Public Relations on a Sunny Little Island

Hello All!

To begin, my name is Samantha Ng, and I’m from the sunny little island lying off the southernmost tip of the Malay Peninsula, best known to the world as Singapore. The best thing is, my office is right at that southern tip! We’ve got an amazing view of the sun and the sea, plus all the cruise ships that come and go. The beautiful moving canvas helps to relieve the stress of hard work.

So it’s been two, almost three weeks since I’ve started my internship at Fleishman-Hillard Singapore. Fleishman-Hillard is currently one of the world’s largest public relations agencies, with about 80 offices worldwide. It provides public relations services for a wide range of industries, like technology, consumer lifestyle, finance and even healthcare.

I decided to take up a six-months program with them, as I see golden opportunities in public relations and wish to fully immerse myself in the working environment and culture I feel only agencies can share. For the period of my internship, I am posted to the Technology team.

One of the first works I was tasked to do was to prepare a Christmas Gift Guide for the media, featuring a selection of products from our client. I had to complete this from scratch, with only last year’s guide as reference. It was an interesting task, as it is not one of the more conventional public relations tools that we were introduced to at school. I also find that tweaking the products to suit each occasion helps in pitching and ultimately, coverage, as there is relevance.

Besides that, I also had to work on drafting media invites and electronic direct mailers (EDM) to upcoming events, preparation of press kits, as well as call-downs to follow-up on potential coverage. As my team works on regional accounts as well, I also assisted in preparing press releases, on top of regional versions of the aforementioned.

I have come to realize in my course of study that “public relations” and “ethics” often appear in the same paragraph. The biggest issue I feel that has the most implication on ethics is time entry. I think that overcharging a client is commonly an issue commonly faced in agencies all over the world. This is because it is done mostly at each practitioner’s discretion. Most agencies, like mine, have it under control, however, by constant guidance by superiors.

All in all, I am enjoying my internship tremendously and I hope for many more interesting tasks to come.

Stay tuned!
Samantha Ng
Singapore