitching a blogger is a delicate area. Bloggers can write about whatever they want and however they want to. Persuading a blogger to mention your product goes against the foundations that blogging was founded on. Blogging best characteristic is that fact that it allows everyone yo have a voice.