Job Description: Publicity and Events Intern

Job Description: Publicity and Events Intern 

Since my arrival at USC in the fall of 2021, I have held various jobs from being a pet nanny to a casting intern to publicity and events intern and many more in-between. Some roles I loved (pet nanny was my definite favorite) and some I absolutely loathed, but I will always be grateful that I had paid work even if the very job made me decide to change career fields completely. 

I would say my most intriguing job yet has been what they would call a “Publicity and Special Events Intern”. This term could mean a million different things depending on the agency or company you are working for but at the agency that I interned for and now do some freelance work at, it means you are taking on multiple roles as: 

• Personal Assistant 

• Talent Escort

• Peacekeeper

The particular agency that I worked for is a small but mighty public relations agency that is known throughout Hollywood as one of the most powerful entertainment public relations agencies in the industry. Specializing in both talent and events publicity, the agency has two teams “Talent PR” and “Events PR”. The lines often blur as the talent and events teams will often work with each other and for each other's clients. However, I landed an internship role on the events side of the agency and this is essentially what that entails… 

Personal Assistant: 

Many of those who embark on beginner job roles or internships will often take on the role as a personal assistant of some sort. Essentially, completing the work and tasks that your manager or boss does not have time to do or does not want to do.

I started working at this agency remotely in the summer as I was living back home in Massachusetts and the agency is based in LA, so there were no typical coffee runs or getting lunch for the team. Instead I was tasked with pulling press coverage on certain clients, creating face sheets for upcoming events, and updating all media and press lists. 

Pulling press coverage means that you are compiling and organizing a document of all press that a certain client has received over a specific amount of time. To do this you run thorough google searches on the client and use a software called Muck Rack to find press material from a magazine, newspaper or outlet, sometimes social media, that mentions the client. You must ensure that it is a mention from the correct time frame and not from many moons ago. A lot of times you will be asked to find press covering a clients recent work, so for instance, if you wanted to find press that is talking about not just Robert Pattinson but his work specifically in Twilight, you would only make note of articles and press that is talking about Robert Pattinson and Twilight not an article that is only talking about Robert Pattinson in The Batman. 

Updating media lists consists of running through a giant, overwhelming master list of all of the agency’s contacts in the industry and having to be extremely careful that you as an intern don’t accidentally delete one of their most important contacts. You must look through all the contacts and use the agency’s resources and softwares to check that these contacts are still up-to-date, that all phone numbers, email addresses and places of work are still correct and if they are not, to update them immediately. 

Working with face sheets is a little more fun but nothing too exciting. Face sheets are headshots or face photographs with the names of all of the attendees in alphabetical order, that will be at a particular upcoming event. For me, this often meant going to google and finding a recent, clear, up close and personal photograph of a celebrity's face and pasting that into a document and typing in the correct name of that celebrity underneath the photograph. These face sheets are used by the agency at the event to know who will be attending, and what face goes with what name. There is no possible way for everyone to know everyones name and what they look like, so that is when the face sheets come in hand. If the host on the stage is announcing a name that no one knows, we can look at the face sheet list and see what that person looks like so that we can then correctly escort the right person off the stage and tell the journalists and reporters back in the press room the correct talent that is about to come in which brings me to my next role as a PR and Events Intern…

Talent Escort: 

The job of Talent Escort is by far the most fun, enthralling yet demanding and exhausting roles as a Events Intern. 

CONS: 

• My agency required that all women wear black heels only, flats are FORBIDDEN. Which means that you are standing all day, with one 20 minute break in the middle of the 12 hour work day, running around like a chicken through the chaotic red carpet, backstage, and through press rooms. It is surprisingly difficult to stay level-headed and in a decent mood when you can feel your feet blistering and you can barely walk. Suddenly all the celebrities that you have been so excited to see since your childhood blur away as all you can think about is drinking some water and getting out of the shoes you are wearing. 

• There is little explanation or directions given to interns and first-time red carpet workers. The first red carpet I worked on I heard someone say that I was a “deer in headlights”. Working on a red carpet is so much more difficult and complex than you can imagine. There's hundreds of photographers, journalists and reporters all shouting at once, publicists are swarmed and crowding the entrances, celebrities and their managers and publicists are shouting orders and doing as they please, the carpet has so many different lanes, twists and turns, and sections, and somehow you as an intern are suppose to know how it all works, where everyone is supposed to go and what the rules are. One of my fellow interns said to me that she felt like she was in The Devil Wears Prada… 

PROS: 

• As you stand at the entrance of the red carpet, you get to see an endless line of celebrities, dressed to the nines, made up by the best hair and makeup artists in the world. You have to remain composed because it wouldn’t look too professional if the agency working the red carpet was gasping and pointing at all of the celebrities. You have to act like none of it affects you, even if you see your lifelong idol. 

• You get to be backstage at an award show and see first hand the candid reactions of the award winners as they come off of the stage. You will be tasked with escorting the award winners after their win, to the press room where they will be photographed and interviewed by the press. Often times if the person you are escorting is not “A-list” but the person behind you is, the person behind you will cut in front of you to get to the press sooner with no issues and you then have to explain to the person you are with that they just have to keep waiting their turn even though they were there first. 

Peacekeeper: 

• As you stand at the red carpet entrance, greeting the guests as they arrive, a lot of times you will have publicists come up to you and ask how they can get their client (the celebrity) at the front of the line, if they will be let in late, and many more requests. As an intern it is difficult to determine what can be swung for certain celebrities and the rules that remain for the rest. I mistakenly told one big celebrity’s publicist that they couldn’t arrive late as that is what the agency told us- that absolutely no one could come on the carpet if they arrived past the designated time that it said on their ticket. Yet when I went to double check this about the certain celebrity that wanted to come in late, I was told that he was an exception and to apologize profusely to the publicist that I told them otherwise. 

If someone starts getting angry with you, you have to simply remain composure. Publicists and their clients will often flood the entrance of the carpet, making it a chaotic traffic jam of people. If we were to tell them they needed to step aside and go into the designated publicist holding area, that would be an issue and we would most likely be met with a lot of complaints, but to keep the peace, sometimes white lies have to be made and we have to say it’s a fire hazard and the fire department is saying we will be shut down if this area is blocked off by people.

• Passive Sentences : 17
• Flesch Reading Ease: 45.59
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 15.65