August 9th, 2010 by
Steve
Tomorrow is Speed’s inaugural – and potentially final – Bring Your Kids to Work Day.
It was an idea born of a comment that those colleagues with children have a wholly different life outside the office, one which those without kids rarely appreciate. Equally, most of the kids have no idea what really goes on in the workplace. A heady morning of photocopying is unlikely to linger long in their memories though, so we’ve tried to set up some more suitable and creative exercises for them, at not inconsiderable risk to the paintwork of the place and the sanity of colleagues.
I’ll carry some details of how the brave experiment goes here tomorrow, but the main feed will be on this tatty old blog that you can also find on our web site.
This attempt to introduce youngsters to the world of work by giving them a quick taste of PR has again drawn my attention to how tough it is for (older) young people to find jobs at the moment. Couple that with the way in which PR is both changing rapidly because of diversifying media and it’s easy to see why in the future agency jobs may become pretty unattractive for people starting their careers. Not only are the jobs scarce, but once you are in the door the skills you’ll need to learn quickly will be bewildering, and worst of all few agencies have a sufficiently structured approach to learning to help them
Which feels like a good topic for a blog post or two in the coming weeks.
It’s a worry. I’m 46 and three quarters and this is my first ever blog. Not only that, I’m ‘babysitting’ (babyblogging?) for my boss, whose blogs are the stuff of legend. And he’s younger than me. In fact everyone at Speed is younger than me, which confirms two facts: first, I am old; second, we work in a young industry.
Obviously, I haven’t always been old. But when you’re the oldest person in a team of almost 40 PR professionals, you certainly feel it. Speed is not unusual in this respect – all the agencies I have worked at (and there have been a few) have a similar age profile, with most people in their late 20s and early 30s. Quite what happens to PR folk in their 40s, I’m not sure, but there aren’t many of us around.
This is a worry. At a recent iMedia Agency Summit in Brighton, one of the keynote speakers was Professor Sarah Harper, director of the intriguingly-titled Institute of Ageing at the University of Oxford. In a wide-ranging presentation, Prof. Harper argued that the wider marketing community needs to rethink its attitude to the ’silver’ market and shift the focus away from an obsession with all things ‘yoof’. The flurry of approving tweets from the largely 30-40 year old delegates at the summit were testimony to the fact that the professor had hit a raw nerve.
Simon Hill (almost 47)
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workplace 2 Comments »
March 23rd, 2009 by
Steve
Great column from Lucy Kellaway in today’s FT about why there are so few pop songs inspired by the workplace.
She cites Sheena Easton’s Morning Train but laments on this being an ode to commuting rather than an incisive snapshot of the working day. Whatever the merits, the video and studio performances are classics.
Even domesticity has had a go at attaining musical heights of late. 101 Housework Songs offers us treats like I Want To Break Free, Manic Monday and – poignantly in the depths of a recession – I Will Survive.
So surely the modern workplace can offer us something to inspire musicians? We spend enough time in it after all.
Here’s my PR top 10, in no particular order, for consideration:
- Fleetwood Mac, Sweet Little Lies
- Spandau Ballet, True
- Dead Or Alive, You Spin Me
- The Jam, News Of The World
- Eurythmics, Would I Lie To You?
- Green Day, I Want To Be On TV
- Elton John, Tell Me What The Papers Say
- Brutal Truth, Media Blitz
- Girls Aloud, No Good Advice
- Bros, When Will I Be Famous?
Nylon and hairspray meets a steam train
