By Shipra Shukla, Intern
I remember the day when I first stepped into the newsroom. Chaos is the right word to sum it up!
The initial few days were intimidating, but newsrooms taught me to be calm during the chaos, find signals in the noise and anticipate the unusual. I wrestled tough days to give my best shots as a news presenter: “Breaking News” LIVE for 10 years was such a thrill!
Precisely, it was a happy ending.
Journalism to PR — not so obvious!
Next, I decided to give entrepreneurship a whirl. My BFF and I opened a brick-and-mortar store PANKH. The idea was to promote India’s eco-friendly handicrafts and to empower artisans. As a new entry in the market, PANKH needed publicity and promotion to get registered in customers’ minds (The thought of taking PANKH online, as an e-commerce store thrilled me). I realized, however, that before promoting PANKH, we must educate consumers about the beautiful, traditional handcrafted items.
The power to change brand perception
Having spurred my interest to learn more about B2B, social media marketing, SEO, organic search, digital campaigns, promotions and all aspects of designing a brand’s identity, I decided to pursue a graduate degree.
While I learned a whole new dimension of communication, the one idea that prompted me to explore PR was the prospect of helping brands connect better and creating lifelong relationships with customers.
That’s how I pivoted!
After graduating, the search to find the right job began. While I had an early opportunity to work with a SaaS-native tech startup as a communication consultant, my ex-colleagues, who also transitioned into PR professionals, encouraged me to explore options in the agency environment.
This quest for agency experience landed me with The Hoffman Agency. The information and experiences shared by other interns and employees via Hoffman’s blog helped me to decide that this was the right place. I felt that at Hoffman, I had the liberty to ask all the hard questions upfront! I was particularly fascinated to learn more about the Periodic Table of Storytelling. It’s the authentic stories that help brands stand out after all.
Embracing the challenge of tech PR
Now that I have the privilege to integrate my past experiences with my new work life, I want to contribute and learn about new ways to make the world a better place.
Undeniably, tech can be a great enabler and can empower change. Patiently, I have started inching toward tech PR. The challenge ahead is to uplevel my understanding of tech terms and technologies.
Apart from that, I look forward to learning more about building successful client relationships, crisis response and best practices for global communication. To have the longevity of your career, you need to build the foundation right — having done it before, I’m replicating it again!
P.S. In case we haven’t met before, you can always spot me turning and twisting “the yogic way.”
