Press Conference 101

I have been lucky enough to attend three press conferences since I started interning at Eisbrenner, two of them earlier this week. One of the benefits to being an intern here is that although you are assigned to certain clients, you are able to work on any account and that means you are involved in a wide variety of projects.

On Wednesday I attended a press conference at Cobo Hall for Convergence Education Foundation’s Innovative Vehicle Design Awards. The program unites high school students with corporate partners and their goal is to build an innovative one-person, electric car. The students did amazing things with their cars, and it was great to see the interest from the media.

Thursday was another press conference, this time at the grand opening of Rock Financial JA Finance Park in downtown Detroit. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was there to speak, along with the founder of Quicken Loans and Rock Financial, Dan Gilbert. This conference attracted all sorts of media, including print, radio and broadcast.

The press conferences I attended this week gave me a world of knowledge about the role of a PR practitioner at these events. They are there to greet the media that attend (sometimes chasing them down), make sure they have the press kit and any information they might need, as well as set up interviews with people involved in the conference. These are things you may be able to learn in class, but when you have the opportunity to see how a press conference is run, your knowledge of how to work with the media will vastly improve.