The Mistake by the Lake

Hey kids! Hope everyone's summer and summer internships are going well. I'm currently interning at McKinney Advertising & Public Relations in Cleveland. It's a small firm, I mean really small, only 2 executives are in the office full-time, but I've really learned a lot.

The firm is run by Judy Cerne who is hilarious, she reminds me of the fun grandmother I never had. She shows you everything about running a business, she lets us look at the in-voices so that we can see how they bill their hours, which was really interesting. I think one of the most exciting things that I've gotten to do was sit in on a conference call with McCormich & Schmick, a seafood restaurant coming to the Beachwood area who was looking for someone to do their PR for the grand opening. We didn't get the job but it was a great learning experience to see how they positioned themselves to be the best option for the potential client and how they handled their questions.

I think the thing that I'm most excited about is that I've gotten to draft and send out two press releases to the media. I didn't really think as an intern that I would actually have that opportunity. My non-PR friends didn't find this very exciting but I thought you guys might appreciate it.

McKinney takes interns year round even though they don't post it on their Web site, and they've had many from OU. If anyone is interested in a small agency that allows you to do a lot of hands of stuff I would highly suggest them. They also have a tendency to hire a lot of their interns

Things will start to pick up here soon, their biggest client is the North American Menopause Society (I know sounds like a blast right?), but they have their national conference in October so the next month will be full of assembling press kits and alerting the media.

I guess I'd better get back to being a productive intern, talk to you guys later!


P.S. One of the account executives gave me an article on when to you and En dash, Em dash, and hyphen, it's really interesting and if anyone wants a copy of it let me know and I'll hook you up :P