Live.On.Air.

Hello again, my attachment here at Pustaka Negeri Sarawak Miri has been more and more interesting as days went by. On 19^th April, my supervisor asked to come with her to RTM (Radio Televisyen Malaysia) Radio Station Miri to promote the organization’s Science and Maths Week 2016 that was happening in the same week. At first I thought I was just there to observe what was going on. As we enter and wait for our slot to speak on live air, she asked me if I want to give it a shot. And of course I said yes! God knows when opportunity like these will arise in the future. Speaking on air live was one of my dreams when I was little. When I was on air, I felt a little nervous even though I knew that nobody would see my face (but they do know my name though). I spoke about the schedule of our Science & Maths Week 2016 event, the objectives as well as promoting our upcoming Sarawakiana event at the end of May. What an experience!

(On air)

(Left: DJ Nor Aliza. Centre: Sofina Tan, my supervisor. Right: Yours truly)

The day doesn’t end there. I went back to the library and straight away work on my in-house project at Pustaka Negeri Sarawak Miri. My project is to conduct a questionnaire to find out which platform is better to gain publicity for Science and Maths Week the following year since it is an annual event.

On 25^th April,in conjunction with the World Book Day, we held the Let’s Read Together event. It is a nationwide event that is held simultaneously. I was in charge of book distributions for those who forgot to bring a book with them during the event. No one left…bookless.

( Regional Manager, Salina Zawawi giving her speech)

Later that day, our team together with Pustaka Negeri Sarawak Miri Regional Manager Salina Zawawi went to General Hospital Miri for handing over The Reading Cart plus some books for the children’s ward. Although the children were sick, they managed to smile when we hand them the books from the reading cart. The doctor and nurses in charge gave us a quick tour in the children’s ward and some refreshments were prepared for us. Have I told you that lots of food was also involved during my attachment here?

(Handing over the reading cart)

So gonna miss this place.

Aizat Mahmudy

15628167 / 7E1A8690

Magazine Executives = Sales Executives

I recently sat in on two meetings we had with magazine publications, ‘Scoop’ and ‘Wedding and Bride’. Lamont’s are looking to place advertisement pieces in print publications to inform readers that Smiths Beach Lamont’s do offer weddings and inform them of how much a wedding package would cost and the various things included within that. ‘Wedding and Bride’ is a longstanding publication in Victoria and has only very recently been transferred over to Perth. It is a directory for brides to be and has everything from cakes to venues to dresses to cars. Therefore it would be an ideal publication for Lamont’s to advertise their wedding packages in. As this was the first ever meeting with an employee from a magazine publication I was very surprised how they acted and how very similar magazine executives are to sales representatives. They came out to the Swan Valley and discussed the pricing of a quarter page, ½ page, single page and double page in the magazine. I didn’t realise just how expensive it is for businesses to pay for advertising and how much magazines rely on businesses to want to appear in their magazines.

Magazine executives are similar to sales executives are they are overall trying to persuade you to purchase “space” in their magazine. They genuinely both seemed very disappointed when we told them we needed to think about if and what amount of space we would like to buy in their publication. Both of the sales representatives from ‘Scoop’ and ‘Wedding and Bride’ knew their publications in great depth and overall believed their publication was the best suit for us. Companies need to think long and hard about whether their target market will read the particular magazine and whether or not it will be worthwhile for them to purchase space in the magazine. The magazines offer monthly payments, which does make it easier for the business, however some don’t offer a readership profile, where we can determine who has purchased the magazines and of what demographic they are. It would be interesting to know who purchased the magazine and who contacted Lamont’s after reading it (either via phone, email or even viewed the website).   

Online advertising really is the way to go when a business is on a tight budget. By advertising over multiple platforms, including print, online, radio and television it broadens viewers chance of spotting the advertisement. However it all comes down to what your advertising budget is and who your target audience are (in terms of what they read, listen to and watch). What is going to gain the most readership and by which group of people? There needs to be some way to analyse this and I realised recently that when you create a business Facebook page you are informed at the top of the page of how many of your Facebook “friends” saw the post, how many of them liked it and how many commented. This is incredibly handy, as it allows the business to understand who views the post and whether they prefer photographs to text (and various other things).  

Overall it was incredibly interesting sitting in on the meetings with the magazine executives as it allowed me to understand how magazines make the majority of their money and how important it is for businesses to advertise over a range of platforms in order to gain sales.