Communication and Time Management in PR!

Hello everyone!

Let me start off with a proper introduction of myself and where I am doing my internship at. My name is Stephanie and I secured my internship placement with, in my opinion, one of the most amazing PR agencies in Singapore, Citigate Dewe Rogerson, i.MAGE. I went to the company hoping to join the finance department but since the marketing communications department needed some help with their heavy workload, I was assigned there instead.

So, day one at work. I certainly was excited and could not wait to get started but I cannot emphasize more on how important it is to be on time for work. Well, I learnt the hard way. I was fifteen minutes late for work, and you might not think that is a lot of time. However, considering that the entire agency does media monitoring from 9am to 9.30am, I had already missed half of it. Imagine how I felt about the kind of first impression I made. I now understand why our lecturers constantly emphasize on the importance of time management, especially in the Public Relations industry. Time IS money.

I began my first day at work doing some background research for a new client of the company. This included searching for print and online media that was relevant to the client and taking down the details of the editors to create a media list in the event that our company wanted to send press releases. I would not say it was boring, but I would have loved to do something more challenging. Guess I had to learn to walk before I tried to run.

However, by the end of the day, I had a pleasant surprise from my supervisor, the Associate Director of the agency. She had invited me to attend a press conference by a Government arm and I was simply over the moon. This one, I knew I could not be late for.

So on day two, a group of us from the agency headed out to the event venue where the award ceremony was to take place. CEOs of major multinational companies were there and I was intimidated by their mere presence. I got to see how the various media and their camera crews set up their equipment while my colleagues facilitated the interviews. Fun for me, not for them.

I had the rare opportunity to meet a prominent news presenter and the camera man that was with her. I was absorbed into the flood of stories that he had to tell me, such as when he went to Thailand to cover the Red Shirt protests and when he had gone over to Indonesia to cover the aftermath of the devastating Tsunami in 2004. I will spare you some gruesome details, but you get the picture. There was just so much for me to learn at one single press conference, experience I would not have gained if Citigate had not given me the chance.

There were numerous other things I had learnt about public relations in my first internship week alone. I now know that communication with all parties involved with any event is crucial in keeping to specific deadlines. Take the press conference I attended as an example. The media kit and other documents were slightly late due to certain circumstances and I suppose that if communication had been more effectively and efficiently carried out by all parties, everything would have been ready on time. All the media were late as well, which surprisingly turns out to be a norm. One particular camera man so late, he had almost single-handedly disrupted the press conference.

I suppose, looking back on my first week, that no matter how my agency tried to be on time, the lack of responsibility on other parties' parts can cause disruptions to an entire plan that likely took months to put together. At least for my own benefit, I have learnt from other people's mistakes and now know just how crucial it is to be responsible to others, and to be on time, just like other parties are. It is does not look good if you end up jeopardizing somebody else's work.

I believe beyond any doubt that we all have to learn to be professional, responsible and live up to the promises we make. There can be serious repercussions for the lack of such qualities. We have to learn, we are the future of PR.