By Andrea Aguinada
On April 1st, PRSSA hosted the President of Amy Levy PR, Amy Levy- Savage via Zoom. She
has been the President of her own firm for the past 18 years. Levy is a New York native and
attended the University of Hartford. During her time there she studied advertising/PR and went on to get her degree in Business. Amy would go on to work in different areas of her field like advertising and marketing. Throughout her career she had 5 internships and worked for ad agencies with huge accounts like Estee Lauder and Marshalls. The first job that she landed fresh out of college was at Della Femina where she stayed on for 6 months. Then she went on to work on Pharmaceutical accounts at D’arcy Masius. She then moved to Los Angeles to work at Paramount Pictures where even though she had experience in the industry already, she was still sent to work in the mail room. She worked on clients like Sandra Bullock and Charlize Theron. After her time at Paramount, she went to work for a smaller PR firm and eventually she opened up her own PR firm after years of different experiences in the PR and advertising world. Originally, she wanted to only represent art galleries and restaurants then began to do food manufacturing, film, film festivals, directors of plays, and expanded into the cannabis industry and drew on all the experience of the past.
Amy offered us her insight and expertise in the world of Food and Beverage PR and also about the ins and outs of the PR world. One of the biggest pieces of advice that she offered us was to “Merchandise your efforts”, which means to use the experience that you have gained at previous jobs and incorporate them into your new one. You use that experience to get your foot in the door. In her own firm she highly believes in transparency and in having everyone in on what is going on in the company, including her interns. She believes highly in celebrating diversity and inclusivity. She believes that diverse opinions make a business better because you get to see ideas play out from a different perspective. Amy actually implements the idea of merchandising your efforts by having her interns email her at the end of their day to give her a recap of the tasks that have been done, and that way when they finish their internship they can look back and see the experience they have gained.
Amy was very willing and open to answering all of the questions we sent her way. When the meeting began she made sure to connect to us on a personal level and asked us all a little bit about ourselves. When the Q & A portion of the meeting began she answered questions about retainers, how she is managing her company during the Corona Virus quarantine, and how creative she has to get now when she pitches her clients.
Amy offered us some really good tips on job interviews.
1.Do not say i would like to work here because " I am a people person."
2.Do not use quotes in a job interview.
3.She wishes that she listened more and didn’t try to show she was smart by giving her opinion and that she had soaked it all in.