Adam Cotton - Music PR Specialist (The Outside Organisation, London)
BA (Hons) Journalism and Media Studies, 2005
Before university: Cockshut Hill Technology College, Birmingham.
After graduation I took a job as an Advertising Assistant at Lepicol, a health food company, where I wrote editorial and negotiated the placement of adverts. I then had a brief but productive spell at HMV in London as a rock ‘n’ pop buyer where the head of PR, Gennaro Castaldo, got me a work placement with a top PR firm, The Outside Organisation. I had previously interviewed Gennaro as part of my course at Staffs and he remembered me.
I have now worked at The Outside Organisation, whose huge list of clients includes the likes of The Who, David Bowie and Q Magazine, for nearly three years. My job is very varied, from writing press releases to planning and carrying out media campaigns for events, artists and brands. My highlight by quite some distance is being the publicist for John Lydon, The Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd.
I want to keep learning and be involved with the media and music in some capacity. I have been lucky enough to work with some great people and some real legends in the music industry and I will never take any of this for granted. Staffordshire University gave me confidence, something I very much lacked before starting. My course was incredibly varied and the lecturers always on hand to provide guidance and advice, in particular for me John Rafferty who put many hours into helping me and giving me the confidence to succeed on the course. This is something I will not forget.
On the social side of being at Staffordshire University, despite it being a little bit of a cliché, I made great friends, some of my best friends, who I still see regularly. You spend three years with these people and you all have the same general goal no matter what course you are on. We all supported each other and had some great experiences too, many of them in the pub, I admit. I still miss the community element that the time at university gave me. Staffordshire University in short gave me both the confidence and tools to apply to my present job. It gave me an invaluable experience.
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