It's Almost Christmas!

I can't quite believe it, but the holidays are fast approaching and I'm almost halfway through my placement year!

A lot has been going on, but I had better update you on the Pocket-lint Awards first...we didn't win! It was a great night though, at a great venue (the Apollo Cinema on Regent Street in London) and we met lots of people!

My line manager has recently given me a project - headphones. Dawn (the student I replaced) got to do this last year and it's a really fun product area to be working on! The PR student usually gets their own project or area to look after about 6 months into their placement and so far, this one has lots of scope.

My task is to help the Headphones Team with securing coverage in the press and, to do that, I have to contact journalists from technology and lifestyle publications and websites. As you can imagine, there are a lot of publications and online sites which are relevant to this product area, so it's a big job! At the minute, I'm just making the first contact and calling and emailing journalists to see if they would like to review our headphones. Any who are interested will be offered samples to review and, due to hygiene reasons, the samples can't be sent back, so I have to be selective and choose the journalists who would be most likely to give us the coverage!

The models I'm helping to promote are all different, which means I'm getting in touch with lots of different people. The product manager for Headphones has suggested five models for me to recommend for review; the sports model; two chic-looking, rectangular over-the-ear models; a noise-cancelling model; and a 'DJ style' model. Today, I've been contacting the technology press - these are the people who are more likely to give in-depth, techno-tastic reviews (and hopefully awards...) and the reviews they write are the ones we find are generally the most powerful in influencing the market.

Last year, Dawn had to plan a whole event for a headphone product launch, too. Just in case Panasonic would like me to plan one (here's hoping!), I've already had an idea and it's a little gem! That's all I'm saying for now though...