Tank News and Blog

Being from rural Yorkshire, where the locals of retired vets have only recently been bestowed with broadband, to go and work for a Nottingham PR agency is not a common thing to do.  So why did I?

I am not particularly sympathetic towards corporate etiquette.  A day of being 110 per cent on-message, with inroads and blue-sky pseudo-creativity over a cup of other meaningless jargon, appealed to me as much as eating a bowl of toenail clippings.

Having racked up plenty of placements, ranging from advertising and newspapers to national broadcasting, to do something quite fun was the priority. Trouble is, every half-brained cretin who has ever done a media course wants to do the same.

MTV News was a fun place. Unfortunately, they couldn’t take anybody on permanently. Likewise, BBC Radio 1 was amazing. Being in the press department, there was a good mix of dealing with the media and production, and I liked the process of seeing something I had publicised appear in the newspapers. They, however, were in the middle of the licence fee jiggery and couldn’t even keep the people they had.

Being nearly, but not quite, as delusional as your average military dictator, I tend to walk around thinking I am in a mixture of The Thick of It, Mad Men and The Apprentice. Perhaps for this reason, Nottingham PR agency Tank PR seemed like a good choice. Still working with the media, but with less prospect of lifetime bankruptcy.

And it is quite a fun place. There’s a football table, it looks like the Dragons’ Den set and there’s a Labrador slobbering over my foot. Sure, I could have gone into banking and been rich, but I’d have probably jumped off the top of Canary Wharf after a week. And I can’t do maths. Although, neither can most banks.

Tank also has a wider range of clients that one might expect for a Nottingham-based PR agency. From fashion to corporate services, there’s a chance to get involved with all sorts of industries. In future, I reckon I would prefer to do more events and showbusiness publicity. If Simon Cowell calls up, I might be off. But all is safe until then.

The first week has been very admin-heavy but, for such an impatient person, I think I have stuck with it well. I am assured that, as the company grows, people will appear and take care of that. So it stands to reason that, if I help Tank do well, I get several personal assistants. If that’s not an incentive, I don’t know what is.

Glen