Class meets "real life"

Every academician looks for a way to bring classroom work to life. With the study abroad program this is facilitated through scheduled field trips to various places in and around London. For my students, previous field trips and classroom discussions lead them to their meeting with "real life," at Abchurch Communications.

Briefly, as stated on their website, Abchurch is one of the UK's leading financial, investor and corporate communications consultancies, advising more than 85 clients, over 70 of which are quoted on the London Stock Exchange. The aggregate market capitalization of their client base is now approaching £4 billion ($8 billion US).

The first half of the day was, as one student put it, a crash course in financial public relations. Charlie Jack, an associate director, spoke with us for approximately two hours on how financial public relations works and where Abchurch fits in. It was interesting to see how UK papers significantly influence the London market. Charlie mentioned that a survey reported approximately 80% of readers who made a decision to invest or not within the market did so after reading various London papers and financial websites. Inadvertently, Charlie touched on several classroom topics such as objectives, target audiences, working with the media, understanding your clients industry, research, training, and more. Students were positively overwhelmed by the wealth of knowledge and various aspects of financial public relations. During our last few moments in the meeting, Justin Heath, a director, discussed the environmental aspect of the firm. Justin provided an overview of the clients and why environment is a such a hot commodity.

After our discussions with Charlie and Justin, we were lead on a 5-10 minute walk by a few new hires to attend a lunch-time meeting where we listened to Julian Bailey, the multi-media news editor for the BBC. This meeting was sponsored by the CIPR, which is the equivalent of PRSA in the U.S. After a few moments of eating and socializing, we listened to Mr. Bailey discuss how PR fits into the media and why we should care. This 30 minute conversation was followed by 30 minutes of Q&A.

Overall, this was a great opportunity for students to see the inner workings of a firm. This was an ideal merger between classroom discussion and the "real world."