First Month and I can't complain!

Wow, what an amazing first few weeks I've had at my internship.

I've been lucky enough to land myself at Mellen Events working in the Promotion, Activations and Marketing sector! Everyone here is just like what you'd think a music events company would be like, they're amazingly nice, funny, creative, smart, friendly, quirky and beyond everything just super cool.

From day one I've been straight into doing work, I found myself making a spreadsheet of bloggers to invite them to the CoLAB Festival at UWA and asking them to cover the event. This was an ongoing task requiring constant updating, management and communication. I was sending out press releases, posters and accreditation forms to all the bloggers who had replied.

On my second day I worked with the awesome marketing team and brainstormed on how to market and promote CoLAB to the right demographic. Through doing a quick run-through we figured that the best ways were through Facebook on a sunday night, STM and Facebook advertisement.

The real fun came when I was asked to work backstage at A Evening On The Green at the Rodriguez and Jimmy Barnes shows. Here I was doing backstage work, going through the run sheet and making sure everything was going smoothly for the night ahead.

At Stereosonic I was required to create and manage a Promotional team for Future Music Festival. Here we handed out stickers and just promoted the festival, this was a bit of a challenge as we had a bit of problems with the council and the opposing festival Stereonsonic not liking that we were promoting our festival at theres. This made me put in my crisis management skills and find a way to keep everyone happy which was much easier than I thought!

Hopefully in the New Year I'll get to do a bit more PR related things but I can't complain about the work that I've been asked to do because it's been so much fun!

Merry Christmas to everyone! Hope everyone's internships aren't stressing them out too much :)

One month in!

Hi all!

This is my very first post since I started internship. My name is Sheryl and I’m from Curtin Singapore.

It has been a month plus since I started my internship programme with Rice Communications Pte Ltd, and I have been enjoying myself! Just a little bit about my company, Rice Communications is a PR agency that provides strategic, insightful and customized professional communications services.

This is the logo of the agency I'm interning at. More information of Rice Communications can be found here: http://www.ricecomms.com

I cannot believe time is passing so quickly. I am very thankful for having superiors who are patient at answering my questions, clearing my doubts, and giving me work one at a time. As I am new to this industry, it is something that I absolutely need.

Even though it has been only a month plus, I have definitely learnt a great deal. There are plenty of similarities and plenty of differences between working in the real world and drafting up a PR plan and doing projects in school.

The similarities between school and working are the parts of a PR plan and other projects I have done in school. For example, press releases, media list, media pitching, media callings, media training, and many more!

However, through this internship experience, I have learnt and seen how real media pitching, media calls, media interviews, creating a media list, sending out of press releases and many more are done! Something I never got to do while creating PR plans and pitches for my projects in school, and it has been a real eye opener.

Initially, I felt that doing media calls is the scariest thing to do! What if I say something wrongly? What if I gave the wrong information? Or what if I could not answer their questions? But now, after doing a number of calls, I am kind of used to it.

Another thing that is relatively new and that I have learnt at Rice Communications is media monitoring. I have heard this term numerous times by different lecturers but I have never done it hands on. Doing media monitoring daily allows me to be updated about the happenings in my surroundings and also allows me to further understand the relationship of the news with the current clients. Doing media monitoring is to also keep a look out for any coverage or mentions of the clients.

The things I have learnt so far will definitely help me in future if I continue working in the PR industry. I am glad I took up this internship as it has taught me a great deal, and I am certain I will learn much more in the next two months. Because of this internship, I believe I have learnt to manage my time better, juggle my commitments, and appreciate other little things in life.

Till then,

Sheryl