For my Princetern­ship with Fleishman-Hillard in Atlanta, Geor­gia, I had the priv­i­lege of shad­ow­ing Ms. McCall But­ler ‘97 a Senior Vice Pres­i­dent and Part­ner at Fleishman-Hillard who leads finan­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the firm’s AT&T Inc. account. She began my action-packed day by explain­ing how she came to work at Fleishman-Hillard through her early con­sult­ing work at Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers, her MBA from the Tuck School of Busi­ness at Dart­mouth, and finally, her land­ing at Fleishman-Hillard as a part of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Con­sult­ing World­wide divi­sion, a voca­tional route that she her­self described as “slightly cir­cuitous.” Then, she talked about her work with AT&T, specif­i­cally the company’s finan­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and how, while the advent of the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing age and social media had altered the medi­ums through which com­pa­nies com­mu­ni­cate, the basic prin­ci­ples of any pub­lic rela­tions and/or brand man­age­ment remain the same: hon­esty and con­cise­ness. Though the tone of dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions was slightly more con­ver­sa­tional, peo­ple always val­ued clar­ity and integrity in pub­lic rela­tions above all else.

Next, Mr. Aeres and Ms. Gon­za­lez talked about their work with com­pa­nies, such as two com­mer­cial mate­ri­als pro­duc­ers based in Atlanta. They dis­cussed the wide vari­ety of work that Fleishman-Hillard does for its clients, includ­ing the restruc­tur­ing of inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions, analy­sis of busi­ness pro­pos­als, and investor rela­tions. More­over, they dis­cussed the strengths that Fleishman-Hillard has in its vast net­work of offices all over the world that spe­cial­ize in the var­i­ous types of work that the firm does for its clients. One of the many keys to Fleishman-Hillard’s suc­cess in the pub­lic rela­tions indus­try is the coop­er­a­tion that occurs within the firm to give the client the best pos­si­ble prod­uct and experience.

After­wards, Ms. But­ler had a con­fer­ence call with Mr. Solomon, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent — Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions for AT&T, and his lead­er­ship team. Dur­ing this call, the group dis­cussed the company’s focus on the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Among other things, recog­ni­tion for AT&T’s com­mit­ment to deliver a supe­rior cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is one task that Ms. But­ler and her team pur­sue each and every day.

Ms. McCall But­ler, Matt, and fel­low Princetern Christina

We also met with Mr. Cor­ley, a team mem­ber in Fleishman-Hillard Atlanta’s Con­sumer Group, and Mr. Browher and Mr. Groom, who lead dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions ini­tia­tives for the Fleishman-Hillard Atlanta office. The group dis­cussed the need for cred­i­bil­ity when it comes to pro­mot­ing a busi­ness and the impor­tance of design­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions to a company’s tar­get audi­ence and ulti­mate com­mu­ni­ca­tions goal.

Accord­ing to Mr. Cor­ley, pub­lic rela­tions are much more con­vinc­ing and effi­cient if the infor­ma­tion and argu­ment for a par­tic­u­lar com­pany or prod­uct comes from a third-party source rather than an adver­tise­ment. Thus, Fleishman-Hillard works to pro­mote its clients to, for instance, tech­nol­ogy blog writ­ers or news­pa­per jour­nal­ists by giv­ing these third par­ties oppor­tu­ni­ties to expe­ri­ence clients’ prod­uct or ser­vices. As a result, Fleishman-Hillard can deliver more mean­ing­ful and cred­i­ble cov­er­age for its clients and their prod­ucts. Mr. Browher dis­cussed the need to deter­mine the tar­get audi­ence and use that infor­ma­tion to cre­ate a more effec­tive pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign for that tar­get audi­ence. This allows clients to effi­ciently mar­ket to their con­sumers, even if they are on a tight budget.

This Princetern­ship was an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence for all that it taught me about the world of mar­ket­ing and pub­lic, finan­cial, and investor rela­tions and for all of the bril­liant and moti­vated indi­vid­u­als that I had the honor of meet­ing dur­ing my expe­ri­ence. Every­one was extremely wel­com­ing and gra­cious to me, and I was very pleased at the fact that they all were will­ing to spend their time to edu­cate me. I would like to thank Mr. Aeres, Ms. Gon­za­lez, Mr. Solomon, Mr. Cor­ley, Mr. Browher, and Mr. Groom for tak­ing time out of their busy sched­ules to speak with me. Most impor­tantly, I would like to thank Ms. McCall But­ler for offer­ing to host this amaz­ing Princetern­ship and being such a won­der­ful men­tor dur­ing this won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity. This Princetern­ship was truly one-of-a-kind.