PR Internship Reflective Blog 2

Welcome to PR Internship - YOUR opportunity to put everything you have learned over the past years at university into practice and to get a thorough insight into what public relations is like "in the real world". This Blog allows you to reflect on your experiences, share insights with other students across campuses and to possibly give advice and support to fellow students. Please also see http://printernship-reflections.blogspot.com.au/ for more reflections

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Big and Small

Today, when I was going through what I have done being as a PR intern in Mawar, I realized that we don't just organize an event as a big idea but we have to take care of every single details that comes in as a whole with the events. Indeed, these inconspicuous details could always be the one that causes a huge mistake in the end!

Since the first day I came to Mawar, my head of department told me to be in charge of the staff annual dinner 2009. Sooner i realised that 'be in charge' here laterally means:

1. To do a lucky draw for all the employees of 200 people (everyone can get a gift, the difference is just what one can get) means you have to prepare three sets of numbers, one to be kept in the box for them to draw, one to be stick on the presents, and one (only the top ten numbers) to be kept in another box for the VIP to draw.

2. Design the lucky draw box

3. Prepare the mock cheque as gifts for the top three numbers

3. Prepare the shopping mall gift voucher for 200 of them (it is money that I am dealing with! So, I have to make sure that i don't slot in any extra or less voucher in any of the envelope. It will be very troublesome if we found that there is lack of voucher in the end).

4. Tags for the VIPs's seats and counters

5. Name lists for each counter to make sure people don't double take any gift

6. List of top ten lucky draw

7. Prepare the layout plan of the day

Although the 'big' things like renting a venue, scheduling the rundown, buying the 200 presents and more are not my responsibility, but i realised the 'small' things aren't very much easier either.

Let me give you an example for a clearer visual for this issue. When the creative director of an advertising campaign has an idea/concept for his client's product, his big idea needed to be polished up by his copy writer, graphic designer, art director, and illustrator. And when the advertisement is produced, how and when it is being publicized is a very important factor contributing to the success of the advertisement. Therefore, media planer's role is taken into account at this level.

Thus, what I am trying to convey is no matter what role you are playing, everyone should be responsible to their own task. The bigger an organization is, the more cleaners are employed, the bigger a movie production is, the more supporting characters are needed. And the key idea is, all of them DO matter. Same goes to an event, how well you take care of every little details determine how successful your event will be.

In conclusion, I think we, as the small role should always appreciate the opportunity given as each of them could give us something. As time goes by, you will gain more than you realise and that is when you have more than enough to handle a big role!

Attached are picutures of the design that I did and some of the events that I have involved during my intern: