An intern's last day.

My internship in SBO TV, Surabaya has officially ended. I started the internship on July 8 and finished on July 30.

A lot of things happened during my placement, I faced various crises and had to come up with a quick solution to help my major event to succeed. Throughout my placement managed to secure valuable media contacts, learn and develop various public relations and other business skills.

Throughout my internship I have developed my communication and public speaking skills further, and has learned negotiation and administrative skills. This internship gave me valuable experience on working with big events from clients such as Honda and Yamaha. Being a public relations intern who worked under the event department, SBO TV demanded high focus on details while managing these events.

Specifically throughout my 20 days of internship I was the gatekeeper for the YMMF (Yamaha Mio Music Festival), where I was responsible to organise 48 different event venues and permits. This event is a music and dance competition event sponsored by Yamaha as a partnership with SBO TV. It targets high school students across East Java, and is the biggest music and dance festival in the region. Various Indonesian celebrity debut performances were through this event. 

I was given additional tasks such as doing an impromptu presentation to destined schools on explaining what the event is, as well as being the PIC (person in charge) during the event date in one of the school in Surabaya - SMAN 22. For this event I work in a team of 10 main people, who were in charge of different cities during the event.

The other event, Bazaar Ramadhan was my secondary duty. In this event I was in charge to do a host briefing prior to the start of the event. Overall working in SBO TV was a lot of fun, there are heaps of memories, contacts and valuable experience to treasure.

Other than these events I was  given the opportunity to attend a photo shoot for a "For Hers" section in Jawa Pos. Additionally based on my radio announcer background I was given the opportunity to do a news voice over for a news program in SBO TV, Update Sore. 

On my last day July 30, 2013 I brought a cake to thank all my colleagues, supervisors and managers for their help and assistance during the placement. On the day an unexpected thing happened, as a colleague and a producer approached me. They offer me to be a cast in a television commercial for a furniture company named, SKEV.

On the day I took the job and did the commercial shooting in a shopping centre, SUTOS (Surabaya Town Square).The commercial is a 30 seconds advert that will run for 30 slots in SBO TV. The shooting process took half a day and a raw video on the commercial is attached below. Two days after the shooting, I was contacted by the producer to do another commercial ad for the same company with a different concept. Both advert will be used and aired in SBO TV.

All experiences attained are beyond my expectations, as a public relations intern my expectations for the internship would be to do an office job such as writing media releases and sorting incoming media releases from various companies and organisations. In reality these experiences are more exciting and will be treasured as valuable knowledge that are not attained through merely a university degree.

The Credits doesn't Roll

As someone who has never work in my life it was quiet frightening upon hearing about this unit. When preparing for this internship it feels like buying a ticket to the last harry potter movie. Just like how I start re-watching the whole movie series starting from the first, I tried to go through my documents of PR reports and group works over the past three years. Now that my internship has ended, I find many similar emotions and findings just like when I watch Harry sent off his son before the credits roll.

Just like the last movie from the biggest movie franchise in the world, many references to the previous movies are mentioned. SWOT analysis, competitor analysis, report writing, cultural differences, presentation skills and more, I had to shout out almost every magic spells from the book of PR.

I’m no Hermione of PR, I wasn’t sure how much I would enjoy this PR internship since I plan to continue my post graduate life doing marketing (my other major). We all knew how the movie would end, but we watch because we want to know how it ends. I enter my internship with an open mind and wonder what will happen in 20 days. An open mind is probably my first suggestion to anyone starting this unit.

Unlike university, interning does not necessarily have a strict curriculum, a format or even assessment rubric. There are no chapters of what you should learn to get ready for the final exam. Everything you learn, and I mean everything, including the things your mother taught you on how you should talk to a respected stranger is needed during this internship.

I have learnt how to voice my opinion, in order to show the company that I’m here to help them rather than being a dead weight of an intern. I did it not because of the extra 10% participation mark; I did it because it’s why I’m there.

I learnt that your creativity and your ideas are beyond any writing skills. As my supervisor said, ‘every body can learn a writing format and grammar. Not everyone has the idea to make the writing worth reading’. English is my second language and its one of my most uncomfortable skills. Interning has changed that and I’m more comfortable with writing as long I have a good thing to say.

I’m very thankful to all my teachers and friends who have helped me through this past three years and prepare me for this internship. Unlike the last Harry Potter movie, the credits does not roll for me. I have been offered a job with my current company, which would involve both of my major. Not to mention this internship has made me fall back in love with my home country, (awful traffic and all).

I am excited to resume my roll with this company as an official employee. If it wasn’t for PR internship my road may lead a different way. (Not to mention I might not be able to reference Harry Potter in any of my future writing).

Levia Kwee

15617178

Curtin Bentley

How Culture Plays a Role in Communication

On my third blog I would like to share my findings on how culture plays a role in Communication. I am currently interning at PT. Graha Agung Wibawa located in Bogor Indonesia. In my previous blogs I talk about cultural shocks that I experienced throughout the few weeks I work here. Seems like cultural differences keeps popping out through every aspect of my internship.

As an intern I was tasked with many different communication state of affairs between the company and the tenants. In my study at university we cover many different communication tools such as face-to-face meetings, emails, letters, social network etc. In the case of PT. Graha Agung Wibawa it’s a bit different.

There are levels of respect associated with communication. Each tenants, depending on their size or sales have different communication tools. This is differing by their power and how ‘face’ is correlated with communication.

Starting from the bottom, stores that are individually owned such as clothings, computers and mobile phones stores usually set up a face-to-face meeting with the staffs. In this case these are small shops where the owners of these shops are more likely to be in the store at all times. Whether by casual text, phone calls or emails a meeting would be arrange and a staff or two would go up to the stores to meet. This way the conversation is more casual and friendly. I find this communicating tool the easiest and less nerve racking because you get to see the emotion of the tenants and be able to receive any information straight away. The problem I experience with this communicating tool is that because it is face-to-face the staff does not have the chance to discuss the matter in hand with the higher power. In many cases multiple meetings would need to be held before problems are solved.

In the case of big franchise stores such as Samsung, Nokia or Cellular Networks, the communication tool of emails is used. Different from what we learn in PR, these emails contain an attachment of a scanned document that includes typed contents, company logo and hand written signature of head of department. The letters are written in formal language to show respect to these big franchises and are most likely to be proof read by head of department before it is sent. The respond of these emails would also include similar attachment. Though this process takes longer time to send and receive I find that problems are solved faster because of the respect each companies have for each other are very visible. The typed document would most likely to include very detailed information and numbers. I found this way of communication show amazing level of respect that I don’t usually see in western culture.

For the anchor tenant of the shopping centre, Ramayana department store (similar to Myers or David Jones in Australia), a printed letter that includes company logo and head of department personal signature are packaged and sent through the mail by Ti-ki (similar to fed-ex). Responses sent similarly would be kept in a compartment in the office and if were to be copied only black and white photocopier would be allowed instead of colour scanner. The reason for this is because it is believed that black and white copies are perceive as unofficial copies meanwhile coloured copies would be a replica or a fake document. The amount of work involve with these communication tool is great and takes the longest time. It is not electronically kept and has higher chances of being lost.

What is consistent between all of these communication tools is the maintaining of time structure. As each communication tools involve a lot of work and time into it, it is important to be on task for communication to run smoothly and not too late to respond.

It amazes me how communication differs culturally. This has been a great experience and learning opportunity for me and how even after three years of PR, there are still new knowledge learnt during my internship.

Levia Kwee

15617178

Curtin Bentley

Culture Shocks: More embarrassing than you think

Hello fellow PR interns, this is my second blog.

To summarise my first blog entry, I am currently working in a property management company called PT. Graha Agung Wibawa in Bogor, Indonesia. I have been in charged with organising exhibitions, participating in meetings, communicating with tenants and travelling outside of the company to create a competitor analysis brief. In doing all of these task I’ve repeatedly experienced one thing in common; cultural shocks.

To briefly introduce my background, I was born in Jakarta and move to Perth when I was 8. I return to Jakarta to an International school with international baccalaureate curriculum for three years of high school, which then continued to my homecoming to Perth for university. And now I am back to my South East Asia birth home. Even though I can speak bahasa fluently on a daily basis I have never truly experience or understood the Indonesian culture. I have never communicated with someone who is not related or part of the western culture before. So you could imagine the culture shock I experienced working in a traditional company located in a small town outside of the city.

Every day seems like a déjà vu of morning conversations in PR International class!

One of the cultural shocks I experience is how religion plays a role in time management. The religion of Islam covered most of the Indonesian population, so Muslim beliefs and culture plays a role in the calendar of how the company operates. I have to say during my first week of interning I was behind on some of my tasks due to adaption problems, and being a university student that I am I keep things on the last minute. Not knowing that every Friday, male Muslims are obligated to ‘Sholat Jumat’, which requires them to leave the workplace to pray during the afternoon and offcourse to make it fair, all staff is offered some hours off during Sholat Jumat. The visual of me alone in the office confusingly looking for my male colleague to ask some questions on a Friday afternoon is quiet miserable.

I guess my poor tolerance of a religion that I am not associated with is acceptable. But another cultural shock I experience was communicating with tenants with Chinese background, one culture that I personally share ancestries with. Apparently Chinese runs in my blood, but not through my tongue. My supervisor mention that when having face to face meetings with Indonesian-Chinese tenants its easier to have another Indonesian-Chinese staff. Indonesian-Chinese people believe that another person that shares their background would be more understanding of their conditions and easier to communicate with as they speak the same language. I’m not talking about mandarin, I’m talking about Bogor-Mandarin-Bahasa, a mash up of the three languages that Indonesian-Chinese people use on a daily basis to communicate. They have a whole different word for numbers and emotions. Which in this case I urgently had to call my colleague to help me. Again.

The last cultural differences I would like to mention are transportation and traffic. If anyone believes the stereotype of how Asians could not drive, then they have not been to Indonesia. The road is probably filled with Michael Schumachers driving inches away from each other adding to hundreds of motorcycles speeding and squizzing themself between moving cars. It takes me an hour to get home every day. I found that the major difference as a university student and an intern is the stamina, the 8 hours work time compared to 3 hours classes and the 15 minute drive compared to the one hour sitting in the backseat while a personal driver drives you to work (personal driver is not something posh, almost everyone has one).

Despite all of these cultural shocks I’ve been having a great time in Bogor, and learning along the way of new languages and religions.

So that’s all from me today. Hope to see you in my next blog!

Levia Kwee

15617178

Curtin Bentley

Overseas PR Internship: Coming back for more

Hi everyone! My name is Levia Kwee and I recently commenced my work placement a week ago with PT. Graha Agung Wibawa located in Bogor, Indonesia. To briefly introducing myself, I was born in Jakarta, Indonesia and currently I am a double major student in a PR and Marketing. PR Internship 393 is my only and last unit of my degree.

PT. Graha Agung Wibawa is an Indonesian shopping centre group undertaking ownership, property management, developing, leasing and marketing activities of Jambu Dua shopping mall. For the next 3 weeks I’ll be working under Nina Kohandi, the incredible woman who mask herself as the Operational Director, Marketing Manager and also Exhibition Manager of the company. The office is located in the basement of the shopping mall, making it easy access for managing and arrange meetings with tenants.

This is not my first time working with the company; I spent six weeks of my break interning under the same supervisor. At first, the company was uncertain with taking in an intern since they were not familiar with internship activities. Fortunately after a brief meeting between Nina Kohandi and me, she was interested with the PR and marketing skills I’ve learnt from Curtin and the youthful insight I have offered.

My first month working in PT. Graha Agung Wibawa were filled with different activities which varied from things I’ve learned from PR studies, things I expect to learn in a PR internship and things beyond my expectations as a PR student. To give you an idea of my number one surprise, I did not expect to face any sort of condition where I had to call out security in order to break out a fight between tenants during my first round of tenant damage control. Believe me, what I witnessed never came up in an exam question. Fortunately this event was taken care of without delay.

On the bright side I was part of a promotional event by one of the major tenant and an exhibition for the company in order to attract new tenants and extending current tenants’ interest.

One of the most valuable lesson I have learnt during my first round as an intern is that as a PR professional expressing confidence is the strongest key aside from skills like writing and creating a PR plan. I learned that when dealing with people, your aim is to make them trust you. My personal social skill was tested and I have to uniquely stand out for them to choose my idea, while keeping in mind my professional profile and not to go beyond my status as an intern.

The best thing that happened occurred on the last day of the internship. I was offered a full time job as the co marketing and exhibition supervisor for when I graduate in September. This came as a surprise since as they were not necessary looking for anyone.

You could imagine why I love to come back working for PT. Graha Agung Wibawa even as a PR Intern and how they nicely welcomed me back. I currently work with another person who graduated from a university in Singapore.

For my second round commencing my work placement, I was assigned to more work since now my supervisor is familiar to my capabilities and skill set. My tasks on my first week were:

1.    Create a competitor analysis brief

I had to visit the three main competitors on three different days and put on my customer hat for the day. With my iPad I jot down my personal analysis of the similarity and differences of the shopping malls to Jambu Dua and created a brief, which will be shown to my supervisor.

2.    Part take in a meeting for culinary exhibition occurring in three weeks

Involving myself with higher management and observe the different task from each departments. I experience what it is like to be quick on my feet as during the meeting my supervisor suddenly asks if I have any comments and ideas to improve the plan for the exhibition. I was reminded by the multiple PR plans I created as a PR student which is that the key to a good event is to be creative. I recommend various culinary game that citizens could part take in the exhibition.

3.    Travel to different culinary stations in Bogor with the Exhibition Supervisor

Alongside the Exhibition Supervisor I learn and did my own interview for multiple restaurants that are potential candidate for the Culinary Exhibition. The result of which restaurants to use will be discuss in the next meeting which I would do a casual presentation of my findings and recommendation.

4.    Respond to emails from tenants or meet them face to face to understand more of the situation

One of the culture shocks I experience was that the lack of email use as a communicating tool between managers and tenants. Calls that lead to face-to-face meetings are usually the common choice of communication. Tenants feel safer to directly communicate their state of affairs as they could observe the managers on a more personal basis.

This week another meeting about a different exhibition will be held where I would part take in organising the event from the start of planning.

Though I work in a corporate company I have had a good taste of the involvement of PR in a real organisation. I really enjoy my time here and understand why other students love this unit.

Levia Kwee

15617178

Curtin Bentley