It’s the end of my last week in Malaysia and my internship at GO Communications. I don’t even know if I can fully describe to people my experience here. There have been highs and lows, but mainly just an amazing placement that has provided me with some truly unique experiences and led me to meet some life changing people.
My last week started as any other week did, media
monitoring. This has been etched into my mind and I will never read a newspaper
the same again. I felt as though by week four I could successfully identify
articles relevant to either our clients or the competitors of our clients. A
task which may seem easy enough but it really wasn’t. Throughout the first two
days of the week I was assigned small tasks like look through the photos from
the Nikon event on the weekend and find some to accompany the media release.
EASY. Then came the next event.
My last event I was going to attend was a press conference
for Food and Hotels Asia, showcasing the Malaysian chefs that were
participating in a competition in Singapore later in the year. The press
conference was to be held at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre and some of the
most respected chefs in Malaysia were going to be speaking. I was asked to send
out the media invitations and keep track of RSVP’s. This was exciting, my last
event and the last major project I was going to work on. The only thing wrong
was the time of day it was being held and the particular day it was on. One of
the main things I have learnt about Journalists and media in general in
Malaysia is that they don’t like to plan ahead. They enjoy deciding what
stories to cover hours in advance as opposed to days (which would be ideal for
us PR people trying to organise it). So on this particular day, the “haze” as
the Malaysians tend to call it, was extremely bad and people didn’t want to go
outside, let alone leave the office and fight the horrendous traffic into the
city to attend our press conference.
I was becoming quite nervous when I had no RSVP’s from English
dailies and very few from Chinese and Malay media an hour from the event. My colleagues shared my feelings and were
doing everything in their power to make sure people were at the event. In the
end all was not lost and media did turn up. Another thing I have learnt about
Malaysia media is that even when they RSVP “no” that can also mean “yes I will
be there and I am bringing two camera men”.
With media arriving I was then free to be briefed on what
photos were needed at this event, as I was assigned the role of photographer
once again. The event went so smoothly you would have never known of the
stresses beforehand from the outside, and once it was all done we were invited
to eat cake, among many other delicious treats (the highlight of the night).
The last day was one of mixed feelings, I was so excited to
get home and tell everyone about my experience but I also wished I could take
all my new found friends with me. I received a card with a note from each
person I had worked with throughout my time at GO, which I saved for the plane
ride home (there were some tears).
I cannot recommend an internship at GO Communications highly
enough, it has cemented in my mind that a career in public relations is for me
and I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity!
