Hi, my name is Chirine Harrabi and I am currently finishing up my last year of Communication Science at UvA.
As part of this Bachelor, I did an internship at one of the most contemporary PR Agencies in Amsterdam. The new breed PR and communication company Baby (formerly known as Bam-works) is made up of a small team of creatives with strong foothold in the world of fashion and lifestyle organisations. The agency’s key characteristic is to bring a unique blend of youth, experience and community-led creativity to the art of communication and to work at the speed of culture.
Baby’s main competences incorporate:
- Consulting and strategy
- Media relations
- Community building and curation
- Partnerships
- Event conception
- Guest list management
Despite my position as an intern, I was fortunate to work very closely to the Baby team consisting of three individuals and hence get an in-depth insight into the business, surpassing conventional intern tasks. Our brand portfolio is quite extensive including a variety of highly known and valued brands such as Dr. Martens, Zalando, Filling Pieces, New Amsterdam Surf Association, G-Star Raw, POP Trading Company, Yume Yume and Tenue. By working alongside one of the three senior account holders, I was quickly trusted with a lot of responsibility.
Some of the rather conventional day-to-day tasks included the management of shared documents, keeping track of seedings to editors or influential individuals and sample lend outs to stylists. Furthermore, stock management had to be translated into excel sheets as well as physically taken care of. We managed a showroom of client’s products like clothes and shoes in our office, of which I had to make sure it stays organised. Other ongoing tasks included analysing the media landscape. Additionally, it was very important that I track our client’s media exposure and report these monthly.
Besides the daily tasks I was able to create content for communication with editors in form of press releases but also through visual expression. Therefore, I was able to let my creative affinity shine through and create visually appealing mailers themed around important cultural moments. Moreover, I got the opportunity to experience as well as participate in the process of strategically pitching to a client. Lastly, as a modern PR agency, exceeding traditional forms of PR, event conception was a reoccurring task for us. Therefore, I was included into our regular meetings and got to share my ideas on how to make certain events happening. Let me exemplify this by talking about two of my favourite events we have worked on.
For the street style brand New Amsterdam Surf Association we organised their collaboration together with the Rijksmuseum and the Vermeer exhibition. The brand launched a collection of curated pieces inspired by Vermeer’s art pieces. Therefore we brought together one hundred editors working for several media outlets such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar or Volkskrant and enjoyed a dinner hosted in the Rijksmuseum.
Currently, our team is sharing the office with the independent style magazine Glamcult. Hence, together with their team, we were able to be part of the creation of the H&M Mugler event in Berlin. We worked with a local freelancer and took care of the guest list management both for the Dutch as well as German market. My responsibility included keeping a clear overview and track over the guests invited, creating and sending out invitations and reminders. In Berlin I was also able to help with some of the production tasks such as setting up welcoming gifts at the venue.
