my experience

Dear all,

Happy new year in advance.

The last 2 weeks have been really busy for me. I've been involved in a whole week of different events in a row, involving 3 different clients. Although these are not my first event, it is my first time of having so many in the same week, which is quite exhausting.

I would not mention about my clients' names here because i think these are some confidential things of my company, so i would just talk about my experiences. Sorry if this causes any inconvenience.

Here, i will basically share my experience on the first event first. It was about my client celebrating its 50th anniversary. Prior to that, a week ago i need to accomapny my client to have media drops to distribute media gifts to many selected media outlets and give them a brief introduction about my client. Media drop means dropping by media outlets to pay them a visit. And so, i will have to call and arrange time with all the editors from selected media and section for the media drop. Getting to meet the editors and grabbing the chance to have a short conversation is important for my job as a PR person because it simply fosters the relationship between me and them, even if it is just a little bit. Then, after the media drop, i need to keep in touch with them by sending emails and giving them calls to invite them to the 50th anniversary press conference.

Besides, my client also wishes to have exclusive media interview, whereby, we will only invite one media of each language (English, Chinese and Malay) to interview my client. Basically, the interview is to share the 50 years of success and the company's direction in year 2009). In this case, i would have to email and call the first 3 selected media to see if they are interested to do the exclusive interview, if not, i would have to seek for second choice.

From here, i realise arranging time with the media(for media drop, 50th anniversary press conference and exclusive interview) is quite a tough job. I have to arrange the time based on their availabilties and slot into timetable accordingly. Most of the editors are busy, especially when it is in December, therefore, i will have to either persuade them to just spare out 15 minutes for me, or to let them send their representatives to meet up with my client and i.

Besides, arranging the media interview is also a difficult job. Editors will not be interested with any simply interviews that we offer. There must be certain level of news worthiness to get them agreed. Therefore, i tried really hard to persuade them to actually nod their heads and send their journalists for the exclusive interview.

The experience is new for me, especially the media drops because i get to see the editors that i have to call everyday, to follow up with all kinds of events that my company organizes. I feel weird at times because through the phone, we almost feel very close as we have spoken to each other for countless time, yet, we have not actually meet up with each other. The media drops actually bring me a little bit closer to the editors or media representatives because when i get to meet them personally, it makes things easier when i call them for future events.

The event itself is quite successful from my opinion as i get the number of journalists that i want to attend the press conference, and the media coverage is quite satisfying.

Post event work is not so difficult for me afterall because i will only have to follow up with those who have attended the function.

That's all about my experience for the first event of "that" week. There are more to come.

To be continue..