When Dr. Jabro gave us the itinerary for the PRSSA National Conference our first day of class, I immediately circled the F.A.M.E. PR session. I have been looking into the industry of music and entertainment Public Relations for a while and couldn’t wait to learn at the feet of Nicole Garner. Nicole is the CEO of the Garner Circle, a prestigious PR group based in Atlanta, New York, and Los Angeles. The presentation was by far the most interactive presentation that I’ve had here at the PRSSA National Conference. After introducing herself Garner gave us the hash tag “areyouininc” and told us to tweet our elevator pitch in one minute. Turns out, I need to do a lot of editing for my elevator pitch to fit into 140 characters. Nicole gave the crowd advice and insight into Fashion/Beauty, arts, music and entertainment PR.
I gained confidence in my abilities as a professional when Garner talked about the intricacies of music PR. None of the information came as a surprise to me, and I knew how to effectively accomplish the specific things she listed as being key to pleasing a client and knew I had resources to accomplish them. Such as gaining a network of bloggers, followers, fans, and radio DJ’s for your client. Including finding bloggers that are popular with the target audience for your client. She listed different ways to determine the influence of the individual, as well as taking the band’s story and crafting an interesting and engaging way of telling that story to the public.
There were little tips at the end of the presentation that I found to be really interesting such as the placement of journalists and photographers on the red carpet and the seating arrangements for fashion shows. Everyone knows Anna Wintour is in the front row but who gets seated in the second and third rows?
What really blew me away was how during the presentation Garner not only told us how to be a resourceful and smart publicist, she showed us. Garners new book is entitled Are you in Inc., the book is about being a professional in the entertainment PR field. By using this PRSSA session as a platform for students to use her hash tag she drew in hits for her book and used the influence of the students she was teaching to promote her book directly to her target audience. Tricky, tricky, Nicole.

Follow me on Twitter @_hannaramma to c heck my live tweets from each session at the conference!