It is time to bid farewell

On the last week of my internship, I was given the opportunity to attend a media interview between The Edge Singapore and Subaru. 

My colleague and I headed down to Subaru’s office where the interview was conduct. It was a great experience as I managed to see what a real media interview is like and I got the chance to interact with one of the editor.

I remember clearly in Media Relations 250 we were given an assignment to prepare our “client” for a media interview by coming up with a number of questions that could possibly be asked my the media. Similarly, my colleague had to prepare a list of questions to prepare the spokesperson of Subaru for the interview.

The interview lasted for almost an hour and everything went well. The interview was conducted on Monday, and on Wednesday, we received a call and was notified that the interview would be covered in next week’s (this week) paper. I was never expected coverage to be obtained so quickly. Just for everyone’s info, The Edge Singapore is a weekly publication.

Just incase if anyone is interested in the interview, please find below the coverage.

Another big opportunity that I was given was a chance to pitch to Nikkei, and I am glad that I managed to secure an interview with them for Subaru. The only down side is that the interview would be conducted this week and I would not be able to witness it happening.

3 months just flew by and it is still so surreal that my internship has come to an end. Last Friday, 30^th May 2014, marked the end of my internship journey with Rice Communications and it definitely has been an enjoyable and interesting one.

During these 3 months I have definitely learned a great deal that would be useful for me to continue in the PR industry. I am glad to have been given this opportunity to join Rice Communications as an intern.

Cheers,

Sheryl

The all-new Subaru WRX and WRX STI Media Launch!

On 6^th of May 2014, Subaru launched their all-new WRX and WRX STI cars. The launch was held at Vivocity’s atrium in the evening. It was both a media and customer launch, and boy, was I excited to be part of the team! This was my very first media launch that I helped out and attended and I personally love cars.

Subaru is one of my agency’s clients where we handle their PR and we were involved in helping out during this launch. Our main objective of this launch was to handle the media while Subaru’s own sales and marketing team handled the customers.

Before the launch, there were several things that were needed to be done. First item on the agenda was inviting the media. Inviting the media was handle by my colleague who contacted and sent out invitations to various targeted media. Secondly, I was in-charge of the RSVP of the event and had to do call downs to media who hasn’t responded to confirm on their attendance.

Lastly, as in learnt in school, media kits are items given out during a launch or an event to provide information to the media, and this was the item that my colleague and I had to prepare. This was also my first time preparing a real media kit that was going to be given to the media. The week before the launch, my colleague and I headed down to Subaru to collect the specification sheets of the cars and the folders for distribution.

After the finalization of the press release, I printed copies of the press release to slot them into the media kits. Items in the media kit for the launch include: a press release, specification sheets on the cars.

On the day of the launch, we headed down to the venue an hour earlier to prepare and set up the registration table. After registration and giving out of media kits, we mingled around, spoke to the media, and checked out the cars.

I was also very lucky to see, interact and get a picture with various celebrities such as Alan Wu, who was the host of the launch and 2 finalist of Asia’s Next Top Model season 2 Jodily and Natalie who are the ambassadors of the cars. The cast of Ah Boy’s to Men Musical was also present and did some performance during the launch.

From this launch, I learnt that it is very important to always interact and keep a good relationship with the media, and always making them feel special. The negative feedback received from the media was the location of the launch and not being the only ones around to view the cars. This was actually brought up by us to the client, however, the client specifically wanted it to be a media and customer launch.

Besides some negative feedbacks, most of the media were very pleased with the cars and up to date, we have received quite a number of coverage on the launch of the cars.

After the medias and customers left, my colleagues and I took a photo with the car before we left. 

I feel very honored to be part of this team and attending this launch, as it definitely was an eye opener and something very new to me. It was an enjoyable and definitely a memorable first media launch that I attended. 

Till then,

Sheryl