Top Tips for Any Placement Student

If you get paid on placement - yes, it's amazing to have all of that extra moolah coming in every month and it's a lot different to your average 'student wage', but remember to SAVE! Just put a bit aside after every payday, so that you have some spending pennies for the summer when you're finished and - ugh - for bills and rent for when you return to uni for your final year)!

Hemlines do matter - when you're working in a corporate environment, you'll need to watch what you wear. If you're fashion-conscious, get style inspiration and tips on 'What is Acceptable' from your fellow colleagues and remember, you're not there to look pretty or slick - you're there to do your job. A placement student from a previous year has gone down in Panasonic history as 'Hotpants Girl'... Trust me, that's not a good thing!

You were hired for a reason! If you're ever feeling overwhelmed, remember that it's totally fine to be feeling that way - you're new and a 9 to 5 job may well be a shock to the system! At Panasonic, my team really were there to help me out if I was ever stuck with something or if my workload was getting a bit much. So it's okay to ask for help and to ask as many questions as you need to, because you're there to get as much out of the year as possible. Having said that, don't forget to push yourself - you'll get so much more out of it if you do. Challenge is a good thing!

Think about your future career - when on placement, you will of course be getting first-hand experience of what it's like to work in a certain role. You will (hopefully) be working for a company in the are of industry you would like to work in in the future. If not - fear not! The skills you work on throughout the year and the experiences you will have will be excellent for building your employability and your personal development! It's important to take up as many opportunities as possible (another way of saying don't just sit back and wait for the good stuff to roll your way) and make as many connections as you can - you never know when they may come in useful!

On top of everything else...

Enjoy yourself!

Things I've Learnt...

I always find the retrospective, 'what have you learnt about yourself' thing a bit cringey, but here goes...
I really have learnt a lot about myself this year and I think if you get the chance to do an industrial placement whilst at uni, wherever in the world you choose to take it, you'll learn a lot about yourself too. I know everyone expects a placement to be a massive learning curve, and it really is, but I think it's hard to fully appreciate how beneficial it is until you've experienced it. There's a lot to be said for those 'life skills' your tutors keep harping on about and a work placement is a great, hands-on way to develop them.
So here are the things I've learnt about myself during this year on placement:

• Meeting new people is scary, but what's the worst that can happen? Get yourself out there - the connections you'll make will be worth it!



• Working under pressure can be tough and there have been times when I've struggled - but I've pulled through!

And I can now do a lot more than I used to!

• I can confidently speak to people I don't know


• I can just pick up the phone and speak to random strangers (a.k.a. the Lovely Journalists)



• I can organise myself well and I know how to prioritise


• I work really well in a team and know how to cooperate and help others


• I can touch-type


• I am innovative and can come up with solutions to benefit the team I am working with


• I have become a lot more confident and make a great Panasonic UK representative at events :)

Plus many more! Very odd to write down my strengths, though - cringe!

Looking back at this year, I've been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to do so many amazing things. The award ceremonies, networking with journalists, Panasonic's annual Convention, product launches, landing great coverage for our products and being part of the fantastic KWN programme - I have had an absolute blast. My team have been beyond lovely as well and I honestly don't believe my experience of working for Panasonic would have been so much fun without them.

A massive THANK YOU to the PR Team for everything! x

Being on placement with the other students as well has been brilliant - it's been like being part of a funny little family! Everyone's a bit bonkers, but we've got on like a house on fire. There's certainly never been a dull moment!

If you're thinking of doing a placement and want a completely unforgettable year (for all the right reasons), I'd certainly recommend Panasonic as a company to work for!

Handover - Last Two Weeks of Placement!

The Handover period came faster than I could have imagined! Before Jennifer, my replacement, started at Panasonic, I had to create a Handover Book for her, which came to be known as 'The PR Bible'! It was very odd to write down all of my day-to-day tasks, as everything had become second nature to me! I did stress to Jennifer that the book was only there for reference and that she didn't have to go home and learn everything by heart, as it was an extremely chunky bit of reading!

Jennifer started working at Panasonic on the 27th June and the handover was to last two weeks. In the first week, I showed Jen the ropes and went through a lot of the daily tasks with her and in the second week, it was all over to her! Everything happened so quickly, I'm sure it was a surreal experience for the both of us. As I had been extremely busy, in a way I hadn't yet had the time to process that in a short while, it would be my last day at Panasonic and I would be leaving the company! It didn't really hit me that I'd be going until my last day, when I was out with the PR Team for lunch - it was really sad!

More on the lovely PR Team a bit later, but for now - the rest of the handover! It was really weird showing someone else how to do the job and, at the beginning of the first week, I could see Jen becoming a little overwhelmed with all of the new information she had to process - I was exactly the same though, when I started! I reassured her that it was absolutely fine to feel that way, the team would be there to support her once I'd gone and that everything would eventually click into place. She asked me how long I thought it might be before everything started to calm down and feel 'normal' to her and I told her that I'd asked the PR student before me (Dawn) the very same question. Dawn said it would be exactly three months - and it was! So who knows, perhaps it will be the same for Jen, too!

Though it was bizarre to be handing over all of my responsibilities to somebody else, I know we've hired a corker for the PR role - Jen will have an amazing year!

KWN Mini Awards at The Hollies School in Cardiff - 17th June

The Hollies is a fantastic school for children based in Cardiff for children with special needs and learning difficulties. They have taken part in the KWN programme for a good few years now and this has helped to cement the strong relationship the school has with Panasonic.

Every year, the KWN team from the school submit a great film entry and, this year, they entered a film entitled 'Road Safety', which documented the ways in which the children had learnt to keep safe when crossing the busy roads around their school.

Due to their learning difficulties, the school does not get entered into the main competition, but Panasonic always congratulates their hard efforts every year, as the standard of their film submission is still incredibly high and they are always so enthusiastic to take part!

On Friday 17th June, I travelled with Gill Brigg (the KWN UK education coordinator) to the school for the awards ceremony, where we were to present the school with the Good Neighbour Award certificate and some gifts. That day also marked the end of 'Japan Week' for the school, so Panasonic coming over to present them with an award fitted in very well!

When we arrived, we met with the Head Teacher and a few of the other teachers from the school, who were absolutely lovely and passionate about creating the best learning environment for the children. One teacher told us that, to make things easier for the children, when they learn about different cultures, they often spend an entire week doing activities relating to one particular country - hence Japan Week. For this week, the children had been taking part in a couple of Japanese-themed activities each day, such as origami, Japanese calligraphy and martial arts.

The first session we were lucky enough to take part in was the 'Eco School' class, which consisted of around 10 children representing their different classes in a team of Eco Entrepreneurs. They went through with us all of things they had been learning about, such as how to raise money for clean water in Africa, how to recycle waste properly and how important healthy eating and exercising is, which was great to see! Pelham from Panasonic Wales was also in attendance and he donated to the school some Eco booklets with tonnes of exciting activities for the children to do. This was a really lovely gesture and the teachers and children were chuffed!

After the session, the children went back to their classes and we were given a tour of the school - what we saw was absolutely incredible. The teachers showed us around the Learning Garden, which was filled with lots of colourful activities, as well as an abundance of trees the children had planted themselves. We were then shown the Japanese garden, which had been funded by Panasonic Wales and created by generous people local to the school. It looked amazing! It was a really peaceful, tranquil area and, yet again, a lovely gesture from Panasonic.

After lunch, the teachers very kindly showed me the Sensory Room - this was such a great space for the children to learn through light and sound and touch, it was incredible! This room had also been funded by Panasonic Wales and the teachers were so grateful, as the room had given so much joy and happiness to the children. With the technology on hand, the teachers are able to change the light and sound themes to match each other - for example, beach sounds can be playing whilst shells, sea horses and starfish lights are projected onto the floor!

The main event came in the afternoon assembly - our awards ceremony was only a brief part of this - and the entire school celebrated Japan Week! Some of the children performed a martial arts display and a story-teller told the wonderful, traditional Japanese tale of 'Momotamo - the Peach Boy', with the help of a Japanese lady, who played an incredible harp-like instrument to complement the adventure!

We kept the awards ceremony brief, but we were very pleased to present the school with the Good Neighbour Award to congratulate the young film-makers for their excellent film entry - they were very happy about this, too!

The children went home and then it was sushi all round for the adults, which was really delicious and a lovely end to an amazing day. I must admit, that I perhaps enjoyed this day even more than going to Hamburg for the KWN European Awards - it was just so rewarding and great to see the fun the children have at The Hollies School. Long live the relationship between the school and Panasonic!

Fast-forward to Student Orientation - 6th June

Orientation Day for the new placement students is their first, full-on introduction to the company and a crucial part of the experience. All students come into the company and are given the full low-down on the principles of the business, how it was started and how it continues to be run and then what will be expected of them as placement students in the coming year.

When I had my orientation (all those many months ago!), I remember it was a brilliant way to be introduced to the company, as it showed us just exactly how Panasonic is run. One of the most interesting things for me was how Panasonic strives to incorporate 'Eco Ideas' into its business plans with its two company initiatives:

• "Eco Ideas for Lifestyles - we will promote lifestyles which will virtually reduce CO2 emissions throughout the world


• Eco Ideas for Business Styles - we will create and pursue a business-style which makes the best use of resources and energy"

Panasonic Company Presentation, 2011

The students get given a lot of paperwork to complete and a lot of information to absorb that day, so when Jennie arrived to see us in the PR department, she looked a little overwhelmed and I don't blame her! We gave her a little tour of the Brand Communications Department, but didn't want to give her too much more information to take on board, so we all just had a general natter with her about the year to come!

As per tradition, we later had a trip to the local Hollywood Bowl with all of our teams, so that the old and new students could spend a bit of time with their managers - and take them on in the bowling isles! In PR, we had the idea of a 'Boys v. Girls' game and us girls lost - spectacularly! A great evening though and a nice way for the new students to get to know their teams in a more relaxed environment outside of the workplace.

After the bowling, we had a massive night out with all of the students - old and new - to celebrate the start of year - a bit of a welcome party! I had what turned out to by my first ever migraine that day (not so great!) and it carried on well into the night so I didn't stay long, but what I was there for was amazing! A night out is a great way for the students to all relax after a big day of info overload and to get to know each other!

However.... We did warn them not to hit the bottle too hard, as the next day was very important for them - perhaps even more important than the Orientation! It was... Find Yourselves a House Day. Horrible with a hangover and many of the students unfortunately had to struggle on through the process of deciding who would live with who and then where they would live feeling a little worse for wear! They all got through it though and found two houses on the same street - great, as they'll be living so close to each other! Fingers crossed there are no fall outs...

Assertiveness Training - Aha! Something I did in April (going back here to the 14th)

When I had my probation meeting with my line manager after the first 3 months of my placement, one of the things we both agreed would be beneficial for me would be for me to attend an assertiveness training course. Due to low numbers of people signing up for the course and some last-minute cancellations, it took a good few months for the training to actually take place, but in April, it finally went ahead!

Before I came on placement, I'd always seen myself as quite an extrovert - I'm quite colourful and expressive with what I wear and very creative. Coming into an unfamiliar working environment and a new team dynamic, though, was quite daunting and I soon realised I'm a lot more shy and timid than I thought!

Assertiveness training taught me so much. I would like to think I'm a very good judge of character and always manage to avoid confrontation if I see it on the horizon - I prefer the easy life and hate petty squabbles! This has worked out really well for me in the past - or so I thought. The course leader showed me that actually, the way I behave in some group situations - not rocking the boat and trying to be lovely and pleasing everyone all the time - can give people the impression that I'm naive and a bit of a pushover! She taught me that it's not only okay to have opinions which are different to others'; it's your right to voice them! Respect works both ways, so you need to give others the opportunity and reason to give it to you...

Everyone has rights and, according to the course leader, they are are follows:

"I have the right to:

1. Set my own priorities




2. Be treated with respect




3. Express my own feelings and opinions




4. Be listened to and taken seriously




5. Say no without feeling guilty




6. Get what I pay for




7. Get information from professionals




8. Ask for what I want




9. Make mistakes




10. Choose not to assert myself

And so do others."

I love psychology and finding out about the ways in which people behave in different situations, so I found it really interesting when we looked at how the language you use and the tone, pitch and volume of your voice can alter people's perceptions of you. For example:

• Straightforward assertion: "I need to...", "I feel very...", "The fact is...". Used in everyday situations, ensuring your voice is SLOWER and LOUDER than usual, these are statements whereby you stand up for your rights and clearly express your needs, wants, opinions, beliefs or feelings




• Understanding assertion: "I appreciate that you...however, I need to....". Used when disagreements exists, but you need to let the other person know that you are geniunely considering their position. Spoken slowly, this is straightforward assertion which also includes an element of empathy towards the other person




• Outcome assertion: "If this happens again.... I will have no alternative but to...". A straightforward assertion which makes it clear to the other person what will happen if they do not change their actions or behaviour, spoken at a steady pace and pitch, slowing down on the last sentence

We practised a lot of these scenarios and the group (in the end, there were only two of us taking part in the course, myself included!) felt a lot more confident at the end of the course in dealing with certain situations - and with certain disagreeable people!

May Days!

As you can see, May was an unbelievably busy month - I got to do so many amazing things! You're probably wondering what on earth happened to me in April and if I'm honest, so am I. What a blur! A fantastic, busy-Bee blur.

Health and Safety Council Lunch Meeting - 30th May

A few days before this lunch meeting, Panasonic's Health and Safety Officer - Dave English - came over to my desk and asked if I would like to participate. Dave is an absolute fruitloop, but is lovely and takes a genuine interest in the welfare of Panasonic's employees - he built a real rapport with us students! He told me that two senior members from the British Safety Council would be visiting and that the aim of the meeting was to show them how seriously Panasonic takes health and safety initiatives within the company through the use of compulsory training programmes and health inspections.
Myself and Olly, the PR Assistant for Business, as well as a previous HR placement student who, since leaving the company, has returned to work here permanently, were there to discuss with Dave and the British Safety Council the programmes in place for staff at Panasonic. One of the many training courses I have undertaken with the other placement students is Health and Safety and it was brilliant to see how much importance was placed on our welfare and on developing our knowledge of how to stay safe in the workplace.
Initially, during our first couple of months at Panasonic, Dave gave us a tour of the building, pointing out all sorts of potential hazards which we simply hadn't realised existed - it certainly opened our eyes! A couple of weeks later, we were invited to attend a course on Health and Safety, which included a presentation that Dave had created. The presentation included an abundance of topics, including:

• Types of hazards
  


• Warning signs
  


• Emotional Welfare



• Hazard Avoidance

We were all given the presentation slides to take away and revise from as, a week later, we had an exam! We all passed and were each awarded with a certificate to say that we had passed Level 1 Health and Safety Training. This was brilliant, as this is a qualification we can take with us into any future employment!

The BSC were very impressed with what we had taken away from our training and were pleased to know that the ethos of staying safe within the workplace was instilled into the thinking of everyone in the company. What we also let them know (and not just because Dave was in the room!) was that we all felt we could easily approach Panasonic's Health and Safety Team with any concerns we had and that they always welcomed any feedback we had on any of the company's welfare procedures. For example, I'm only just over 5" (yes, really!) and as soon as I mentioned to Dave that I could freely swing my legs when sat at my desk, he came rushing over with a foot rest and made sure that I was sat at the right height and in the correct position, so that I wouldn't get back ache! It certainly made a difference, so I was really pleased he'd been so quick and willing to alter my sitting position for me. Awareness of good posture whilst sat working at a desk is something that Panasonic is really focusing on now - they have brought in a compulsory, educational questionnaire and awareness programme on the issue, to ensure everyone is sat correctly whilst working. One of the BSC members told us that they were also working on this with other companies and that they were developing a 'chair aerobics' class to teach employees exercises they can do at their desks to alleviate back pain and discomfort whilst sitting - sounds great!

It was lovely to be able to participate in the lunch meeting and it felt really nice to have our feedback on Panasonic's Health and Safety programme listened to and taken into account. We also learnt a lot about how health and safety measures are applied in other companies and it was really interesting to hear how the BSC have been implementing precautions in the run-up to the Olympics!

Visit to Catalysis, our Corporate PR Agency - 25th May

The Panasonic PR team being the tiny size that it is, we often need external companies and agencies to carry out the work we simply don't have either the time or the resources for. Catalysis, based in the gorgeous Clerkenwell area of London, is the agency which looks after our corporate PR. This includes building up the profile of our M.D., Keith Evans, and our image as a top-tier sponsor for the Olympics, as well as any business-to-business dealings within the technology industry.

Maintaining Keith's profile is certainly a mammoth job - as the 'face' of Panasonic, it is crucial that he comes across positively in the public eye. We began to work with Catalysis on this last year, before I joined Panasonic, and whilst I was at the agency, I was shown how Catalysis's role in this process has changed. Jen, who helps to look after a few of the accounts at Catalysis, as well as the account for Panasonic, explained to me that the first year of working with Keith was mostly about getting his name out there and raising his profile. This year, it has been more about working on Keith's image and letting the public find out more about him, to make him appear a more relatable public figure. This, in turn, alters the public image of Panasonic as a more 'people-friendly' brand, which can sometimes be hard to do for a global electronics company!

Jen works with a few others to set up 'briefings' for Keith - these are the interviews with publications which Keith attends. This year, there have been a lot of '10 minutes with Panasonic's M.D.'-style interviews - these are quick and easy to read and a lot of facts about the company and also Keith's perspective on the direction in which Panasonic is heading can be put across to a reader without the worry of information overload.

Jen also showed me a few of the other projects she was working on, such as a campaign for a mobile phone company, which looked at the etiquette of how people use their mobile phones and social networking sites, which was really interesting! She told me that, whilst some of the briefs Catalysis gets can be pretty heavy-going, most of them are really fun and light-hearted - she clearly loved working on each of the briefs!

Catalysis mainly works for technology companies and the team had a big pitch for a cable company in the few days after I came into their offices, so I helped to research a few things for them! I first helped to create a massive spreadsheet of all the coverage the cable company and its competitors had received in the last three months. It was interesting to see all of the programmes and software Catalysis use to help them when searching for information like this.

After lunch (I was very kindly taken out for pizza, which was amazing!), I helped to search for potential companies Catalysis could use which offered net-meeting or 'webcasting' facilities, as they needed to run a net-meeting for over 250 people in the next few days.

Other than my work at Panasonic, I had never experienced working in a PR team, and it was refreshing and a bit different to see how things are run in an external agency, as opposed to 'in-house'. As you can probably imagine, the dynamics are quite different, as you have a few people working in teams for different briefs. It's very fast-paced, but a lot more varied, as the projects the agency are working on are constantly changing. I honestly couldn't say which kind of working environment I prefer though, as the PR team at Panasonic are very tight-knit and I guess, in some ways, it can be easier to think along the same lines when you're working more closely with your team members. Having said that though, I absolutely loved the creative vibe of Catalysis and would certainly not rule out working for an agency in the future! For those of you who are interested in PR, definitely get yourselves some work experience at an agency - it's a great, fun way to dip your toes in the PR waters!

End of Year Appraisal - 23rd May

When it comes to the end of the year (based on the financial year, which ends on the last day of May), each employee at Panasonic is given an appraisal by their immediate superior.

My line manager, Sara, sat down with me and went through the targets we had both agreed on earlier in the year and had a general chat about how I thought things had been going. We both agreed that I still need to work on my proactiveness (I try my darnedest!) and maybe need to speak up a little more, but I had, in general, achieved my targets, which were as follows:

• To distribute all awards within 24 hours


• To collect all overdue product samples within 2 weeks

As I had achieved these targets, I was given my bonus - brilliant!

The appraisal was a great opportunity to get feedback on my performance and, over the year, I've felt that my team have been amazing at giving me constructive feedback and advice and helping me to grow professionally.

Even if your company does not have a policy whereby it holds appraisal meetings, make sure you sit down with your manager or someone in your team to get some feedback on your performance - there really is nothing to lose and everything to gain!

KWN European Awards...in Hamburg!! 18th - 20th May

This trip was beyond unreal! There had been some extremely brief talk about the possibility of me going to Hamburg for the KWN European Awards as the Panasonic UK representative, but it was such a brief mention, that I didn't think it would at all actually happen!

I got into the office on Monday, a couple of weeks before the awards, and checked into my inbox - I had about 10 emails asking me when I was going to arrange the flights to Hamburg, including flights for myself! Eh??

I checked with the head of Brand Communications (who works closely with the KWN programme) and, sure enough, I had been selected! Prior to take-off, I had to organise flights and accommodation for myself and the teacher and students from Testbourne School. Cue a bit of confusion about rooms, who was staying where, etc, and all the arrangements were made... We were off to Hamburg!

I met the teacher and the four students selected from the Testbourne team at Heathrow airport on the afternoon of Wednesday 18th. They were all very excited to be there! Previous KWN teams from Testbourne have got quite far in the competition and had the opportunity to travel to earlier award ceremony locations, but the children I travelled with (Kathy, Steph, Sam and Jake) had never been part of the KWN programme, so they were all just as excited as I was!

The flight was a bit scary - Kathy and I were both a bit apprehensive as neither of us had travelled for quite a while, but everything went without a hitch (or too much turbulence)! We checked into our hotel, which was based right in the centre of Hamburg, and went out for dinner at a traditional Bavarian restaurant and it was absolutely amazing! This picture doesn't really do the restaurant justice, but it'll give you some idea of what the place was like...

Ok, so that picture wasn't too excellent, but we were sat in the corner and it was tricky to fit all the 'scenery' into one shot! What I will say is... Get out your laderhosen! It really was very traditional and we decided to go all out and have the Bavarian dishes on offer. I had obatzer (which is basically fried cheese, mashed up with cheese and rolled into balls. So, cheese balls) with different meats. I think I accidentally ordered for 2 people too, the plate was huge! Not something I'll be trying again... The others had shnitzel and bratwurst and, whilst it was great to sample the local delicacies, I think we will all be sticking with our English roast dinners from now on! We did, of course, all have apfel strudel for dessert - now, that was delish!

We then went back to our hotel for some rest as, according to my carefully-guarded printout of the schedule, the next day was going to be a very busy one...

We checked out of the hotel the next morning, to check into where everyone else was staying, and met all of the teams, teachers and Panasonic representatives from the other countries. We were then whisked off to Studio Hamburg, a large recording studio responsible for some of the bizarre talkshows we saw back in our hotel rooms. We had a welcome lunch and all of the children introduced themselves then stuffed their faces with burgers and ice cream (I was also guilty of gluttony, the burgers were amazing!). Then, it was time for the workshops - the children were there to create a 5-minute promotional film for KWN, with the help of 3 industry professionals.

After a tour of the different studios (the green room, the lighting room, etc), the children were split into groups to create different aspects of the film. Kathy was put into the group looking at the filming and acted as a cocktail waitress in a bar; Sam tried his hand at dubbing and produced a great voiceover for some parts of the film; and Steph and Jake were in my group and acted as the anchors of the film's news report, so they got to play a really major part - go Team UK! I was in the control room and helped to put the right pictures on the screen as Steph and Jake ran through their scripts, which was really fun to do! I thought I'd escaped the camera, but the crew came in to do a very short snippet on the 'behind-the-scenes' team - very embarrassing. So yes, I'm on a KWN promotional film somewhere...

After a long day at putting our cinematic skills to the test, we all went back to our hotel to rest before the Welcome Dinner at an Italian restaurant. The team from Panasonic Europe gave a speech at the end to congratulate the children for getting to such a late stage of the competition and, as the main KWN awards ceremony was going to be held in a 1920s movie theatre the next day, the children were given goody bags with bits and pieces to accessorise their formal outfits with - I'm talking feather boas, trilby hats, canes...the lot!

The next morning, I took the Testbourne team and their teacher on a short siteseeing trip around the lovely city of Hamburg (short, because it rained - a lot - and also, I had no idea where I was actually going!). We then went back to the hotel to change into our formalwear and were taken to Passage Kino, the movie theatre, which was really stunning!

After a short buffet lunch, we collected our KWN-branded popcorn boxes and settled down into our seats in the theatre.

Wilson Solano from PME (Panasonic Marketing Europe) began the ceremony with a speech, reminding those in attendance of how proud they should be to have got so far in the competition and that coming together to celebrate their film entries was of enormous importance. Mr Abadie, the head of Panasonic Europe, also spoke a few words to congratulate the KWN teams and commercial producer Jan Brockmann told them how hard they would need to work should they aspire to become professional film makers, but they were now on their way!

Each school introduced their film before it was screened, giving a short insight into the messages behind their entries.

This was the first time the schools had been able to see the competing films and everyone was very impressed with the high standard. The films showed a great improvement on the use of the video production technology compared to previous years and members of the judging panel reiterated how hard the judging process had been.

After the screenings, the awards were announced as follows:

• Rudolf Dilong Primary School from Trstena, Slovakia, won the KWN 2011 European Award for its film, entitled "Do not destroy but save". It was also presented with the award for Best Visual Effects.












• Testbourne Community School from the UK was awarded Best Story for its video "B is for Apple".







• Max-Planck Gymnasium from Germany was awarded Best Acting for its film "James Bondy - Dr Kill".







• Grammar School No. 29 from Poland was awarded Best Cinematography for its film "The third life of a tree."







• Secondary Modern School Golling from Austria was awarded Best Reporting for its video "Powerlines through environmentally protected areas. Pupils inform themselves!"






• Angel Primary School from the Czech Republic was awarded Best Environmental Message for its video "From the waters of life".






• Ruetihof from Switzerland was awarded best Citizenship for its film "Best friends from all over the world."






• Centro Salesiani Don Bosco from Italy was awarded Best Music for its video, entitled "Flashback".

The two days over which the workshop activities and the awards ceremony took place were a great success. The children got to make new friends from schools from all over Europe and were sad to say goodbye to each other after the ceremony. Everyone who attended the ceremony agreed that Kid Witness News is a fantastic programme for schools to get involved in and saw that the students took a lot from the event, having gained a large amount of film-making knowledge and experience.

Lumix G Launch in London - 12th May

In the run-up to this launch, I was told I would be the UK representative at the KWN Awards in Hamburg, so there were a lot of preparations to be made in a very short space of time. This is not in any way begrudgingly said, it just shows how fast-paced the life of a PR assistant can be!

The event was held in London to launch the amazing new Lumix DMC-G3 micro four thirds compact system camera. The event began in one of the top floors of the LOCOG offices (LOGOC stands for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games), which was incredible and the room looked out over the site for the Olympic stadium – what a view! I arrived in the morning with Claire (head of PR for Lumix) and some of the Lumix Marketing team to set up and prepare for the day’s events. The journalists arrived mid-morning and the new Lumix G3 was revealed to them after a short presentation. Many of them had sung the praises of the previous Lumix G series models, so they were all very excited. We had brought with us a number of pre-production models for the journalists to have a play around with and this gave them the opportunity to ask the Lumix team and our technical specialists any questions they had. The aim of this event was to give the journalists a sneak preview so that they could write up any articles and first-look reviews (the embargo date for the G3 was two days later, so they had to sign forms promising they would not publish any information prior to the launch!)

We took the journalists on a boat ride tour down the River Thames and, as we were very fortunate with the weather, everyone had the chance to take some lovely photos!

All of the journalists were given a Panasonic 4MB SD card to take away, so they could take as many photos as they liked. As the samples were pre-production, it meant that they had to ensure this was stated in their write-ups after the embargo was lifted, if they had included any of the photographs they had taken on the day.

It was a brilliant day and everyone was very impressed with the new model. I got to fiddle around with a Lumix DMC-G2 – a fantastic award-winning model – and got some great snaps! Claire had put a lot of effort into organising the event and we congratulated her for the day’s success in the event de-briefing meeting.

Visit to Durrants, Our Coverage Clippings Agency - 6th May

Durrants is our online coverage clippings service, which we started using in October, to save us manually looking for the coverage ourselves. We gave them a brief, which detailed the keywords we would like them to look out for in articles both in print publications and online. This meant that every time Panasonic was mentioned in any coverage anywhere, we would be notified. Fine-tuning the brief was quite a painstaking task, as there were a lot of conditions we had to ensure Durrants were covering. After a few teething problems (such as Durrants not picking up a piece on a Panasonic camcorder, as Panasonic had not been mentioned in the article’s headline), though, we soon had a coverage service which met all of our needs!

As the coverage is all sent through to me, it is my job to sort the clippings into their relevant product areas and distribute them to the rest of the PR team, as well as internally throughout the company to senior management. Durrants is mainly my responsibility, so my manager set up a meeting for me at the Durrants offices in London for me to look around!

This proved very useful for me, as it gave me the opportunity to see the work that goes into checking through all of the thousands of publications Durrants has to sort through each day. There are even staff there who work on night shifts to ensure nothing is missed! Panasonic is only one of the companies Durrants works for, so, combining all of the different briefs, this must be a very hard job.

Laura was my main contact at Durrants throughout the year and I met her first (along with the head of the company) for a tour of the offices. It was so nice to be able to see the job being done first-hand. A point Laura made to me (and one which I think certainly holds true) is that, when Durrants liaises with a company to correct and maintain a brief, a lot of reference is made to the ‘readers’, who look through all of the coverage, and many people think that the reading is done electronically – it’s not. There are people scanning in the print coverage and other people searching through hundreds of websites online, then going through each piece to search for a company’s keywords.

As well as the obvious ‘Panasonic’, our other keywords include things such as:

• Viera


• Lumix


• Camcorder


• Camera


• LCD


• Plasma


• Breadmaker


• Microwave


• Beauty

There are many more keywords which we have briefed Durrants to look out for and we have given them all of our product codes and names, such as DMC-TZ20 and TX-P46ST30 (a camera and a TV, for those who are wondering!) and when you consider that other electronics companies have product names very similar to ours, you can see that combing through the coverage for any mentions of Panasonic products becomes very difficult!

Another interesting part of the Durrants process I was shown was how the coverage, after being scanned in, is put into a clipping - which is the part I am sent online. The people who work on this area have to cut out (on a software programme) all of the sections on a page and paste them into a new document (the clipping). It has to be done this way due to copyright laws – they cannot simply send us a PDF copy or an online screen-grab of the coverage. After each part of the page is copied across (and it must be put in the correct place), a diagram of the full page is put into the bottom right hand corner of the clipping to show whereabouts on a page the coverage was placed. This is very handy for companies to see exactly how much coverage their product or brand has received and how much impact the coverage has created (such as a half page spread or a double-page spread, for example).

The visit to Durrants also gave me the opportunity to give Durrants any further directions on our brief. It was a great day and it was really nice to meet with people external to the company who we work with, from the Panasonic Press Office, on a daily basis.

KWN UK Awards - Derby Assembly Rooms - 4th May

On the 4th May, I travelled to the Assembly Rooms in Derby for the annual Kid Witness News UK Awards ceremony. The event was held to present the shortlisted films with their awards, as decided at the Judging Panel Day in March. In between the screenings of the schools' film entries, a local band provided entertainment throughout the ceremony. The room crackled with excitement as the results were announced, as follows...

• Best Pictures and Sound - Ryburn Valley School
  




• Best Global Citizenship - Knox Academy





• Best Reporting Team - Leasowes Community College





• Best Learning Journey - George Dixon International School





• Best Story-telling - Testbourne Community School
  

Then came the Grand Prix Award - an extra-special award, as the winners would be travelling to Hamburg later in the month for the KWN European Awards! The children and teachers in attendance were very nervous to hear the results and the winners of this award were:

Testbourne Community College!

The school's excellent film entry, entitled "B is for Apples", was selected as it was engaging, well-researched and brilliantly executed. The film clearly expressed the importance of maintaining the planet’s biodiversity and how the elimination of one species (the bee) would heavily impact upon many others.

What was great about the ceremony was that every school left with an award. KWN is such a good CSR programme in terms of getting schools involved at a professional level and it was lovely to see how proud they were when their films were screened. Everyone in the room applauded the work the children had done, which was wonderful, as the standard of the film entries was really high this year!

What I didn't know at the time of the awards was that I would be travelling with the teacher and the children from Testbourne to the awards in Hamburg as the Panasonic UK representative!! More on this later...

KWN UK Panel Judging Day – 24th March

This day was so exciting! To recap, KWN (Kid Witness News) is a global programme run every year by Panasonic whereby schools from all over the world use Panasonic video equipment to make their very own 4-minute films. It's a bit like a news report, but from the perspective of children - as the KWN tagline states, it's 'the world from their eyes'. Amazing, right?

The two available themes for the entries this year were 'Ecology' and 'Communication' and I was fortunate enough, as the intern, to be able to help judge the UK entries! The judging panel meeting (held at Panasonic UK in Bracknell) was incredible and consisted of the following lovely folk:

• Gill Brigg - KWN UK Education Director




• Adrian Birtwell - KWN UK Operations Manager




• James Stead - KWN UK Trainer and Independent Film Maker




• Paul Press - KWN UK Trainer and Independent Film Maker




• Ian Cameron - Newsgathering Editor for BBC Nations and Regions




• (myself!)




• Gaby Titcombe - Former KWN student from Testbourne Community School




• Suzy Lambert - Director of The Network and Fast Track (Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival)




• Jane Bonner - Walsall Children's Services - Serco




• Anne Molyneux - Citizenship Foundation




• David Mell - Teaching and Learning Consultant (Creative Arts), East Riding of Yorkshire School Improvement Service

We were put into pairs and each team was given a sub-category to judge. My fellow team member and I were given the excellent, but extremely difficult, task of deciding which of the eight shortlisted films deserved to win the award for Best Story-telling. This meant we had to look at how cohesive a film's storyline and script was; if the message was conveyed well through statistics and imagery; and if the reporting style was fluid.

Each film was watched twice, with time for note-taking in between. The other sub-categories included Best Reporting Team, Best Global Citizenship, Best Learning Journey, Best Pictures and Sound and the much-coveted Grand Prix Award (a.k.a. The Best One). Results will be revealed in a later post...

Recruiting the Next PR Assistant Placement Student - March

Being part of the recruitment process was amazing but so bizarre - helping to pick the next 'you' is hard! I sat in on the telephone interviews and then got to meet the successful candidates at the next stage in the face-to-face interviews and it was very surreal, as I'd been in exactly the same position almost a year before!

The interview process for a position at Panasonic is quite a lengthy one, but it's worth it when you consider how many hundreds of people apply for each role - it's so important to hire the right person with not only all of the right skills, but also the enthusiasm and drive to work for the company! The first stage is the telephone interview, then a face-to-face interview where you have the opportunity to meet the team you might soon be working with. After this comes what is called the 'Assessment Centre Day', where you are informally interviewed with the other final potential candidates in individual assessments and also in group tasks. I confess that it was my birthday on the Assessment Centre Day for my role, so I was otherwise engaged (with family time and eating cake...), so the team had to fill me in on who had got the job when I came back! When I'd met all of the candidates at the previous interview stages, though, I felt so nervous for them - you could tell they all really wanted to be there and were giddy that they might soon have a job at Panasonic! I completely understood what it was like to be in their shoes and was rooting for all of them.

When we were narrowing the applications of the possible candidates for the interview process, we decided to only consider students doing a purely PR degree. This was a little weird for me, as I'm on the MAC course at uni (this is Marketing, Advertising and Communications, where PR only plays a partial role in my degree). There were some outstanding applications from students on courses like mine and at first I was, in truth, quite gutted that we didn't get to properly consider them (if you think it may be you I'm talking about, WELL DONE for your awesome application and I bet you were snapped up sharpish elsewhere!)

In the end though, I did see where my team were coming from and we picked an absolute corker for the role: Jenny! She's very excited to start her job at Panasonic and is going to have an absolutely incredible year! We're all super happy to have her on the team as well, lovely lady! x

Oops and hello!

I have left this blog unattended for far too long - sending many apologies through the ether web for this!

There have been so many amazing things which have happened to me on placement at Panasonic since... 16th February. I've written a list and there is an awful lot, which perhaps goes some way to explaining why keeping these blog posts up to date has been a bit tricky. Not making excuses, though - rack me on the wrists and I'll begin...

Kid Witness News!

Otherwise known as simply 'KWN', this programme is run every year by Panasonic, whereby schoolchildren across the globe are given the opportunity to make their very own film using Panasonic equipment.



Next week, I'll be part of the panel judging the entries for the UK schools! The panel has been split up to give out separate awards and my team will be voting for the 'Best Storytelling'. Can't wait to see the entries!

Convention, baby!

Oh my. For the Panasonic PR Team, the biggest event of the working year is almost over. The Convention 2011 has been underway this week and hundreds of dealers, journalists and publishers from around Europe have been shown all of our new products at the London ExCel Exhibition Centre. An absolutely huge space, the ExCel Centre was decked out with stalls to demonstrate all of the products to the masses. I can honestly say we are all completely shattered!


My experience of the Convention began bright and early yesterday morning, when I had to manipulate the London Underground on my own for the first time ever! Being a country girl at heart, I was initially worried about finding my way around, but I actually quite enjoyed the journey - though this may have has something to do with the fact I'd just missed Rush Hour...


I got to the ExCel Centre ridiculously early. We had planned to meet at 11am and I had about 45 minutes to kill. That time elapsed fairly quickly though, as there was a bit of confusion about where I was supposed to be putting my luggage (entirely my fault and I almost sent my bags off on a shuttle destined for France, oops!)


I soon found the rest of my team and was assigned the role of 'Meeter and Greeter' at the entrance - a slightly daunting task, as I had to welcome all of our journalists and most of them, I'd never met before! In truth, I did expect to feel a bit more overwhelmed, but it was just really fun (and so bizarre to finally be able to put names to faces - no one ever quite looks like you imagine them!)



It was lunchtime when most of our motley journalist crew had arrived, so I re-joined my team in the lunch hall to chow down on some very tasty pasta at the buffet! There wasn't much time to eat though, as the grand tours were about to start...



We got into groups for the tour (you can imagine how long this took, so many people were there to organise!) and were taken around the exhibition by a lovely (if ever so slightly too chipper) guide called Lucy. We started off in a mini cinema and sat down to see a welcome video from Panasonic... in 3D! The exhibition was absolutely HUGE and we saw so many great products! What was really nice was that many of them had been put into familiar settings (like the Viera Plasma TV models in a living room setting), so that people looking around the exhibition would be able to relate to the products. My favourite part was the Lumix arena - a miniature basketball court set up with stands so that the journalists could look on as the 'players' shot hoops and use the new cameras and camcorders to film and capture the action as it was happening. We got lots of positive feedback about this, which was great!



The tour took most of the afternoon, but as soon as things started to flag, we took a boat ride to the other side of London to get ready for dinner (my knowledge of London isn't that great, so when I say 'the other side', it's perhaps just better to call it 'wherever it was we needed to be'!)



The weather was drizzly and miserable, but as soon as the boat ride was over, we were whisked away to our hotel... the Park Plaza. I had no idea what it was going to be like, so imagine my complete delight when I saw...






Well, this was the lobby... it was so spectacular!! The hotel is right in the middle of Westminster and is the swankiest place I've ever visited. Before we went to the restaurant for dinner (more on that in a moment), we all met in the bar for cocktails - mine cost a tenner! Frivolous, much?

The restaurant - wow. Aptly named 'Altitude', we were dining on the 27th floor, looking out over London's greatest sites at nighttime and it was absolutely stunning. After stuffing ourselves silly, we headed back to the hotel for more drinks and stayed there til the early hours - which meant rounding up the journalists the next morning to meet in the hotel lobby for 8.45am was a little tricky... ;)


Better 9am than never, though - our original plan was to head back to the ExCel Centre for day 2 of the Convention by boat, the same one as last night. I should have mentioned earlier that the boat ride was an hour long, so choppy winds and churning post-party stomachs would not have been a pleasant mix, so we took the tube! A very good plan.


The second day of the Convention was much the same as the first and our group saw the bits we didn't get time for the day before. As the day went on, the journalists slowly started to leave until, come afternoon, all we had left to do was look after our bloggers and lifestyle press for the open press event. Pana PR Team were situated in the Home Appliances section of the exhibition (which was tucked around perhaps too many corners, which meant that not many were able to find us!) We were expecting 40 - 50 journalists for the afternoon, but only around 12 showed up! Oh well - the ones who did make it had a blast and were given an awesome goody bag, which I helped to prepare before the Convention with Sara, my manager.

The goody bags were brilliant and contained a box of these beeeautiful chocolates!


http://www.hotelchocolat.co.uk/finest-chocolates-P260151/


Yes, that is £20 a pop you can see. Delish.


So everyone's hard work paid off (and trust me, a lot of hard work goes into a pan-European event like this) and we all had a great time! One of the biggest events of the year on Panasonic UK's calendar? Tick. Now breeeathe and get back to the office...