The Things the Spanish Got Right

Image: Spain-Holiday

I have recently made the big leap across the border from Bordeaux in France to the sunny south coast of Spain. My new home is Malaga, the touristy city that allows for beach days in February and continuous eating all day long. As a primary school teacher by day and an Erasmus partier by night, here are a few of my favourite things…

The Social Life. My experience after 3 weeks in the Spanish sun is that the most important thing to a Spaniard is to sit outside cafes drinking beer with friends all day long. “Una caña” is a small beer which, in Malaga, usually costs around 1 euro. In my short time, I have learned that at least one “caña” must be consumed every day. It’s time to wave goodbye to the vineyards of Bordeaux!

The Siesta. It seems to me that everything in Spain happens a few hours later than in the UK. Lunch is at 3pm, supper is at 10pm and night clubs shut at 7am. This has led to the ingenious invention by the Spanish of two shorter sleeps every day, rather than our preferred 8-hour nights. In Malaga, you would be hard pushed to find a shop or restaurant that is open between the hours of 3pm and 5pm. Take note, the siesta is taken seriously in Spain.

The Spanish Language. This is a comparison to France, in which I spent a lot of time being angered by incorrect English on billboards and the language battle with waiters when they replied to me in English (despite being in bourgeois Bordeaux). Even in the tourist town of Malaga, music is in Spanish, shops have Spanish names and the people always reply to me in their mother tongue. Perhaps the same wouldn’t be said for a small town 50 km away called Marbella…

The Spaniards. They may not see any need to apologise if they barge into you in the street, but I have never felt more welcome than I have this past month by the Malagueños. If you ask for directions, they’re happy to walk you to your destination and if you don’t know a word in Spanish, they wait patiently while you try to explain what you mean.

Malaga's Beach!

Why PR Is Not The Job For Me

I have come to a conclusion: after a 6 month internship in a French PR firm that specialises in fine foods and magazines, 2 weeks in a chic London firm that represents top-end hotels and some post-GCSE work experience with my cousin in beauty PR- I have finally decided that Public Relations is not quite right for me.

The world of PR is heavily stereotyped; lots of champagne, a variety of freebies, plenty of glamourous events in high heels and constantly having the opportunity to showcase your creativity. Although some of this may be glitzy, and PRs certainly all have a story to tell of that time they organised an event with a zed-list celebrity in a swanky venue in Paris, the other 99% of their time is spent being frustrated at ignored emails, annoyed at incorrect journalism and having to be overly friendly to an unresponsive client.

The working world demands routine, repetition and admin, but I can’t help thinking that sending hundreds of blankets emails with text book press releases to interns at crumbling magazines is a little demoralising, especially when the majority of those emails end up unread. The rise of influential bloggers has certainly changed this dynamic, there are now a lot more junk mail folders to send your press releases to, but unless your incessant emailing is paired with a creative marketing scheme or an original, and always expensive, advertising campaign, I found it difficult to feel like any impact had been made.

The feeling of seeing one of your clients featured in the press is certainly a thrill. However, even when you are successful in your promotion pursuit, the problem with PR is that it is virtually impossible to measure. The experts suggest that PR value is 3 times the value of advertising (if a half page advert in the magazine costs £1000, a half page editorial piece would therefore be ‘worth’ £3000). Yet, what I find frustrating is that to know if the writing on those pages transfers into the all-important words on the lips of consumers, well that is almost impossible. 

The intangibility of PR certainly contributes in a large way to my decision, but the fundamental turning point is that PR has deteriorated my appreciation of magazines and made me rather cynical about journalism. Journalists can copy and paste a press release straight into their article within minutes without even a full comprehension of the product. This leads to the products represented by the pushiest PRs who happen to be that old-friend-from-school or the most generous PRs (who can offer free trips to the Bahamas) having the largest word count in the press. Even the most inconsistent cynic would point out that this means that there is very little substance behind the statements. 

Even though I am highly dubious about the Public Relations-Journalist partnership, I can admit that PR has taught me a lot about business, networking and events. Although I have decided that it's not the career path for me, certainly at this stage, I won't deny that my experiences have been more than worthwhile.