What's next? - Remaining Useful and Relevant

So it's almost the end of the internship, and really enriching journey. I must say that I have learnt a lot through this experience and definitely am looking forward to learn even more, where ever my next stage of life brings me. That being said, I think I feel very proud to be a Curtin PR student. Being matched up with PR students from other educational institutes, I feel that Curtin really prepares its students well.

One of the biggest takeaways I feel that gained through this is the importance of remaining useful a relevant. Specifically in my generation, there seems to be a change in mindset for people entering the workforce - the main difference being "What I can do for the company" vs. "What can the company do for me". From the number of days of leaves, to extra benefits, to break times and quality of pantries, it really seemed very much like a selfish decision as to why they choose to work in a company. The former mindset, however, is really about how one, as a person, can add value to the organisation he or she is working for.

I will have to admit that initially, going into an internship, I did have the previous mindset, thinking about how much money I could earn, and whether I could take leave (which obviously was not possible in an internship), and trying my best to find shortcuts to get a way with doing too much work. As I went through my internship, I realized that working, or in fact life itself, is never about yourself. It's about how useful you can be to others. After that realization, I felt like the entire world around me changed. It was pretty darn awesome.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure how relevant this post is to the internship, but what I know is that this is something that is meaningful to me. Just wondering, anyone out that share similar revelations?

You can never understand Facebook; Adapting to Change

Being in charge of a lot of social media work, I realize that learning a set method of managing social media does not always work. This is because the rate at which technology changes is extremely fast. Not only is that fast, the algorithm by which social media works is hidden. It is extremely difficult to figure out what or when things are to be said.

Even though there are websites and social media geeks who make it their life goals to work though piles of data, statistics and numbers, however, most of time, Facebook changes so fast that before anything settles in, Facebook moves on with another different algorithm. Here's an article to read if you wanna find out more about Facebook algorithms (http://www.insidefacebook.com/2014/05/27/latest-news-feed-algorithm-change-third-party-implicit-posts-punished/).

One example of these previous changes that hugely affected the way social media engagement works is that Facebook pages used to feed in posts to a user's newsfeed if he or she has "Liked" the page. However there was a huge change that made it such that posts would only get fed to a user's newsfeed only if he or she clicked on "Get Notifications". This resulted in a really big depreciation in the value of "Likes" which was something that companies could easily buy through Facebook advertising.

Imagine you fronted an organisation's Facebook page, and ran advertisements to get 1000 Likes, all of a sudden, 1000 Likes no long means anything at all. No one will be receiving any notifications at all. All of a sudden, the money and effort spent to get the likes previously is now worth nothing at all. New strategies have to be developed and implemented to get things back up to speed.

That is why, in this extremely fast paced era of technology it is vital to keep oneself up to date so as to remain useful and relevant to society.

I hope this helped!
Signing off,
Eugene Wong

Introduction, Interviews & initial Insights

Greetings to all!

Perhaps like the few of you, my internship began ahead of summer enrolment. In fact, it took place from March to September last year. Akin to many of your own experiences, these seven months proved an eye-opener. As such, most of what I’d be sharing with you here will be in retrospect. Thanks in advance for your kind attention. And I hope that this practical unit likewise provided you an incredible learning journey!

Before I slink off recounting experiences gleaned as an intern, I’d like to comment on the interview process. For a shrinking violet like me, being interviewed by no-nonsense corporate types was daunting to say the least. A few face-to-face interviews later, I’ve become emboldened and am the better for it. What I’ve observed is that fortunately or not, fair or less so, likeability and affinity are contributing factors in interview outcomes. Future job seekers would also do well to ask themselves if they’d thrive and flourish in the perceived workplace environment/culture as projected by the interviewer before plunging headlong into a career placement that looks good on paper.

And onto the placement proper, I interned at a business-to-business (B2B), (government-to-business) G2B events marketing company. The lean outfit runs and plans regional events in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. No pun intended, my time there was very eventful having helped run distinct events held at the GSC Pavilion and The Westin Kuala Lumpur and in the process, met an array of personalities.

From the outset, it was a steep learning curve which yielded a rewarding job experience overall. I had hit the ground running in the first week, pooling relevant media contacts and drafting/signing off on my first press release. Frankly, I was terrified at first of the writing prospect as it revolved around IT for Human Resources (HR), a subject very foreign to me at the time. Backed by research material provided (as this was my first assignment), I went on to write about the usability of cloud computing as well as clients’ systems suites for payroll, e-learning and other HR needs/functions. 

It has since impressed on me that PR practitioners need to quickly become experts in specialist industries such as finance, healthcare etc. This is especially pertinent for fledging professionals from a generic Business School/Communication Studies background. In the weeks and months ensued, I found myself primarily immersed in trends/issues relating to oil and gas (O&G), HR and finance sectors. PR practitioners simply must ‘know’ the industry/client/community.

In summary, this working opportunity has provided me the chance to involve in Marketing Public Relations (MPR) and work closely with skilled, seasoned professionals.

Until the next instalment, keep well.

Yours sincerely,

Eunice 

Curtin Singapore

Media Hosting, Food Tasting & More..

Hey Guys!

*small voice* Last.post.ever. (yay!)

Okay, let me start off by saying that I really enjoyed my "internship" with Spa Esprit Group. As some of you may know, I was offered a full time position. Which means, I'm officially an working adult. Even though I've been here for slightly over 2 months, I've kinda get the gist of how in house PR is like.

I know I've been holding back on blogging about my tasting adventures and media hosting sessions. This is the post where all will be reveled. :)

In October 2011, my company just launch a restaurant, Open Door Policy (ODP for short) and a hot dog stand, O My Dog. Therefore, given that I'm new and I need to understand all the brands under the group, my boss was kind enough to bring me along for media tasting session and be part of the R&D for the new hot dog stand.

Let's start off with ODP. It is a modern bistro with a rustic twist. Think fresh food prepped with artisanal ingredients and cooked perfectly. Sounds yummy right? Indeed the food in to die for! Though I was there to understand the brand, I also make notes of how my manager hosted the media. She's truly a PR person I must say. Just a food tasting session and a few side talk, she manage to "pitch" in another story for our other brands! AMAZING. One time, this media came to review the food at ODP and she manage to get a business story about our CEO instead.

Speaking about a business story, our CEO was nominated to be in the Straits Times Power list 2011 under the Lifestyle Leaders. I was present for the interview with Straits Times and the interview was done in ODP. I manage to learn what kind of questions the media will ask and caught a few sneaky questions fired by the media. Thank god my manage was prepared with facts and figures.

As for treatment hosting, recently I was involved in hosting various media for brazilian waxing to launch the new Ingrown Hair Cream by Malin+Goetz and Strip. This is when I get to meet all the beauty press and build up my connections.

The group have more exciting project coming up and I can't wait to be a part of it as life goes on for me with the group. I hope the rest of you who are doing your internship are enjoying it as much as I do.

xoxo,

Weiying

Curtin Singapore

Almost there..

Hey guys!

Wow. Time really flies when one is busy with work and school. I can't believe that I'm already 2 months into my internship placement, though it feels like forever.

I just realised that I totally forgotten to share with you all how the December period of my internship was like! It was crazy yet fun cause I get to be very hands on. So, for starters, I assisted with the brainstorming of gifts to outlets as well as preparing the media gifts.

For the media gifts, my manager decided to send a SCO product as well as home-made jams. Therefore I assisted her with the cooking of jam at the Test Kitchen @ Beauty Emporium. The jam was so nice smelling that I just wanted to take them home! What's so special about this home-made jam is that it is infused with edible Bergamot Oil. (how cool is that?)

Here are pictures of what was done..

Looks so yummy!

Manage to finish the jams over a period of 3days. Why? Cause each batch takes about 6 hours to cook! But it was worth it cause most of the media raved about it :)

Oh! I've also went for a photoshoot with Her World Magazine. They are doing a Pizza story and wanted to feature Skinny Pizza (one of our brands). So my boss was kind enough to bring me down for the shoot at Raffles City. It is nothing glam, just shooting of food but the good part is that I get to meet the media! :) The shoot was a really quick one and we all sat and ate the pizza afters. Ahh.. perks of the job I must say.

Here's a shot I manage to take in midst of the shoot..

So, that's my December for you. Busy month eh. Oh! I also did the sourcing and packing of gifts to our Strip and Browhaus outlets to show our (PR Team) appreciation of their support for allowing us to host our media there. Shall end this post with more pictures~

"Candies in a jar" project:

Phase 1 - Hand write on empty jars

Phase 2: Lay out those candies!

Phase 3: All done!

xoxo,

Weiying

Curtin Singapore

Finally things have cooled down a little

Hey all!

This is my very first post as I've been mad busy ever since I've started my internship. Now with a little breathing time, I figured I should start blogging before crunch time again.

So, I'm doing internship in-house with Spa Esprit Group, a home grown organisation here in Singapore which has international presence too. Basically, the group has 11 brands under it as well as a few other product brands that it distributes. Public Relations work here is done SOLELY IN-HOUSE and the PR team is really small (just me and my boss!).

My first week started out fine as I was attached under my colleague whom I was going to take over. She taught me the ropes and what to expect and how things are done. What's exciting is that I get to go with her to a media hosting for one of the brands on my very first day of work!

One and a half weeks and my training wheels are off. My colleague left the company and first day by myself I felt that I have not learn everything that needs to be done. As the day passes by, I learn more things and is more aware of what my boss expects of me.

Soon after, Christmas was nearing and the work load starts to pile up. Despite the heavy work load, I feel that I have found the right organisation for my internship as just over a month here, I've been to countless of media hosting, interviews and food tasting sessions.

So till next time, here's me wishing everyone out there a Happy New Year.

xoxo,
Weiying Sim
Curtin Singapore

End of The Road

Hi!

It has been arguably the busiest week of my internship. Two big events, a host of things to prepare and follow up from the event, and a tired, but satisfied me.

Week began frantically on Monday as i was assisting my colleague in preparing for the association's Annual General Meeting on Tuesday. From "chasing" and reminding participants to attend the meeting, to obtain the necessary documents and paperwork for the event, to liaising with the various departments such as Corporate Communications, Management and other departments and staff who will be involved in the event, it was one of those period where you really wished you had more than 24 hrs in a day. Somehow though, we managed to rush everything in time (RSVP, confirmation notes, follow-up calls, briefing, co-ordination, etc etc.

Our 25th Annual General Meeting went by smoothly and without much of a hitch (much to our pleasure, and relief). Mr Chan from Goodrich Global was confirmed as the new president of the association out of the AGM and the new executive council was introduced to the attending members present.

But before we could get any rest bite, a quick check at the schedule reminded us that just 2 days after the AGM, there was a charity movie event organised by my department coming up soon. So shortly after clearing the AGM, it was straight back to work for us in repeating almost the same routine (RSVP, confirmation notes, follow-up calls, etc.) Only difference this time was that since the event was to be held outside, a lot of effort and co-ordination was required by my colleague in preparing the logistics for the event.

Before i rant on and on about the dry details of preparing for the event, the event is actually held together with the Singapore Children's Society to raise funds for the society and needy children. Theme of the event was firstly, an art exhibition at the LUXE art museum followed by a movie screening "Margin Call" at the Cathay cinema next door.

Event day arrived and I was tasked with registration along with my colleague. Registration might seem like a simple task but believe me when it gets crowded with people filling up at the registration booth, chances are you would tend to get nervous (especially when there are VIPs or well-known people in the queue). I've learnt that keeping things simple and remaining calm while being polite would help greatly in handling such situations.

On a lighter note, here's a pic of my colleague from Corporate Communications Department, Kumudha. We often work closely with Corporate Communications for a variety of tasks by the way.



(Note how well her outfit blends with the art piece in the background. We jokingly referred her as the theme on which the art piece was drawn for.)

The event then went out without much hiccups (thank goodness) with speeches from Mr Chan and the Singapore Children Society as attendees also proceeded to mingle and network with one another while waiting for the movie screening. When the time arrived, we ushered the attendees and guided them to the respective cinemas for the movie screening. (Movie shown for that night was "Margin Call", a Wall Street Financial Thriller).

And before i knew it, my internship period was almost over. Time goes by in an blink of an eye! Its been a month since I've started on my internship and before i know it, we've reached the end of my internship period. Perhaps one reason why time flew by so quickly was due to the fact that my weeks were mainly packed with activities during this period. It's been hectic at times, but certainly an enjoyable journey. My journey with ASME doesn't end here though, for I shall be continuing with the association as a full time staff. I am certainly confident that my time as an intern here will prove to be useful for me in my full time role moving forward.

Signing off,
Nick Chia

Gala, Gala Night!

Hi All!

Been about 2 weeks since i last posted updates and what an eventful 2 weeks it has been. Those who have been following my posts would know how i sort of lamented about the mundane tasks I've been assigned to do in the past, not for this past two weeks.

To start off, I've been busy helping my colleague with an important upcoming event which is our 25th Annual General Meeting. For reasons of non-disclosure, I would not be able to disclose too much about the event itself, but as I've discussed in my previous post, getting involved in the preparations of an event, especially a large-scale or important one definitely requires much more effort than simply turning up and being involved in the event on the day itself as a staff. Almost every detail of the event itself falls under the team's responsibility. RSVPs, Co-ordination with the other departments, assigning of roles to other staff, etc etc. Being involved in the preparation work for such events has certainly allowed me to appreciate the efforts and difficulties of event professionals and staff.

Despite the work and effort required, the end result(s) of a successful event (particularly a large-scale one) is immensely rewarding as highlighted by the recently concluded Singapore Prestige Brand Award (SPBA), which was co-organised by ASME and Lianhe Zaobao, almost the entire ASME staff were involved on the gala dinner night itself and since this was the 10th edition of the awards, it was naturally more grand than usual and involved more work as compared with previous editions (so I was told).

Our day begin at 9am with the packaging of the goodie bags and this was the physically most exhausting and labourious phase of the day. I've never seen a goodie bag that is packed with this many items before in my life, I'll let the pictures do the explaining (there were 850 goodie bags packed by the way).

(Hard at Work: Packing the 850 goodie bags for the event and guests)

(There were 24 items in each goodie bag and while i didn't weigh the completed bag itself, it probably weighed at least 10kgs each, no exaggeration!)

After spending nearly 6-7 hours just to finish with the packing of the goodie bags, we were finally on stand by for the main event itself. My first exciting and perhaps surprising encounter at the event came while i was directing attendees for the dinner at the entrance. I saw a familiar looking face, it was Dr Tan Cheng Bock, presidential candidate in the recent presidential elections along with his wife attending the event on behalf of a company. This came as quite a surprise to me as his name wasn't on the VIP list and i wasn't expecting him to attend. I approached him and directed to the event and true to his image, he was humble and polite while thanking me for my help, seems like a real nice person, no airs about him whatsoever.

(The sign which greeted all the guest entering the ballroom)

The event and dinner then proceeded at around 7.30pm with guest of honour Mr Tharman, Deputy Prime Minister (as well as minister for finance and manpower) making his way in at around 7.45pm and the event lasted all the way till around 1030-1045pm. In the midst of all that I was doing a host of thing from registration to lining up prize winners to distributing trophy boxes. Tiring, but satisfying and well worth the effort. Besides, other than the experience in such an event, we were also given a half day off the next morning! Yeah!

(Taken at around 4pm, 3 hours before the event started proper, note the staff from the events company setting up various equipment and settings)

But that wasn't the end of the week though, as the next afternoon we were once again back at work busy preparing for not one but two big events coming up next week: our 25th Annual General Meeting and a Charity Movie Night event. Stay tuned as I'll blog about it next week after the events ^_^

Signing off,

Nick

"Calm Blue Ocean, Calm Blue Ocean"

Been a quiet week at work (last week). Been confined to my work station (desk, cell, jail? refer to previous post) mostly for the entire week bar lunch and the occasional toilet break or breaks for tea. And before you perceive this as easy, mundane tasks, I've not been doing nothing and rotting at work or taking naps while getting paid (which is something i am pretty sure we all would love to do), its just that most of my duties for the week has been desk and office bound.

Well to start the week, it was mostly slow given that i was mostly doing ad-hoc and administrative duties for my mentors to relieve them off their workload. I know some might view "ad-hoc" and "administrative" work as mostly mundane or nonsensical chores, but they are important. It must be done in a correct, professional and hopefully efficient manner. The phrase "learn to walk before you run" certainly applies here. Doing these seemingly mundane but mandatory tasks shapes one's discipline and basics in performing future roles. And thankfully i had this little fella to company me through these tough times..

(Painful sitting position in the 2nd picture, note the other little guy in the background, can't remember all the names of these cartoon or toy characters, don't think they are famous anyway)

My week got a little more interesting and spicy in the latter half when i started to dabble with Media Monitoring. Since I've never done this before in a work environment in my previous jobs, I was looking forward to this task with some enthusiasm and to try something different from the repetitive things that i was performing in the past few days. I cheerfully went to grab the newspapers from the corporate communications department and sort to split the workload with one of my senior. There was just one minor problem though after we had split the workload, I realised that she had quickly taken all the English newspapers while leaving me with the Chinese ones to do media monitoring (since both of us would rather read in english, smart move by her). And while not exactly ideal, I thus began my first ever media monitoring task with Chinese as the medium language.

(One of the newspaper which i was working with for Media Monitoring. For the curious Non-Chinese reading you, headline in red reads "Civil Servants to get a reduce year-end bonus compared to last year")

So i basically looked through the news for the past 3-4 days and scanned any relevant ones to the association. That task alone took me 3 hours or more, please do not ever believe anyone who says that Media Monitoring is a simple, mundane task that can be completed in a matter of minutes, whoever said that, is either really competent/experienced or an outright liar. Media Monitoring requires much more work and concentration then one initially expects. And oh, on a sidenote, while browsing through the Chinese Newspapers, i also noticed there's a lot on business news and news about the China economy. It seems that Chinese papers have a tendency to focus more on economic news and news on China, more so it seems than the local English papers which has a more diverse coverage including sports, social news, etc.

On a positive note, i ended the week with a briefing on an upcoming event in detail. Note from my first posting that i was INVOLVED in an event on the day itself, now i am being briefed on the PREPARATION works on an upcoming event. Please never mix up the two, it takes much much more work to PREPARE for an event then to merely show up on the day itself and be INVOLVED in it. Did learn quite a bit from the briefing though, senior was nice and patiently explained the various process and procedures that needs to be done for the event as well as what various liaising personnel that will need to be contacted to make things happen for the PREPARATION of the event. Patience is really needed in training a newbie like me for such tasks. I really appreciate and would like the thank my 3 seniors and supervisor for being so patient with me (something you might not get to experience in a realistic and sometimes cruel working environment these days)

Next week, I'll be dabbling with EDM blasts and other preparation works for other events as well. After a slow start to the week, it seems that the year-end peak period really is here and I can't wait to find out how the new working week would turn out to be as i foresee many opportunities to learn and experience new things. Stay tuned! (If you managed to stay awake after reading this wall of text)

Signing off,

Nick Chia

Curtin Singapore

Baptism of Fire?

Finally managed to obtain access to start blogging. Shall start with my activities last week to make up for loss time and the fact that this week isn't over of course.

Was actively searching for positions around, both through my peers, contacts as well as through online sites and portals when I was finally offered a position at ASME (Association of Small and Medium Enterprises) for an internship of a month.

I was warmly greeted by my colleagues to-be and assigned a mentor on my first day of work. Since they all seemed pretty busy (which job isn't these days?) and I was new to the job, I was basically assigned the task to read up on the organisation, its activities, council members, etc. and tasked to learn more about the organisation and what they offer and do. For the uninitiated, ASME is a not-for-profit organisation that caters to serve to the needs of small and medium enterprises (particularly local ones) and champions for a pro-enterprise environment in Singapore. Various activities that it conducts includes Business Networking events, Award Shows (Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Singapore Prestige Brand Award), Public-Private collaborations (dialogue sessions, talks with/by government agencies), etc. For more info, please visit http://www.asme.org.sg . I shall stop my advertisement of ASME here. I was also assigned to my desk where I shall work from for the foreseeable future.

(Cubicle? Work Station? Work Desk? Cell? Jail?)

Moving on, what seemed like an uneventful day suddenly changed 180 degrees as I learnt from my mentor that I shall be following the team on my 2nd day to an event! And instead of feeling upset (as a small minority would) or nervous (as a good majority would), I felt happy and excited that I would be exposed to such an event so early on in my internship (and an opportunity to get away from often dry administrative or office duties).

The event turns out to be a talk held at the old SPRING Singapore building (which happens to be near our office) involving SME business owners on the topic of "Workplace Health Promotion", Speakers focused on talking about government initiatives to help SME owners in improving health, fitness and work-life balance at their organisations with schemes and grants as well as talking about general statistics, facts and figures regarding the issue. We thought it would be a good idea to sit through the talk and find out more, but it turned out to be a mistake as other than the first speaker, the rest of the speaker were erm.. not quite inspiring to say the least.

But our job there wasn't just to listen to the speakers and the talk, our main goal there was to set camp and reach out to as many SME owners as possible attending the event to learn more about ASME and reach out to them. So just to prove that we weren't lazing around, here's "evidence" of us in action:

(Our booth at the event. Lady on the rightmost is my mentor, a (so-far) patient lady by the name of Eslyn)

Most of the business owners and attendees that we met there mostly gave us a positive response which is kinda surprising as one would reasonably expect cold responses from one being approached by a stranger trying to "push" or "sell" you things. Perhaps is due to the fact that we are ostensibly a non-for-profit organisation that is mainly there to help SME organisations rather than sell them products or services that they have little need for. I managed to speak to quite a few business owners, some of whom showed interest in joining us as members and participate in our community.

I wouldn't say that my first few days on the job has exactly been a dream job that most would die for, but at least it involved events and some other exciting learning activities or experience that one wouldn't get from a strictly office-based job. Might also get to dabble with more PR-related stuff such as media monitoring next week (as I saw my mentor doing it in the office). If that's the case, I look forward to the next working week with enthusiasm and looking to experience and learn more new things about the organisation, PR-related things and the industry as a whole.

Signing off,

Nick Chia

Curtin Singapore

Amanda.T's Scoop - New Realms

Hello everyone!

I'm here to share some of the work I had been doing in my organisation so far.

Infographics

My supervisor, T, knew the fact that I used to be an Architecture student in polytechnic, hence, he roped in my help to research on 'infographics' and to create infographics for our client, as he believed that I am creative. :P

Basically, 'infographics' is the art of compiling information into a picture so that consumers would be able to comprehend the information easily.

Here are some interesting infographics I had found:






Images from: http://www.good.is/infographics

However, as easy as it may seem, creating an infographic is no child's play.

Some simple guidelines I have observed:

1. Information must be concise and clear-cut
2. The images chosen for the inforgraphic must be related to the topic/theme
3. The completed infographic has to look structured and as a whole
4. Terms used have to be generally comprehensible (preferably to use layman terms)
5. To add in numbers and figures when possible, for these aid in gauging and comparison between data
6. It is best to keep the design simple. If not, it is vital to use arrows, lines and so on, to ensure that others looking at the infographic know exactly where the relevant information is.

And yes, I managed to create a couple of infographics for the client as well.

Influence Tracker

Influence tracker is the quarterly analysis on the amount of coverage the client gets, as compared to the competitors and within the industry. It usually takes about two weeks for a full report to be churned out.

Team effort is needed to complete this daunting feat, which involved keying in hundreds of headlines and publications, calculations (done via Microsoft Excel), creating charts, keeping information concise, and so on.

The analysis, data and charts were then compiled into a Microsoft Presentation deck, all ready to be presented to the client.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Recently, our client held a competition worldwide by 'presenting 18-35 year olds with a 5-minute platform to pitch their inspired idea to the world and win a US$25,000 grant to make their idea a reality'. As quoted from the website, 'the grant will be used to bring to life the winning idea and empower disadvantaged women or children in Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa through education, skills training, financial inclusion or social entrepreneurship'. On top of that, a special grant of US$10,000 was awarded to the team/individual with the best financial literacy/livelihood proposal aimed at helping women.

1 March 2011 was the media launch of the project and call for pitches were opened.

As an intern, I was very honoured to be part of the team.

The bulk of my job scope for this task is to key in the participant's names and location, view the videos, write a summary on the content of each video and rank them. I also had the chance to participate in a conference call with one of the organisers as well.

While watching the videos, I was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the participants. They were unselfish, innovative, courageous for pitching in ideas on how to improve the livelihood of women and children who are not even related to them. I applaud them for their kindness. Some of the ideas were really creative, but they had to be sustainable, realistic and implementable as well. Isn't it amazing how a group of people can improve the livelihood of hundreds of women and children with just one idea?

Some figures derived from this project:

- 450 pitches proposals from 50 countries were submitted

- 13, 000 voted were casted

- There were 15,600 views on the project's YouTube Channel

- 300 tweets were tracked by Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa on Twitter, with 7.72 million impressions garnered

- The project attracted 2,100+ fans in Facebook

- Supporters from 117 countries had visited the website

In the end, ten finalists were shortlisted from the long list of submissions, and their videos were being uploaded onto the project's website for public to cast votes on. The winning team was determined by a combination of public votes and judges score from the 'live' pitch in mid-August.

This is indeed an eye-opener for me, because most of us who are fortunate to be living in Singapore would not be able to see, let alone comprehend, the plight these women face in some countries. Things we usually take for granted might be a blessing to them. An example would be public transport. We have taxis, buses and trains in Singapore, but some of the women in Africa have to walk hours under the hot, blazing sun in order to gather their nearest resources (may it be water, firewood, and so on).

Amanda.T's Scoop - Politics, 'Gorilla', Mentor and Supervisor

Hello everyone!

It has been approximately a month into my internship and I am already feeling the heat amongst my team mates. I do not know about the other teams, but I sure do know that I dislike the fact that my team mates are constantly taunting the client, poking fun at her and calling her names behind her back, such as 'Gorilla' due to her physique.

Image from: http://www.photosntravels.com

In my honest opinion, this is really unprofessional. Sure, clients can get really demanding at times, but they paid good money in exchange for the Public Relations agents’ time. As taught by my PR lecturers in previous modules, PR agents are expected to be contactable and always ready 25/7, for one will not know when a crisis will happen.

My mentor, C, came into office today and the first sentence that came from her was ‘oh my god, *inserts client’s name aka 'Gorilla'* is crazy! She called me at 4am!’.

I heard her loud and clear, but kept mum and continued with my media monitoring. I do not want to get involved in negative situations like this. My objective of this internship is clear – to get real-life PR experience, obtain my grades and learn as much as possible. I understand that no one likes his or her sleep to get disrupted by work calls in the middle of the night, but complaining in front of an intern is entirely unprofessional. What if the intern is a potential employee? Wouldn’t such remark turns him or her off from PR industry?

Till now, I am still struggling with media monitoring as there are so many things to be searched on within an hour. Not only that, we have to select the relevant news, include those articles (with the publication name, headline, date and journalist name) in a word document, type out a synopsis for each selected news and ensure that there is uniformity in the email. My mentor commented that I am getting faster, so I guess that is an encouragement for me. =) As for office politics, I am not interested at all.

Additionally, many things had happened in the past one month, and I felt really unhappy how some employees can just vent their frustration on interns.

______________________________________________

Just the other day, C (my mentor) came into the office feeling very grouchy, and when I submitted my media monitoring to her in the morning, she scanned through the articles and turned to me and said rudely, 'Don't you even know WHERE NEW YORK IS?'

I was taken aback by her curt response but I just explained to her that the article was supposed to be included as it was filed from our allocated region. Later in the day when the consultants had to email me their weekly market updates so I could compile them and then email the list to the client coordinator (N), I emailed the team a list comprising of the missing markets. C, once again, turned to me and snapped,'Amanda, you know you are supposed to get India market updates from me right?! So why did you include what N sent you?!' I assumed that what N had emailed me was right, because after all, I had to email her the compiled list eventually.

I felt quite offended that I was being questioned so rudely for the second time on that exact same day, but I just calmly replied,'Alright, you can send me the updated one and I can just edit the updates if there are any changes.'

Instead of letting it go, C went on and on and on and on about the same issue. Sitting there, I couldn't take it anymore and retorted,'What is so difficult about comparing the updates I already had and the new ones you are going to send me? If there is any difference, I can just add those in!'.

So, it ended up with C, V (another team member who was close to C) and I bantering about this silly issue in the office. T, my supervisor, came up to me and asked rudely, 'Amanda, what is the problem?!' I sat there horrified, because it was not my fault. I was just doing my job, and I did not want things to end up so badly. Before I knew it, I was crying when I tried to explain the situation to my supervisor because I could see that he was going to push the fault to me. T asked me to go into our department head's office (she was not around) and spoke to me sternly.

I sat on the chair sobbing and feeling indignant, and T raised his voice at me, saying, 'Amanda, DO NOT CRY ON FRONT OF ME. If you do not stop, I am sending you back home now and make sure you never come back again. I am not your babysitter!'

Right there and then, I felt extremely insulted. He then added in a whole chunk of unpleasant things about me, which I felt was really personal instead of work-related. He was making judgement on my personal life, saying that I must be an 'overly-sensitive' person, just because I told him that I do not like the fact that some of the team mates, especially the mentor, speak curtly to me. This is totally crossing the line and testing my patience!

Who likes to be spoken rudely to? No one!
And who is he to make assumptions about my personality and personal life when he does not even hang out with me after work?? We are colleagues, not friends.

Yes, I am an intern, but I need basic respect too! And all along, I was NEVER rude to them at all.

Seriously, I felt this was really unfair. I had already explained that I would rectify any discrepancies, yet my mentor still continued to harp on it until I broke down. It was nothing but pure mental torture.

I could not wait to finish my internship and leave ASAP. I thought this internship was what I really wanted, what I hoped for, but it turned out really unpleasant.

Normally when I was in the office, I am always seated at my desk and working on the tasks I was given. My team mates are always gossiping about the clients but I wasn't interested to partake in any of these, as it was just a waste of time. I want to get my things done and go home on the dot. But maybe, my silent presence made them feel as if I am a doormat who can be easily bullied.

Photoshoot for new dining menu

[back date: 28 April 2011]
I always thought taking food images are easy. After shooting, edit the images and that's it. They are ready to be printed and shown.

However, today is the first time I observe how the photo-taking is done. I would describe the experierence as tough and tiring.

Because the current Baits of Pleasure menu is expiring soon, chef had developed new menu named "The Pleasure of Oz". Diners are pampered to enjoy unlimited bite-size portions from this menu in additional to the buffet spread.

The photoshoot was carried out from 3pm to 6pm, to snap 3 dishes. The photographers set up their props around the table and once ready, the food is placed in the middle on this acyclic which is very clean and scratch-less. Several shoots were taken to capture the best effect and "look" of the dish. At times, the food needs to put on some "make-up" to look pretty.

I was there with my supervisor to advise the effect we need for the photos to ensure that these photos meet the company's guidelines and suitable to be send to the media for coverage.

Overall, I enjoyed this fun and fresh photoshoot session.

Next up will be the dissemination of information to the media in regards to the new menu.

Little Lessons learnt in the office

When I first started my internship, I realised that I had to learn all these tiny lessons first in order to make things easier.


#1: Pick up the phone
I've always had a pretty irrational dislike of phone calls. I realise this sounds pretty foolish for someone that is studying Public Relations. I just don't like having to call a person who is often too busy and rushed to listen to what you are trying to say. I've never had the task of contacting the media however I was often put on the task of sourcing for venues or event partners.  Looking for partners was a completely new experience (which I will blog about another time)

Initially, I would email to touch base and only call several days later if I was forced to, usually due to non replies. I soon found out that this was very unproductive.

In order to get all my tasks done as quickly as possible, I had to move out of my comfort zone and pick up the phone.  The more phone calls I made, the better I felt about making them. Sometimes the calls were still nerve-wrecking to make. Especially when I was looking for partners/information when our company was simply bidding for, and had not been awarded the project yet.  There is always an issue of how much information was alright to reveal.

I have found that many people will ultimately still tell me: "Okay, why don't you just drop me an email" before I am even done talking. But that being said, it is still easier to get your foot in the door after making that initial contact. Due to the fact that people are expecting you to email them, they are quicker to respond and will not simply skip over your email thinking its unimportant.

One more thing that I found out was, often after the first introductory call, most of my communication resumed to be via emails.
 
So if there is anyone else out there as phone-shy as me (kind of ironic because I'm really not a shy person) remember, pick up the phone! It'll almost definitely help in making your to-do list quicker to complete.

#2: Wordy emails are not always your friend
When I first started because I was not always sure of how much information to reveal to the client, my emails would sometimes be wordy and overly formal.

Luckily my director gave me some advice on this and explained that often clients did not have the time to sift through long emails. To make things easier for them I was told it would be perfectly fine to create bulleted lists to aid their reading. However, this did not mean that my grammer could be anything less than perfect and that the tone could be overly informal.


#3: Casual does not mean sloppy

This is not really a lesson I learnt but rather is something I was glad I already knew before I started at my placement. 

My placement was at a small office with a casual environment, this meant that jeans were okay for day to day work. However, this did not mean that slippers and sloppy t-shirts would be accepted.  For my duration there, while I did go to work in jeans and leggings (if there were no meetings scheduled), I was always sure to wear covered shoes and to ensure my clothes were not to revealing.

I was also always more dressed up for meetings or project briefings with potential clients.

I'm glad to say that judging from my own director's attire, I did make good choices on my wardrobe. 

Here are some other commonly made internship mistakes as according to BBC. I found this list to be very true and even though we've already gotten our internships, it is a good read to ensure we aren't making mistakes that could cost us future job opportunities or a good reference.  
(Link via click-through, in case you missed it)

Til my next entry! I hope everyone is having a good time at their internship!

Cheers!
Nicolette, Curtin (Singapore)

The Mandatory Introduction + my first rooky mistake

Hi everyone!

I'm Nicolette Stewart from the Curtin Campus. I see that most of you are almost done with your placements.  At our campus, we've just managed to get access to the blog so please bear with me while I fill you all in on the beginning bits of my placement.


I've managed to secure my placement at a small communications company that I've worked for before as a manpower co-coordinator.  I was informed by my director that these months are kind of a slow period for them but he would be glad to have me on the team so I could see what building up projects from scratch was really like. (But more about that in later entries)

Today, I'll be blogging about the 1st mistake that I made while on internship. Looking back at it now, it was such an obvious thing to do, we've been taught it in school, its pretty much common sense but yet I still made it.

This is what happened. I was given the task of sourcing for venues for a client who wanted to hold a series of roadshows in various shopping malls. Obviously I made a list of all the malls and contacted the relevant departments, I then noted down when and which venues were available.

Has anyone spotted my mistake yet? I'll tell you.

While I did manage to speak to the relevant people, this often occurred only after several internal transfers from general lines to marketing departments. The first person I communicated with was often not the person that could help me out and ultimately, I completely forgot to get the names of the people that gave me the answers I needed!


Fortunately, my director was really nice about it and told me to remember in the future. I'm pleased to say that since then I have never forgot to ask for the name of the person I'm speaking to. As you all know, these names will come in very useful if you ever need to contact them again, helps you create a contact list that will save your time in the future and helps assure clients that you have actually done your work and are not just lying about it.


This instance really made me think about how sometimes we feel like we've learnt all these skills and knowledge in school that we are rearing to use in the real world and oops! we forget the most obvious ones.  This really made it obvious to me that work experience is sometimes really the best teacher and that you learn best when you get your feet wet.

What was your first mistake as an intern, was it silly like mine?  Did you think it was the kind of mistake you'd make or did it catch you by surprise like mine did?

Planning my first Internal comms event

This week has been both real busy for work and school. I am not sure about other agencies but the year-end always have been much more hectic for AONIA than other periods. It is times like this where work and school becomes difficult to balance. As my boss has started giving me more responsibilities at work. However, it has created some problems for me as I no longer have much spare time at work to get some of the report writing done and by the time I get home I am usually too tired to get on my PC and write the placement report or finish up any other school work.

But I believe in a saying “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” RIGHT? Well, I am sure many of my peers doing PR placement also faces such issues. So how do you guys manage your time to ensure work and school get equal attention?

Anyways, let get on to the new PR task I have gotten recently. Last week, I was given the responsibility of being the person-in-charge for employee welfare and events. My first task is to plan a company retreat this coming December for all the employees from AONIA and Quaffs. It is a new PR responsibility where I can put what I have learnt in PR modules into practice at work. It is definitely an educational and interesting role that I get to work on and apply my PR knowledge to improve internal communication. My first internal communication is the Annual Retreat for employees, basically, it is a dedicated work-day set aside for employees to get together not only to relax and have fun but also deepening the bond amongst employees. The first step for running an internal event is to find out how many employees are going to be participating at the retreat. Then, I had to do a quick survey amongst the employees to identify the activities they would like to participate in or any suggestions of activities to do during the retreat. Next, is to set aside dates to conduct the retreat and start liaising with various companies to get quotations for the activities.

Initially, I planned to have a stay over at local chalets as part of the retreat progamme, as being together under one roof is one of the best ways to get to know one another. After much researching and calling I found out that December is a peak period for chalets and most chalets were already booked months before. Instead I have to re-tweak my programme plans and just have activities for the day. After, getting all the quotes and creating an event plan/programme, next step is submitting to my boss for approval and confirmation. For now, my responsibility as the internal comms executive is done until I get approval to go ahead and reserve the activities and venues for the retreat.

So has any no else tried their hands in doing internal communication for their company during placement. Please share your experiences by commenting on this post.

Also, this is my last blog for PR professional practice, I have really enjoyed blogging about issues facing during PR placement and discuss about the PR tasks I have done. I hope everyone enjoyed reading some of my posts and good luck to everyone who is finishing up their placement reports.

Ganbette =)

Stories from a cancer centre - Final

The Cooking Masterclass went well despite hiccups here and there.

Chef Janice Wong is a real dessert goddess!! She could make a simple dessert turns to be a fine-dining-kind of dessert.

One thing I learned from this event was the importance of Plan B. Yes, emergency plan. Everything can go wrong on the day of event itself so we better make sure we have a Plan B for it.

Contacts are also important. Make sure you are good to everybody so they also will be happy to help when you need them. Be nice to everybody in your team, because a happy team will do a much better work. Journalists, treat them as humans, not merely your 'PR tools'. In my opinion, PR practitioner should be humble but fast in making the right decision.

I also got to know that PR/marketing for healthcare industry is different from any other industry. We can't be too aggressive in healthcare because it doesn't serve the purpose of healthcare - to help people in need. We would rather do it by getting them aware about cancer, encourage them to get screened, and help them to get the best possible treatment.

A day after the Cooking Masterclass, 2 Oct 2010, we also have another event in partnership with The Pink Paddlers as part of October 2010 breast cancer awareness. We screened the video of Pink Paddlers at the giant screen, ION orchard.

It’s the FIRST EVER DOCUMENTARY TO SHOW OUTDOORS AT ION!

You can see the Pink Paddlers 2010 trailer here.

So I've finished my internship. I am glad that I have learned a lot. I am so grateful that Jade, my mentor, still update me things I've been involved even after I came back to the operation department of PCC. I guess I am special now! I not only face patients everyday but also get to know the 'back stage' part of this organization.

I am happy to be in Parkway Cancer Centre whether I am in operation or marketing side. Do you know what they say about good karma? I am accumulating good karma by dedicating myself to my patients! :D
I am lucky to be here, in PCC. It feels great when you know you have done something good for other people :)

Life is short, do something good and be happy!


Cheers
Lena

Stories from a cancer centre - 3

So tomorrow is my last day of internship..

I learned a lot for the past 4 weeks but feel it is not enough. I want more! haha

Tomorrow we will have a big event. Featured in Straits Times for 2 days, I am very happy to get so much coverage from the national newspaper!

Awake Your Appetite! Cooking Masterclass featured in ST Wed's picks and ST Thurs' picks.




















Thanks to Chef Janice Wong (2am: dessertbar) and Chef Diego Martinelli (The Lighthouse at The Fullerton Hotel)! :)
They will whip up special dishes for our participants who are cancer patients and caregivers. Delicious + healthy dishes for cancer patients = new reason to enjoy meals and be happy!

Today the contributing chefs for the recipe book are interviewed. They also have photo shot session. They are all very nice chefs! We have fun during the photo shot. I never know doing business can be fun :D

I have more work to do this week since the Cooking Masterclass is tomorrow only and the launch for the recipe book is just in 1 month time.

Some of the works for Cooking Masterclass are: sending media invite for, preparing media kit, liaise with Chef Janice and Chef Diego, check the venue for event, write emcee script (which I enjoy the least!), preparing our CanHope banner to be put at the venue, etc... it's a long list, really..

Whereas for the recipe book, I am in charge of collecting quotes from our doctors, being middle man for the chefs and our senior dietitian for each recipe, and liaise with sponsors.

We still looking for more sponsorship as we want to have more promotional actions, which will boost up the awareness, which will raise the sales of the book, which at the end will be donated to Singapore Cancer Society, which I believe will help more cancer patients in Singapore. Very complicated... Money is always difficult to get...

That's all the summary of my week. Will post another post this weekend after the event and after I am officially out from this great place..

It's getting late and I'm getting mellow.. I feel the sadness just thinking that I must come back to my usual work in the clinic..

Thanks for my 'lao ban' ('boss' in Mandarin) L, the 4J and 2S :)


Cheers
Lena

Public Relations on a Sunny Little Island

Hello All!

To begin, my name is Samantha Ng, and I’m from the sunny little island lying off the southernmost tip of the Malay Peninsula, best known to the world as Singapore. The best thing is, my office is right at that southern tip! We’ve got an amazing view of the sun and the sea, plus all the cruise ships that come and go. The beautiful moving canvas helps to relieve the stress of hard work.

So it’s been two, almost three weeks since I’ve started my internship at Fleishman-Hillard Singapore. Fleishman-Hillard is currently one of the world’s largest public relations agencies, with about 80 offices worldwide. It provides public relations services for a wide range of industries, like technology, consumer lifestyle, finance and even healthcare.

I decided to take up a six-months program with them, as I see golden opportunities in public relations and wish to fully immerse myself in the working environment and culture I feel only agencies can share. For the period of my internship, I am posted to the Technology team.

One of the first works I was tasked to do was to prepare a Christmas Gift Guide for the media, featuring a selection of products from our client. I had to complete this from scratch, with only last year’s guide as reference. It was an interesting task, as it is not one of the more conventional public relations tools that we were introduced to at school. I also find that tweaking the products to suit each occasion helps in pitching and ultimately, coverage, as there is relevance.

Besides that, I also had to work on drafting media invites and electronic direct mailers (EDM) to upcoming events, preparation of press kits, as well as call-downs to follow-up on potential coverage. As my team works on regional accounts as well, I also assisted in preparing press releases, on top of regional versions of the aforementioned.

I have come to realize in my course of study that “public relations” and “ethics” often appear in the same paragraph. The biggest issue I feel that has the most implication on ethics is time entry. I think that overcharging a client is commonly an issue commonly faced in agencies all over the world. This is because it is done mostly at each practitioner’s discretion. Most agencies, like mine, have it under control, however, by constant guidance by superiors.

All in all, I am enjoying my internship tremendously and I hope for many more interesting tasks to come.

Stay tuned!
Samantha Ng
Singapore

Internship with Bang Public Relations

Hi All!

As this is my first post, let me do a little bit of introduction.

My name is Alicia Tan, I am from Curtin Singapore and am doing an internship with Bang Public Relations (PR). As we are not given time off from school to focus on our internship, we have to juggle both of them. I must say, every since, my social life has become almost non-existent. But of course, it is all worth it because I am enjoying myself tremendously!

Bang PR is an agency that is part of TNBT International Pte Ltd. The company works with clients from different industries such as technology, education, fashion and retail and health and beauty. I really like working with the company as the culture is such that opinions are always appreciated and every one helps one another even though they might not be serving the same clients.

Similar to Bridget (one of the other bloggers), this is my first job in the public relations industry and it was introduced to me by her!

Initially, I wanted to work for the public relations department of a company in a fashion industry. But after joining an agency, my mindset changed entirely. I think working in an agency allows you to be exposed to many clients in different industries and it teaches you how to cater to each and every one of their needs.

I am currently halfway through my 20-day internship with the company and I am loving it! Although what was required by my school is 20 days, I am intending to continue after the term is up.

The tasks that I have been given to do so far are to monitor the media daily and write media analysis reports for the clients, do press releases and a whole lot of research and brainstorming of ideas for different clients, create different media lists to suit each of them and their products and up-keeping the 'master' media list.

As TNBT is the holding company of other communications companies, Bang PR works closely with them to come up with campaigns for some of the clients. I have been given the opportunity to sit in in one of their meetings where I got to see how the management team throw ideas around for two different fashion and beauty brands.

I can't wait to see what else is next!

All the best with your internships and I hope all of you are enjoying it as much as I am!

Till the next time,
Alicia Tan
Curtin Singapore