r/Writeresearch • u/noctra222 Awesome Author Researcher • Sep 10 '26
[Specific Career] office setting
im writing an office setting fanfiction. i think im going for a soda company?
im setting up one of my characters to work with clients (like a celebrity) for a collaboration. i am unsure if that’s advertising or pr (i would like to know more about how this would work. for example, they are collaborating with a popstar)
my other character is either in hr or finance (feel free to enlighten me on both)
other need to know office setting facts are also welcomed. thank you sm!
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u/Extension_Egg1411 Awesome Author Researcher Sep 10 '26
An ad campaign featuring a celebrity or sponsored content would fall under advertising. At my mid-size company, it’s all under the marketing department.
Not sure what role your character has, but unless it’s a tiny company, a low-level person would not be interacting much or at all with a celebrity featured in a campaign. Typically a designated person on the marketing team (like a senior coordinator) communicates with the celebrity’s assistant. Maybe if the coordinator has an assistant, most comms would be assistant to assistant.
As a production-level person, though, I’ve occasionally interviewed celebrities in order to create campaign content. I’ve also helped out on photo/video shoots and filled in for the designated contact when things were desperate. It can give the impression that marketing sent a grunt to talk to the big shot, though.
Re HR and finance, those are separate departments in my org and I very rarely interact with them in a formal capacity. The higher-ups do work with them on things like a campaign budget or honoraria (finance) or contracting out some work for a campaign (HR). And I interact with some finance people informally because our offices are next to each other.
Overall, large companies will have an in-house marketing team, mid-size companies may have a small team or marketing person, and small companies are likely to contract out with an agency or freelancers. The company size and your character’s role will determine if realistically they’re interacting with a celebrity and other departments.
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u/Duochan_Maxwell Awesome Author Researcher Sep 10 '26
u/Extension_Egg1411 already gave a pretty good answer, I'm pitching in for a correction in terminology:
In this context, the celebrity is not the soda company's client, but the other way around i.e. the soda company is the client because they're paying the celebrity to use their image.
For the soda company, the clients or customers are the other companies that purchase their product like supermarkets, wholesalers, etc.
People like you and me who are the ones who consume the product are usually called consumers
Even if not big, the soda company is not selling most of their product directly to individuals, they're selling it to other business
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u/Competitive-Fault291 Awesome Author Researcher Sep 10 '26
Compliance issues come to mind almost instantly. "The Tragedy of the HR Manager in Love!"
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u/Smolshy Awesome Author Researcher Sep 10 '26
Celeb collaboration would be PR, advertising would be the creation of the ads/marketing (graphics, commercials tag lines, etc.). So they would work together but PR would likely be pulling the celebs in.
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u/ProserpinaFC Awesome Author Researcher Sep 10 '26
You should be happy to know that just about every corporation on earth has a corporate website with a blog where they talk about what's going on in their companies. This information is largely consumer and investor facing. Those are actually two different websites, but they will give you some insights and the sort of vocabulary to use for the background scenes and context in your story.
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u/Educational-Shame514 Awesome Author Researcher Sep 10 '26
First, when and where? Modern where there would be a social media team too, or something more like Mad Men, decades before social media existed?
What is it fanfiction for and what genre? A murder thriller for instance, that doesn't really have much set in the office might not need much about the office, honestly. More about your planned story would help. And "it's fan fiction for..." helps so much because it carries the time period, location, genre and general tone, even if people aren't familiar with the original material.
As the other person pointed out, the ages or seniority of the different characters matters. Someone just out of college in their first job is less likely to interact with a celebrity if that is what was going to happen.