I had the amazing opportunity to participate in PRSA's Shadow Days two weeks ago (I know, I'm slacking!) and I am so grateful for this experience! I was assigned to 'shadow' the media relations department at Coca-Cola Headquarters in Atlanta. When I found out my placement, I was beyond excited as an Atlanta native and loyal Coca-Cola consumer. There was a group of about 8 or 9 of us from several different colleges in Georgia so we mostly stayed in a conference room and listened to a few people in the media relations department talk about what they do. We got to ask them a few questions and watched a couple presentations on their work. Of course we got to pick a beverage from their cooler filled with every current Coca-Cola product you can imagine. I picked the classic Coke bottle :). After we spoke to some of the team, we all headed down to their archives.. this was by far the
best part of the tour. The archives hold every Coke memorabilia you can think of. There were rows and rows of Coke products like cans, bottles, classic coke trays, fountains, lamps, gum wrappers, posters and way more. The historian pulled a few objects from several rows and told a little story about each thing- most of the information was new to me and made me fall in love with Coca-Cola even more. They were the
first to do everything!! Oh and they had the couches from American Idol just sitting in the lobby area of the archives room. I wanted to take a picture so very badly, but I resisted the urge. But I could go on and on about this part of the tour so I will stop before I get carried away. It was an amazing experience to be able to see all of this. This was the first time I got to see what it was like to practice public relations in corporate and I have to say that I would prefer this over agency life. I know I have to gain experience in agencies first and that is completely fine with me but working in corporate is a great goal for me and I'm so glad I was able to see a little glimpse of what it was like!
