First Step Into the PR World

Hello all,

I am Divya, BA Mass Communication student at Charles Telfair Institute. Public Relations and Journalism are the major constituents of my course.

I have completed my internship at Immedia Co Ltd which is a communication and art-promoting agency. My stay at Immedia has been a very enriching experience as I have learned so much in such a little time. The reason why I chose to do my internship at this particular agency is because I am fascinated about everything which englobes the art world and I intend to do my career in this field as a PR person. Immedia Co Ltd indeed seeks to promote art and culture throughout Mauritius and the Indian Ocean through various events which it organises each and every year. These events include: concerts- by local and international artists, Immedia Theatre Festival, Le Spectacle Humour Mauricien, Painting contest, Sculpture contest, dancing events and the publication of Collection Maurice, an anthology of short stories by Mauritian authors.

In my first blog post I would like to talk about communication which takes place at different level within Immedia :

Internal communication- Employees briefing session

I assisted a briefing session among the employees where Mr Rama Poonoosamy, the director of Immedia discussed about concretised past projects, the organisation's actual concerns and future plans. The purpose of the briefing was to keep everyone at Immedia informed and engaged with the activities.

Communicating with the public through Media

In order to reach its public and make them aware of Immedia's activities, the agency held media conferences. I assisted three in all whereby I got the opportunity to observe and learn a lot about how Immedia promotes its art and cultural events through Media. All three press conferences differed from one another. Obviously  the messages being communicated were different; but also the way the press conferences were held differed. For the first one, when doing the announcement for Immedia's 2013 projects  the sole spokesperson was the director himself, Mr Rama Poonoosamy, and by the end of the press conference I was surprised by the passivity of the journalists. The second press conference, which was to make an announcement about Moriarty's concert in Mauritius, consisted of not only oral communication but emphasis was laid on the importance of audiovisual as a tool of communication. I concluded that to be able to make the public aware and discover the band, first the journalists' needed to learn about Moriarty which is not very famous in Mauritius so they could better frame their message before delivering it to the public. While the third press conference consisted of several spokesperson which I found very interesting. They all had their own way of delivering their messages but in the end, the key messages were all related and communicated effectively. The aim of the media conference was to promote the poem 'ti bato papyé' by Alain Fanchon.

Social media- Facebook

Facebook is an important communication tool which Immedia uses daily. I would like to elaborate more on it in my next blog post as I was given the opportunity to be the agency's Facebook analyst during my short stay at Immedia.

Till then, keep well everyone.

Divya G.