Last week was indeed a busy week for everyone in Swinburne Sarawak! We were busy with the preparation for Open Day which had been successfully held on last Saturday (December 12, 2009).
Throughout the past whole week, I was flooded with translation/correction of media release, advertorial and advertisement.
I know it may sound silly to some of you, but somehow I am quite confused with ‘advertorial’ and ‘editorial’. Therefore, I research on it and find that Newsom, Turk, and Kruckeberg (2004, 234) provide a good explanation.
There are three types of advertising that are commonly used in PR practice: house-ads, public service announcements and institutional advertising used for issues, advocacy and identity.
In this case, what Swinburne employed is institutional advertising.
The objective of institutional advertising is to convey a particular message. Issue ads are used by an organization as a forum for its views on a topic or problem. These ads are often called advertorials in print media and sometimes “infomercials” in broadcasting.
My colleague, David had also kindly explained to me that advertorial means “you pay for the space” (that the editor is not allowed to make any changes to your article). On the other hand, the editor may choose to edit the media release and editorial that we send in for publication.
p.s: Thanks David for his useful and comprehensible explanation (he was a former sub-editor for The Sun – a free daily English newspaper in Malaysia).
Okay, now back to my topic. Basically, Swinburne Sarawak handles the advertising part on their own and of course this job falls under Communications and PR Unit. Sheryl (mentioned in my previous post) is the one who in charge of design and web management. Too bad she was out station to Melbourne last week (to attend a workshop in Swinburne Melbourne).
Fortunately, we had two design students to assist us during this busy period. I helped Veronica to monitor and scrutinise the layout and content of the advertisements.
As a distinguished university, Swinburne is particularly strict with those small details, such as spacing, alignment, font, font size and colour to make sure all their publications are standardised and well-produced. Therefore, we corrected the advertisements again and again to come out with the best!
Besides, I did some ‘trifling’ jobs like calling to acquire quotation (flyer), walking around the campus to get documents/keys (good exercise, huh :p), preparing the gifts like notepads, car stickers, and pens for Open Day, and distributing Swinburne T-shirts to the new staff and students (for Open Day purpose). On Friday, we were busy with setting up the venue, arranging the tables and chairs, and putting on the signage.
Saturday was really an exciting day for me. I remembered that I arrived at 8.30am (which was an hour earlier than the stated time) and dressed up in my black Swinburne T-shirt. I was in charge of registration. What I did was getting people to fill the “Getting to Know You” enquiry slip and giving them the goody bags. After that, my colleagues (those who in charge of ushering) would guide them to our lecture hall where there were several booths managed by different disciplines.
Note: Open Day in Malaysia is quite different from those in Australia. In Australia, students always have fun and get to participate in various activities. For Malaysia, it is more focusing on ‘academic’, ‘getting information on courses available’.
Therefore, most of our visitors were parents and students. I noticed a common scenario – when students filled up the enquiry slips, some of them “ticked” the courses as what their parents told them to. Besides, some parents who came on their own (as their children were not free to come) also tended to choose the courses for their children.
It seems to be a general phenomenon in Malaysia that parents are the one who decide and choose the courses for their children. Perhaps this is another cultural difference between Malaysia and Australia.
Here are some photos on that day:
By the way, we faced intense competition as University College Sedaya International (UCSI) and Segi College were also having their open day on the same day. SEGI College even offered free car wash! :P Anyway, Swinburne Sarawak has its own strength as it is an Australian university branch campus.
In a nutshell, PR is about everything!
Oh, feel free to have a look at our media release on Open Day – written by David~ click
Jenice
Curtin Bentley
Reference:
Newson, D., J. Turk, and D. Kruckenberg. 2004. This is PR: The Realities of Public Relations. 8ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
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