Hello everyone, hope all of you are having a great time like I am interning, I’m into my second week of interning and I can finally say that I’ve gotten the hang of things. My workmates are a great bunch of people to work with and my boss who comes off to be a bit harsh, which is understandable because she believes in producing only the best is a great lady. So far, so good! Here is a re-cap of the week that was.
Week 1
Day 1 - Monday 8th December 2008
This was my official first day of work at Advance Public Relations and Marketing Promax in Nairobi, Kenya. I was at the office by 8am. I met with my boss and the Managing Director of Advance Public Relations Promax Mrs. Nisha Van Hoek who informed that I will be working from Monday – Friday 8am - 5pm and on Saturdays from 8am - 12:30pm.The staff has a meeting every Monday morning at 8am where I met with a few members of the team, Maria Wambau, the Accounts Manager and Marcia Janet, the Accounts Executive. During the meeting, the team discussed the past weeks activities as well as the activities for the current week. They also went through their clients and the tasks that have to be fulfilled and looked into. I got to know the clients that the consultancy works for, the most popular being British Airways in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, HP in English speaking African countries and the Seven Seas Technologies headquarters in Kenya. The company is also operational in Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Burundi. Other clients include Crown Berger Kenya, Getrudes Children’ Hospital, Institute of Quantity Surveyors Kenya, Brookhouse International School among others.
I was assigned the role of Media monitoring where I have to go through Kenya’s and Tanzania’s daily newspapers for any articles and/or pictorials for our clients. Kenyan dailies include The Daily Nation, The Standard, Business Daily and Nairobi Star while Tanzania’s include The Guardian, Daily News, the East African and Mwanainchi. Ugandan dailies are handled by a member of the team who is based in Uganda.
After the meeting, I was briefed on the consultancies rules and regulations as well as its background, vision and mission, the services it offers, Advance Public Relations Promax as a marketing consultancy, the consultancies client base, its competitive edge, their aims & objective and lastly their methodology.
Day 2 - Tuesday 9th December 2008
Day 2 :) I was as the office by 8am and first thing I did was Media monitoring. There was a pictorial in one of the dailies where Mr. Acharya of Acharya Travel Agency clinched the British Airways (BA) agent of the year award for the 2007/2008 financial year. I cut out the pictorial form the Daily Nation Newspaper, pasted it on a Promax Africa coverage sheet, scanned it and printed it as well. The scanned copy is sent to the BA offices based in London and Nairobi Kenya as well as to Promax Dubai.
One of the primary tools for supplying content to the media is the press release. This was invented as a Public Relations tool by Ivy Lee. I assisted in writing a Press Release for British Airways (BA) on how to avoid flight delays. This included information on improvement on flight delays and baggage loss as well as the December 2008 Christmas Holiday season fares.
We also came up with a Leisure Strategy for British Airways in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania which is to run after the Christmas Promo, probably in January 2009. We took a look at what Zambia had come up with as a guideline. The Leisure Strategy was for competition which is to run on one of Kenya’s best radio stations Capital FM for a week form Monday to Friday on the Breakfast show which runs from 6am – 10am. The presenter will take a total of 30 minutes during the show to talk about BA and its daily flights and later on ask a question on one of British Airways daily flight destinations. Three daily winners will win BA gift hampers and entered into a draw where at the end of the week, 15 listeners will be entered into a draw where they will stand a chance to win the ultimate prize of a return ticket to London courtesy of BA.
There are a few challenges we faced when coming up with the Leisure Strategy. Initially, we were supposed to come up with one Leisure Strategies for Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda for both newspaper and radio but there is no one newspaper and radio station that carters to all three East African countries. So we had to come up with three different strategies for all three countries even though this was not the initial plan. Using the budget we were allocated with, we were able to come up with three sensible and usable BA Leisure Strategies.
Day 3 - Wednesday 10th December 2008
Early in the morning, I started off by checking the emails and Media monitoring. Afterwards, we finalized the BA Leisure Strategy and sent them to Promax Dubai for confirmation.
Now last year, Advance Public Relations Promax put forward a proposal for a British Airways Kid’s Council. The proposal involved forming a group of children to advise British Airways on a range of different issues that may be important to younger travelers. This was the first time any airline has ever formulated an official council of young people to advice on their brand. British Airways worked with First News, a newspaper for young people to run a competition inviting children aged 8 – 14years to apply to join the council. Our Public Relations objectives include generating publicity about the Kid’s Council and to sell BA children’s products as the best in the airline industry, increase the visibility of BA and to enhance the BA brand in Kenya especially with family oriented fliers.
The international BA Public Relations teams also prompted the Kid’s Council around the rest of the world. The children were asked to submit a 250 word essay on why there should be a Kid’s Council and what ideas they have for making travel for children enjoyable. 12 children from the UK, Romania, Uganda, Hong Kong, Greece, South Africa, Mexico and Nairobi, Kenya were successful. From Kenya we had 8 year old Michelle-Marie Ng'onga win the essay competition. She will represent Kenya in the council for a period of 2 years.
Several kids programs that run on Kenyan television – Club Kiboko (Kenya Television Network - KTN), Generation 3 (Nation Television - NTV) and Angels Café (Citizen TV) wanted to have Michelle- Marie co-host their shows to discuss her role in the Kid’s Council as well as talk about her experience that took place in August 2008 in the UK. As BA’s Public Relations consultancy, we have the task of making sure that all interview, video and photograph sessions take place and are handled smoothly. We are in contact with the television stations involved and it is our job to inform Michelle- Marie and her mum on the locations of the shootings as well as make assure that they have transport to the locations. We were handling the first shoot for Kenya Television Network’s (KTN) programme Club Kiboko on this day. We confirmed with the station crew as well as Michelle- Marie and her mum on the shooting and left for the KTN offices. There, Michelle- Marie co-hosted the programme. The interview took about an hour.
Day 4 - Thursday 11th December 2008
In the morning, we decided to do all of Friday’s tasks on this day as Friday was going to be a public holiday. These tasks include sending the weekly report to Promax Dubai on BA activities of the week on Press Releases, Photo Releases in dailies in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and the forthcoming activities for Kenya and Tanzania.
After mid-day, my boss Mrs. Nisha Van Hoek, Marcia and I had a conference call with HP offices in Abu Dhabi where we discussed forthcoming activities yet to take place as well as other issues.
Seven Seas Technologies is one of Advance Public Relations Promax clients. The week before, Advance Public Relations Promax did an audio news release (ANR) for Seven Seas Technologies. This was pre-edited audio news story we sent to one of Kenya’s leading radio stations Capital FM’s business news. This is in the same way Press Releases are sent to print media. The news clip played on Thursday afternoon and we called to get a copy of the clip for our client Seven Seas Technologies.
BA requested for a survey to be conducted in the existing print and electronic media in Kenya and Tanzania. This task I believe is known as Communication Audit. BA wanted to know the media’s opinion on the airline. We sent out the questionnaires via email to media representatives from different media houses. Some responses came fast and they did so for a reason: the journalists had nothing good to say. Each question had an angry screaming answer. I resounded to calling those who did not respond to the emails. Some promised to respond to the email, others swore they were on when I called them, while others were kind enough to answer the questions over the phone. We were able to get a number of both negative and positive responses by the end of the day and sent them to the BA head office. I learnt a lot from this, like how to talk to people on the phone with love and patience no matter the situation (thank God for my sweet voice).
Friday 12h December 2008
Public Holiday – Jamhuri Day. Kenya celebrates 45 years of Independence from their British colony.
There’s a little History lesson for you all :).
Day 5 - Saturday 13th December 2008
Today being the shortest day of the working week, we filed all the press cuttings in their respective files.
It was a challenging week for me as I had to get used to the office and fit in within a short period of time and prepare my mind to work. In a week, I have written a Press Release for British Airways, come up with a British Airways Leisure Strategy, done Media monitoring for our clients and carried out media co-ordination and coordination of advertising where we worked together with the print and electronic media. The media was faced the most difficult week after the Information Minister passed a “draconian” Media Bill which seeks to give the Kenyan government the right to gag the fourth estate. The decision lies in our Presidents hands on whether or not to sign the proposed Media Bill.
Can’t wait to see what the next week has in store.
All the best interning.
xoxo
Carole, Limkokwing University Malaysia
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