Introduction about me and my PR placement

Hi Everyone,

Just a short introduction about myself and the company where I am currently undertaking my PR professional practice placement. I’m Bridget from Curtin Singapore Campus, local Singaporean born and bred here and a final year student at Curtin Singapore. I am now interning from AONIA Private Limited which is a boutique Integrated Marketing Agency.

A short history about AONIA, it was started in 2003 by my current Creative Director, Daniel Chua with a vision to excel as a best practices Integrated Marketing agency.

It my first job that is PR related and I count myself really lucky to have this placement as I got it through a recommendation from a friend. I have been in this agency since November 2009, might sound bizarre but I have been balancing full-time school at Curtin and interning since then. Trust me; some weeks are killers with deadlines both in School and at work. However, I have been really fortunate to have an understanding boss whom not only provides the opportunity for me to PR related accounts but also time-off to prepare for projects and exams. Unlike some of my peers who will only have experience of 20 days as interns, they might be facing a problem of not having enough PR practice. However my case is the exact opposite, I was able to work and be exposed to so many aspects of agency work and PR that I need to really think about which are the notable PR activities I should write about.

Therefore, I have thought hard and thorough, I have decided to writing about the following. which can be mainly divided into two aspects;

1) Internal PR –

a) Copywriting for Internal EDMs(Email Direct Mailers) to employees, clients and trade media

b) Online PR – Social Media ( Blogs, Facebook, Wikipedia etc)

c) Maintaining company press page and facebook account

d) Copywriting – Knowledge or opinion articles on AONIA’s press page

2) External PR

a) Craft media releases for PR accounts

b) Online PR through the use of Social Media and online portals for PR accounts

c) Assist with media research

d) Assist in the planning and implementation of various Press Conferences and media lunches.

e) Craft , sent out and follow up media and VIP invitations

f) Come up and maintain media list

Let me move on to the issues I face during the start of my placement. When I first started at AONIA, my biggest concern was my ability to do copywriting and flair of writing or the lack thereof. As other than for writing reports and crafting press releases or feature article whilst undertaking PR techniques, I do not have any other practice. My first media release was rigorously and thoroughly dissected by my boss. He made me understand my lack of professionalism in my media release. Through that I realise writing media releases for PR techniques is actually easy as most of the time we can “invent” events or quotes. However, reality is I have to learn to make use of whatever information that is given to me and turn that into a well-thought out piece. That I found out was one of the toughest when the info you get is minimal. It took several re-writing and editing till I got the style of writing meets the company standards.

Here is the link to my first media release that I have written, feel free to comment on this blog entry and the media release.

On my next blog entry, I will share with everyone about the PR accounts that I was roped in to assist and eventually helped manage, as well as my first press conference experience.

Till then. Happy placement everyone.