PR: the easy or the difficult?

"Why do you choose to work in a PR field?"

That's the question that I asked my supervisor on the last week of my internship.

For her, she chose to study PR because it's exciting and interesting especially on her practical assignment in one of a television company. With a mass communication education background, she likes to be involved with the media for example video shooting. 

The part that makes me slightly go "ohh" was when she said PR is easy but people are the ones that is hard to deal with. As a PR person in a company, you're like the central platform of all departments information and you need to communicate well to get things done. If you can't work with people well, then it is hard for you to be in the PR field.

I do agree on her opinion. 

Newspaper clipping, handling social media, writing media releases and photography etc, there are always somehow new events or agenda to write on. These can still be learned or practiced from PR professional tips / blogs / format or standard set over a period of time.

But dealing with people...

Being taught that to be a PR person, you have to be a people-people however for me striking a conversation with someone new in the cafeteria does need a little guts and courage! I did manage to have quite a long conversation with a HR personnel during lunch time and it was full of insight and experience sharing. Furthermore, running errands gets you to even meet more people and in fact, people can be or are friendly when you give your smile and be courteous.

It takes time to sharpen the people-relation skill as well as the technicalities in writing. This internship has build up my interest in venturing into a PR-related career, adding with the classes and assignments to prep up my knowledge and understanding of it.

I may not have the full grasp of PR in real life but I definitely have the interest to venture more into this exciting field!

Chung Yee Vun Elaine
16091427

Behind-the-scenes

As one of the prominent 5-stars hotels in Sabah, Hyatt Regency Kinabalu is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year and I was lucky enough to have a sneak peek of their 35th anniversary video-making behind-the-scenes!

I just joined the first part of it which was interviewing 3 pioneers of the company who have worked for 35 years till now! Even I myself couldn't guarantee that I will work in a company for more than 10 years.

Preparing for the interview

Practicing and reviewing on the interview questions

Practicing their anniversary wishes

My supervisor as the interviewer guided one of the interviewees in answering the questions and indeed, it was really fun as everyone is excited about it and nervous as well in reviewing their own scripts with a few NGs.

The most valuable insights are in the interviewees' views on what is the company's strength and advice to young people who wished to work with the hotel in future.

In summary,
Employee benefits and the strong brand are the company's strengths;
Honesty, integrity, humbleness and willing to accept criticism are the pioneers' golden advice to young people.

What inspires me most are the answers given are not about one's qualification but it's about one's values and beliefs. They started their career from the bottom level and then slowly climbed all the ladder with perseverance, you can feel their genuine personality and warmth while meeting them face-to-face, need not much of a long conversation.

Employees are the most important stakeholders in maintaining the corporate reputation, brand and image because they are the immediate persons to work in the company and their testimonies hold a great impact. They are also the PR people to the public as well. Besides, this anniversary video will then be uploaded in their own staff portal connecting with other hotels under the Group and serves as a great internal communication for other sister hotels.

What constitutes a good PR of a company is not just on the PR department alone but on the entire associates from management to staff. Therefore, PR can collaborate with human resources department on carrying out internal communication and enhancing relationships.

Chung Yee Vun Elaine
16091427

Bread & Butter of PR

I spent a lot of time writing during this internship such as writing media releases and a SMS blast but what interests me more was preparing posts for the hotel Sina Weibo account. For your information, Sina Weibo is a popular Chinese microblogging website.

Quick fact: The China tourists market compromises 40% of Sabah tourism which explains the setting of Sina Weibo account.

Hyatt Regency Kinabalu official Weibo. Even though this account is established around 2 months ago but it garnered a very positive number of fans. 

Statuses or posts updated introducing about Sabah attraction, hotel's promotion and/or hotel's selling point.

What I have to do is: 

1. Write 3 English posts either about the hotel’s selling point, Sabah’s attraction and activities in the hotel, outside or around the hotel. 
2. Proof read of posts by my supervisor and Director of Sales and Marketing.
3. Translate the posts into Chinese. 

I was bit thrilled by this task because it really tests my language capability. At that time, I was glad that I did my Chinese language education since elementary school till O-Level. 

I tried my best in doing the translation such as choosing the right words and terms to convey the right feeling, thinking in a tourist’s perspective do I feel interested to visit Sabah and stay at the hotel and I edited it for several times. In fact, I do Google a lot in finding more adjectives and idioms on Chinese websites!

Although it’s just 3 sentences or posts to be translated, but because of the diverse expressions that can be used by the language itself, and to meet up 140 characters limitation, it is hard! Furthermore, it is impossible to translate every English word to Chinese.  

The art of Chinese language is deeper than you thought (or perhaps any other language as well!). 

Thank God that my translation was edited and refined again by a international China associate who is working in the hotel as well (I couldn't bear to see my writing being posted with my not-so-top Chinese translation!).

It is always an advantage to master one or more languages because who knows it might help your company in marketing communications to different market group of different language. In this context, since the company targets the China market, hence it is important to learn Chinese in use of conversing with tourists and also issuing official communication notice in Chinese such as room notice or announcement.

As writing is the bread and butter of PR, language should be also considered as one and in my opinion, it is the life and art of PR because whether the reader feels interested or not, it depends on how you write it. 

Chung Yee Vun Elaine

16091427

Mundanely important or routinely interesting?

Hello, I’m Elaine and it’s nice meeting you here, my PR friends with the sharing of my internship experience at Hyatt Regency Kinabalu!

I’m pretty sure that newspaper clipping or analysis will not be a new thing to you and yes, it’s my first task assigned in Hyatt.

Every day, I will:

1.  Search and cut out relevant news about tourism, airlines and hotels especially 4-star and 5-star rating along with advertisement on hotels’ promotions or future events from newspapers.
2. Let my supervisor look through the news, omitting less relevant news.
3.  Paste the news on paper with date and time stated.
4. Translate and summarise Chinese news, send the translation summary to my supervisor
5. Scan the clippings. 

My supervisor will then circulate the scanned clippings to all staff via email. The purpose of doing newspaper clipping is to let the staff to know about the current news relating or affecting the company and knowing other competitors’ promotions especially for sales managers.

It was a new interesting thing at first and you have to practice your “eye scanning” throughout the newspapers especially on key words. It took me about 3 hours to go through 6 newspapers with a mix of English and Chinese.

I got pretty frustrated at first because of its time-consuming and the effort of cutting and paste. I also do doubt the effectiveness of newspaper clipping circulation: will the staff actually read it or they will ignore the email? It is a daily routine and I get bored at times because you will have to cut out the same news from newspaper but with slight difference of content. I also feel like the task is insignificant and more of a nuisance to do sometimes.

Little did I know that newspaper clipping does hold some importance or contributes to the company’s strategies.

There was one afternoon that I saw and overheard the general manager talking to one of the sales managers about one of their strong competitor’s room promotion, which is one of the clippings that I did in the morning. 

You know the instant feeling that you thought the simple task that you do was not much significant and then later on you found out that it is useful and appreciated by them? Even though just by opening the file to read through the scanned images of clippings means something, or maybe I’m just easy to be satisfied.

Newspaper clipping is much related to PR research and analysis especially on examining potential threats and opportunities. There is no exact quantitative measurement done in terms of the content or frequency of the news related to Hyatt but nevertheless, they are able to know the happenings in the tourism industry especially on the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment’s plan or opinion about the industry itself.

The task that I’m doing not only contributes to sales and marketing but also to revenue management. The revenue manager will analyse booking patterns and market trends, forecast the room rates to maximize profitability and revenue performance. Besides, he/she is responsible in liaising with the sales team and general manager. With the collection of competitors’ promotions news, revenue manager can then do the forecast with current news update accordingly.

Till now, I don’t feel that frustrated doing newspaper clipping everyday, at least I know that my effort is not wasted and in fact, reading news is interesting and you do feel a bit smarter (in a sense) with all the diverse information that you read!

Never underestimate the significance of a simple task, it might be mundanely important and yet routinely interesting!

(*This post was amended once in respect of information update and content refinement.)

Chung Yee Vun Elaine

16091427 / 7e2a9644