Hofstra University’s new student-led public relations firm, The Swing Agency, is up and running after recently launching its website.
The agency was created last year by Hofstra professor of public relations Victoria Semple to bring experiential Public Relations (PR) learning to campus, something that hadn’t existed before.
“The radio students, they have their radio station and the TV students, they have a TV station. All we had was PRSSA [Public Relations Student Society of America],” said SaDiedrah Harris, the agency’s director and a graduate student of public relations at Hofstra. “This really combined student learning, leadership and getting that experience that you normally wouldn’t get on campus.”
The Swing Agency is run by a small group of PR majors from the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication. They currently manage three real accounts for companies that are all operated through the Hofstra University IdeaHUb’s Center for Entrepreneurship.
These campaigns include the Healthcare Entrepreneurship Challenge, the Veterans Venture Challenge and the Fitter Woman campaign, which is a part of Ascend Long Island, a larger organization working with small, minority-owned businesses.
“We’re serving entrepreneurs and small businesses in the Long Island area that normally would not be able to get a PR firm to help them,” Harris said.
Tasks include doing research, writing social media content and press releases and updating client websites.
“It’s giving me more of an idea of what real life PR agencies will look like so that I can get used to that and understand what kind of industry I‘m going into,” said Madie Mento, a junior public relations major.
Mento holds jobs for all three campaigns, currently working as the Account Executive for Fitter Woman, a researcher for the Healthcare Challenge and a writer for the Veterans Venture Challenge.
In addition to being a real agency, The Swing also serves as a Special Topics class that meets two times a week. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, students meet to update one another on their current projects and periodically hear from guest speakers or Professor Semple as she lectures on topics like pitching to the media and writing press releases – all relevant skills for the job.
“I think what’s interesting about this is I’ve pulled together all the knowledge I’ve gotten in my [other] classes to be successful in this class,” Mento said. “It feels like everything we’ve done has led up to this.”
Students are also required to put in an additional six hours of work per week outside of class to schedule appointments, meet with clients and work on their campaigns.
Despite having a faculty advisor, The Swing is entirely student-led, which the agency’s members greatly pride themselves on.
“We are still learning and that’s one of the things we’re proud of,” Harris said. “We know we don’t know everything, but that’s not what we’re trying to get to. We’re just trying to build morale in the community and trying to let [clients] know we’re here to help them.”
However, being student-led offers them a unique advantage over their competition.
“Most of the students in the class, they’ve grown up together because they’ve taken the same classes for four years at Hofstra, so it’s really great seeing that student leadership come out and being able to collaborate with other students,” Harris said
Although Hofstra University has transitioned to online classes for the semester and asked students to leave campus due to the COVID-19 outbreak, work at the agency has gone on mostly unaffected.
“A lot of [our] work is digital and the PR industry [as a whole] is digital,” Mento said. “When I was at school there was nothing I couldn’t do for the class on my computer besides face-to-face meetings with clients, and we’re still getting that by doing Zoom calls with them.”
“It’s been easier for us to pivot because PR can be done virtually,” Harris said.
The Swing Agency is continuing to work remotely due to stay-at-home orders and is looking for new clients to collaborate with. They can be reached at theswingagency.com.
