Media Calls

One of my regular tasks during my time at Go Communications was to complete media calls on behalf of the Vertical team. These calls usually were to query whether certain media outlets would publish an article or attend an event, etc. Through previous internships and various administration jobs I had quite a lot experience with phoning clients and the media and felt confident with my phone etiquette and manner, thus I was confident I would be able to successfully manage phoning the Malaysian Media outlets on behalf of Vertical.

Although I had only been in Malaysia for a short period of time everyone that I had met and spoke perfect English. My confidence soon evaporated however, as many recipients of my calls were not fluent in English, thus I discovered how fortunate I had been in only meeting Malaysians who spoke fluent English. I realised that although my previous experiences had been similar they hadn’t required the same amount of patience by the receiver of the call.

Malaysia, unlike Australia, has multiple official languages which include Malay, Chinese, Tamil (the language predominantly spoken by Malay Indians), various indigenous languages and Malaysian English. Not all the staff at the media outlets I called spoke English, which resulted on occasion with them becoming very irritated with my lack of multi lingual skills. Completing this task on a regular basis during my time in Malaysia made me realise how lacking in diversity our media outlets in Australia are.

Australia is extremely multicultural, with a diverse range of persons and opinions, however our media, particularly when it comes to traditional media, such as print and TV, doesn’t seem to represent this diversity and instead only caters for the preference of a certain majority. I do acknowledge that this lack of diversity could also be related to a difference in populations, however I still feel that we are somewhat missing out by not embracing the various other cultures who co-habit Australia.  

The diverse range in media organisations in Malaysia also has resulted in consultancies like Go Communications having to work really hard and compete for coverage across a diverse range of media outlets. For instance, if Vertical wanted an article to be published within a   Chinese Newspaper, they were expected to translate the article to Mandarin or Cantonese, depending upon the readership.

Although the media calls did become monotonous, on reflection, I realise that I now have become more aware of the differences between the media in Malaysia and Australia, in reference to the demands of diverse cultures within the country and how easy the organisations I interned for in Perth have it in regards to gaining media attention.

First Day

I didn’t really know what to expect for my first day at Go Communications in Kuala Lumpur. Obviously interning is a daunting experience on its own, adding a foreign country to the equation only escalated things. The previous students who had interned with Go Communications had pre warned me about the traffic or “Jam” as they refer to it in Malaysia. I was lucky to be able to hail a taxi easily enough from where I was staying in Bukit Bintang, a suburb located in the city precinct of Kuala Lumpur (similar to North Bridge).

Successfully managing my first task of finding a taxi and correctly navigating my way to the office, I arrived early to Go Communications. I had also been informed before commencing that the office equipment wasn’t the most recent and up to date, which I also discovered extended to the general office décor. I didn’t really appreciate these comments until I actually saw the office and I was quite shocked by just how old the equipment and décor was. I had completed previous internships, one of which was with a government office and they had in place the most up to date software and equipment to make sure work was completed to the highest standard possible. Go Communications office was a cultural eye opener.

The Go Communications head office in which I interned was founded by CEO Michael De Kretser, in 2006. Michael is an ‘out of the box’ thinker and “one of the most recognised, experienced and respected public relations professionals in Asia”.  Go Communications has expanded to have offices in Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Indonesia.

After a brief introduction to the various staff members, who were divided up into various teams, I was placed in the Vertical Team. The staff members in this team were all fairly new to Go Communications and had come over together from another company. My first task as an intern was media monitoring. Media monitoring is a task I had completed before, but not to the same degree that it is completed at Go Communications. The majority of staff are involved in this task. Go Communications staff collect clippings for a range of circumstances, which relate to each particular client - these include press, competition and industry. The scope of articles collected on behalf of clients I initially found to be excessive and extremely time consuming. Being a consultancy each of the teams has a large list of clients. Relative to the client’s size and influence, so the quantity of clippings the consultancy is required to collect for them, sometimes before 12 noon. The media monitoring process is laborious, and as such on occasions could be quite stressful, particularly to complete the task by the allocated deadline.

My first few days Go Communications were completely different to what I had expected, but were also a massive learning opportunity. Interning in a foreign country also allowed me the opportunity to immerse myself in Malaysia’s diverse range of cultures, which before commencing my trip, I knew little about.