House of Talent Pa: Intern

My name is Ryan Somerville. I am interning for House of Talent Pa this summer in the city. House of Talent Pa is a PR and talent management agency that does PR and marketing, model representation, talent representation, brand representation, graphic design, and web development. This has been my second summer working for House of Talent. Last summer, I was one of five interns and now this summer I am the one and only intern that they brought back for the summer.

The business is ran by notable publicist, Antoine Johnson. As an intern, I act as an assistant to Antoine and get to learn how he operates his business. I am also responsible for assisting in creating media kits for clients, securing media opportunities, assisting clients at events, specializing in crisis management, being a liaison between clients and press, setting up appearances for events (TV/Radio), assisting in media buying and more.

At House of Talent I’ve had the opportunity to work with a vast amount of clients of Antoine’s as well as finding my own clients to book and represent. Finding and managing my own clients has been a fun experience for me. I’ve enjoyed finding local talents to choose to represent as my own clients. Through this internship I learned that I really had a passion for the music industry and people who work in it. Through this realization I started my own blog, interviewing local Philly artists and tying in how fashion has influenced them. I had a hip-hop and fashion blog that through my internship connected me with a lot of new up and coming artists from the city that I got to interview.

The blog was something I never thought I’d ever do. Being at my internship constantly around creatives and people that inspired me it only made sense for me to start my own thing and carve my way into my new found passion. The blog and internship led me to interview and build connections with a lot of new and influential people, which I really enjoyed and made my experience at House of Talent so worth it to me.

We had a launch event for a local rapper debuting his mixtape and for my blog. The rapper was another intern that worked at House of Talent so we got to build out our own event from scratch and watch it come to live. We created our own campaign called, #CityGoinUp, dropping content and music every week using the hashtag to promote the launch event. For the event we had to make up our own sponsorship package to share with potential sponsors after budgeting the cost cover the event. We ended up securing KiKi Vodka as an alcohol sponsor, Whoseyourlandlord, and the Philadelphia blog Wooderice as the media sponsor. It was a fun experience setting up my own launch event for the first time and learning the proper steps/ways to build up such an event. #CityGoinUp ended up as a success for my first ever event that I had put together. That night being around people that inspired and influenced me showed me that this was something that I loved and wanted to get into.

My experience that night at the #CityGoingUp event and everything I’ve learned at House of Talent has been nothing short of amazing. It has been a great two summers of learning PR and talent management as well as dipping my feet into so many other career paths. The experiences and connections I’ve made from this internship will live with me forever!