A Blessing and a Curse

I don't talk about work on here very often, and when I do I keep it brief. I work in the public sector and I do admin. That's as much as I'll disclose here. I do the best I can, given the circumstances (short term memory difficulties) but the team is supportive and aware it's not the most ideal job for me. Somehow, however, I've held it down- against all odds, and despite a few errors- for nearly 13 years.

A couple of years ago I identified Public Relations as a sector that I'd be well-suited to. It's a field that involves marketing, writing, advertising and journalism, but doesn't involve sales, a field I crashed and burned in twice in 2005. (In 6+1/2 years of studying media, I never once learned about PR.) I started looking around for opportunities in this field- be it being put on their books as a blogger, or volunteering in their office.

Go PR and Events have had me as a blogger on their books for a couple of years, and- before the lockdown- were inviting me to blogger dinners, product launches and bar openings. I'm looking forward to things picking up once it's safe to do so. I looked into PR as a field, and it seemed like a perfect fit- everything I'm already good at. I'd just need to learn procedures. I started asking around, and a friend gave me the heads-up about another PR company, in the city centre, called SKV Communications. I sent an email off- in the tail end of 2018- and met with the Manager. He explained more about the field, and the industry, and offered me 2 weeks work experience. I took him up on the offer, and enjoyed it. As a field, PR was just what I was looking for, and from then on, I had a plan. I was to be a Public Relations Officer.

That said, around that time, I bought a house. It's kind of a big shake-up, moving from a 1-bedroom council flat to a terraced house, and even a fairly well-kept house needs a TON of decorating. I did a huge splurge of decorating starting around April '19, lasting for a few months.

In May '19, I covered my time at SKV here. Over that next month, I grafted away at getting my foot in the PR door- to little avail. It was going to take more persistence.

Of course, once 2020 began, everything went tits up. COVID-19 found its way to UK shores, and within 7 months 40,000 people were dead. The country was, and still is, in lockdown. Thousands of businesses have gone under. Sadly, one of these was SKV.

They were a great team. I hope the freelance plan is working for the officers there- I'm not closely in touch with many of the team, bar the odd social media follow. As for myself, my public-sector role is an essential job, and I've been working the same number of hours during lockdown as I did before. So, as much as I'd like to have made a transition, I am in some ways glad I didn't. At the same time, though, how much more of my life should I spend doing something that, honestly, makes me quite unhappy?

A blessing and a curse, indeed.

Public Relations Month Results

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Sticky toffee pudding @tgifridays #manchester getting full. Will power through #cardiac

A post shared by Matt Tuckey (@matttuckey) on Jun 21, 2019 at 1:56pm PDT

I've spent the last month looking into the field of PR, reading books, watching documentaries and dramas portraying the industry or connected industries, and I've looked for opportunities in the process.

Before the project began I'd emailed a list of local PR companies asking if I could volunteer. In the midst of this, though, I moved out, and am still in fact finishing off bits of decorating. More recently I've got back in touch with a few contacts and I have a meeting tomorrow with a Managing Director of a local PR firm. I'm hoping it will lead to at least a few weeks' worth of experience.

I've been to 2 great PR launches from Go:Pr and Events: Olivers Club barbers in Wilmslow and The Studio yoga centre in Macclesfield, making contacts, asking questions, getting to know people, and of course getting pictures with celebs. I've been to 1 comic con and 1 charity birthday party and had 5 celebrity encounters: Steve Guttenberg, Erika Eleniak, Zach Galligan, Kieron Richardson and Rachel Lugo.

What I haven't done, though, is set foot in an actual PR office in the time I've been doing this project. I had done in January, though: I'd spent 2 weeks on placement. What that placement taught me, and what has been reinforced through doing this project, is that I've found my niche- I've just got to get into it.

Time running out on PR / Netflix stuff

This week: I've found For Immediate Release, a podcast about Public Relations featuring experts from the UK and USA. The site doesn't have a particularly decent landing page put you can take your pick with the episodes and you''ll learn something. The British and American presenters Give a good rundown of happenings in the sector as well as focussing on an aspect of PR, like 'Why Techies Make Great Speakers' and 'Circle of Fellows #45: Consumer Activism.'

The self-imposed deadline for my Public Relations project is Saturday. I haven't learned as much as I'd hoped, but that comes with having a half-decorated house needing attention. I've still got contacts to email and places to approach.

My deadline for Netflix is Tomorrow. It's my sister's account, and I haven't asked what happens next. Will I find out what happens to Walt in Breaking Bad? What happens to that Arsehole McLeash in Designated Survivor? And which characters make it to the end of the pending Season 3 of Ozark?

I'm happy to share the cost. Of course I am.

Pain in the mouth

This week has been not a pain in the arse, but a pain in the mouth.

On Tuesday I wandered around Manchester, looking for any Public Relations information: new bars or shops opening, police incidents, any marketing info about events... I wasn't sure what I'd find exactly but I got some photography done.

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Graffiti art in #northernquarter #bird #manchester

A post shared by Matt Tuckey (@matttuckey) on Jun 4, 2019 at 7:48am PDT

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Graffiti art in #northernquarter #deer #manchester #shareourplanet

A post shared by Matt Tuckey (@matttuckey) on Jun 4, 2019 at 7:51am PDT

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Soon... #kingstfestival #manchester

A post shared by Matt Tuckey (@matttuckey) on Jun 4, 2019 at 8:12am PDT

I'm researching a few finds at the moment.

On Wednesday I had oral surgery to remove bite trauma from the inside of my cheek. The whole of the side of my face swelled up and I slept a lot afterwards. I'm still mouthwashing with saltwater and necking ibuprofen like they're Werther's Originals. As a result I've slept, read and watched a lot.

Watched this docu on the birth of Public Relations, featuring an interview with a PR pioneer, Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays and focussing on oil magnate John D Rockefeller.

Interesting, but the industry has moved on so much it's near unrecognisable from its inception.

Finished reading Jurassic Park, the 1991 Michael Crichton novel. It's a weighty, generous tale, very similar to the movie adaptation but much steadier and with more emphasis on the science harvesting fossilised remains, this leading to the creatures being revived after a 365 million year wait. A lot of the violence was removed for the film to get a PG rating, and some of the book was used in the movie's sequel, The Lost World. Half way in the tension starts to rack up. Worth ploughing through.

I also read Teach Yourself Successful Public Relations in a Week from the highly reputable Teach Yourself range. The short but comprehensive book by former BBC / Heathrow Airport PR manager Brian Salter takes you through the main tenets of public relations, and quizzes you after each section.

Next up: a couple of comics from Oldham Comic Con: John Wick was a cliched revenge story about a hired assassin seeking vengeance for his murdered team. Features an unrealistic fight scene and stops abruptly. Wonderland was a corny, bloody fantasy about a murderous, giant talking rabbit.

Deathstroke the Terminator came next, an early 80s graphic novel that predates James Cameron's Terminator franchise. I assumed it was some kind of 'versus' story when I picked it up. A heavy, fast-paced tale of a soldier-of-fortune ninja type, jacked up to a huge size after a military experiment went wrong. Deathstroke's alter ego, Slade, is as much of a villain in the outfit as he is out of it- he's an old, rich, white guy, a Savannah trophy hunter with little cultural knowledge (he seems to think a mosque and a temple are the same thing- that could be another entire graphic novel if the writers are savvy enough). He's served in humourously mythical places like 'Kurac' where he was fighting the dictator 'Kaddam.' An enjoyable romp which I guess I stumbled upon by accident.

I tried another episode of 70s Advertising drama Mad Men, but found it all rather dull. Same goes for political drama House of Cards. Both had ties to PR but weren't dealing with the sector head-on. There doesn't seem to be many TV shows portraying the industry.

I revisited Phone Booth, the 2002 thriller starring Colin Farrell as Stu, a slick-talking, 2-timing publicist blackmailed into standing next to a Manhattan public phone until all of his dirty truths are revealed. It's a good movie, but has dated somewhat. There were a few 'you brought this on yourself' films in that time period (Se7en was 7 years prior, the Saw franchise soon followed), plus there were a few discrepancies that I didn't think of when I first saw it as a 20-year-old. Wouldn't he need to pee at some point? I would have thought the film would have had more tension if it had been written with restricted narrative- if we'd never left Stu's side. It would have meant we never got to hear the police's side, nor saw the guy in the building behind the rifle, but it could have been done.

Perhaps all 4 of these shows portray PR people in a negative light. I'd say it's massively undeserving, as over the last few months I've met a lot of PR people and they're- for the vast majority of the time- good people. I briefly mentioned on the blog here that towards the end of January I volunteered at a local PR company. I won't name them just in case, but the team were positive and supportive professionals- down-to-earth, good teachers, careful listeners and people who genuinely wanted to make the world a better place. One of the projects involved a road safety campaign in which we were trying to get drivers to be more aware of cyclists: to give them space, to be more tolerant and to accept that the vast majority do follow the Highway Code. If you've ever cycled through traffic you can imagine how hard it would be to change public perception on that.

I have more Public Relations ideas in the pipeline.