Industry news & advice blog

A day in the life of a PR? Surely that potentially sounds like a dull read? I mean we give off the idea that we sit in front of a computer and write emails all day. In reality, it’s not far off but requires a little more thought process - juggling many projects at the same time; cross platform, cross genre etc. At I Like Press we are involved in quite a few different projects. We do national and regional PR for bands, events and more recently venue PR too. At this time of year though we are planning for the next year and finalising campaigns and sign offs. 

I get up early on a morning, not often through choice. I have a little cat, named after Spurs’ iconic goalkeeper Erik Thorsdvedt, and he will basically fight me until he gets fed. After feeding the little devil I go through emails from the night before. Some of our contacts work outside the UK so it’s good to catch up and action anything that needs attention straight away. 

Early mornings in the office are powered by a Cafe 164 flat white (so hipster!) and our regular Has Bean coffee order. It depends on what happened the night before as to what time we get in but generally if it's after 9am then we have been out. We have recently moved into a new office and a blackboard wall was essential for planning the different things we do. The first part of the day is reviewing this and discussing what features are going to be pitched. 

For me, today is a day of meetings and preparing for said meetings. We are talking to a local regional newspaper about a takeover of the paper. Later we will have our weekly Belgrave Music Hall catch up, followed by a Beacons Festival catch up. The morning is taken up by preparing for the meetings. The Beacons meeting is about early ideas for the festival plus managing partnerships of the festival. I have been helping prepare documents for them so I will finish the draft of these and present them later. Belgrave Music Hall is a new venue to Leeds, one which we helped launch and have continued doing the PR for. I sense the excitement of summer coming and that roof terrace being used to its full potential. 

The City Talking team are in our office for the afternoon. The newspaper is coming up to being a year old in Leeds and provides an alternative view on Leeds and has become a stable diet of indie Leeds. We had heard on the grapevine that a January 2014 edition wasn’t going to take place due to the Christmas holidays and we had a few ideas of how we could help make a different version of the paper. Notes were jotted, gossip chatted and ideas were brainstormed. It’s always nice to catch up with Lee and Dan from the paper and hopefully we can announce this collaboration soon. 

After writing up some quick notes I have time for a brief chat with Danny from Victoria Warehouse Records. We are working closely with him as he is about to launch his new label good and proper. We chat over a host of releases planned for 2014. I am popping over to Manchester in a few days so we discuss the plan of action. I then plough through my emails. 

The day seems to have vanished and we head over to Belgrave Music Hall for our early evening meetings. They have just launched the Patty Smith Burger (first tried out at Beacons Festival last year) and we are desperate to try this. It doesn’t disappoint. We discuss upcoming shows and events including the FREE NYE Party and the food plans for the next few weeks. Dough Boys Pizza have just launched their Christmas range of pizzas. The Beacons meeting follows and is all about signing off the partnership document and first chats on which bands might be playing. Exciting times. 

I decide to head home via Gerry’s to buy some Christmas drinks and finish off some work at home with a cheeky Kraken & Coke whilst also preparing things for the iLiKETRAiNS performance of Progress Reform EP later in the week.