One Controversial Topic - a Journalist's Dream and a PR Intern's Nightmare!

I started my official internship with The Freeform Foundry the week just past and what an exciting week it was. Being a current employee I found the transition into the public relations department seamless and comfortable – knowing familiar faces truly made it a lot easier! There isn’t a quiet day at The Freeform and this week surely proved this. My day-to-day responsibilities drastically changed from my usual Account Coordination role to that of a Public Relations Consultant, from writing press releases to organising events – there was never a dull moment. 

In today's first blog post I would love to share my experience of dealing with the media and one of our clients, amid the drastic changes made by the Federal Labor Government to the Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT). I won’t bore you as I know this isn’t a riveting topic – however I’d like to briefly explain what FBT is and how these changes will affect the industry and in particular one of our clients, a fleet leasing company. 

Kevin Rudd announced approximately a month ago that he is planning on terminating the carbon tax by implementing an emissions trading scheme. Part of the plan to fund this is by abolishing the Statutory Formula for FBT on cars, hence FBT may no longer be calculated based on 20% of the FBT value of the car, but now on the Operating Method, based on actual business use. 

Our client, who is predominantly known for Novated Leasing now faces the challenge of requiring leaseholders to monitor their work related kilometres, by keeping a logbook for up to 12 weeks to monitor business usage. They also face the burden of diminished benefits for their customers. 

This drastic change has caused many fleet leasing companies to announce major redundancies, however our client’s main objective was to inform the public that this was not the path that they would be taking. My first task in my internship role was to write a media release aimed at communicating this objective and coordinating a company photo shoot to be used within the publication.

This drastic change has caused many fleet leasing companies to announce major redundancies, however our client’s main objective was to inform the public that this was not the path that they would be taking. My first task in my internship role was to write a media release aimed at communicating this objective and coordinating a company photo shoot to be used within the publication.



To top off this experience I also had the pleasure of interviewing Member for Swan, Steve Irons who showed his support and reaffirmed the Government’s promise to oppose Labor’s FBT reform.



The process of writing this media release was very eye opening. I was given a draft handwritten article from the Managing Director and was instructed to use this as a guideline, but to source my own supporting information.  Once I read the draft alarm bells triggered and I was remembering back to my PR Media and Technique classes. The article read very one-sided and emotional, I could already see the media and journalists ripping this to shreds. I had to re-write this media release to still express our client's view of not relinquishing whilst keeping a levelled two-sided approach to the situation.

On the other hand, I still wanted to express these emotions and the fight of our client so I then decided to write two articles, one to be used as the official media release and another as a 'latest news' article on the client's website, linked to Facebook and Twitter.  This experience made me realise how much I drew from my university's teaching of public relations – the multitude of practice media releases really did pay off! It is truly an exciting feeling to know that these will be published in renowned media outlets and already I believe that I have put many of my public relations skills into practice and even to test! 

All in all, I learnt a lot from this first task and am really looking forward to the next! Watch this space for more insight into my internship at The Freeform! 

Rachel Chandler