Another step forward; Internship!

Hey everyone!

I am Vivian from Curtin Sarawak Campus and this is my very first blog post. The company I am working with now is Curtin University, and I am in the Corporate Communications department. It has been four days since I started working here, and guess what? My placement started just at the right time. This is due to the graduation ceremony that will take place on the 26th April, which is this coming Saturday and I am glad to say that I will be involved in it. One week into work, and I already have tasks allocated to me in such an event. More updates on that will be coming your way, right after the event ends. But for now, I will be talking about my first few days at work.

Curtin University, a place I can call my second home because I spend about the same amount of time in campus and home. And I am indeed very glad and fortunate to be able to do my internship in campus. From what I heard from my seniors, it is difficult to apply for a placement in the Corporate Communications department as they have quite a number of students waiting in line for their turn to do their placement there.

Well, I am lucky enough to be accepted by the management. I remember walking into the office to see my supervisor, Ms. Marcella Gider, Senior Corporate Communications Officer sitting at her desk at 8.00AM sharp. She was the only person in the office. So I took a seat and discussed some of the things I have to do throughout the internship, then subsequently she introduced me to all my colleagues when they arrived at work.

And starting from the first day, I have been asked to read newspapers, eight different newspapers in three languages to be exact. So, there is the English, Chinese and Bahasa Malaysia version of the newspapers. Funny thing is, I hardly read Chinese and I have to read it with squinted eyes (like the image below) just to read those seemingly unfamiliar Chinese characters.

But, I made it through day by day, reading articles after articles, looking for Curtin-related news as well as exciting local and worldwide news. Reading newspapers may only be fun to a handful of people, and I admit, that I am certainly not one of them but somehow, I am starting to like going through these papers in search of any intriguing and eye-catching news. Well basically, the main purpose of doing this is to compile all the advertisement clippings, feature articles as well as press clippings and put them in separate folders. Media clipping may just be my thing - or maybe not. Shown below are some of the things that I have done, including the cutting of the name tags for committee members at the graduation ceremony this weekend.

Look at the amount of newspaper I had to read on my first day of work!

Oh, and I even found a tiny mistake in one of the articles I read regarding the lunar eclipse in Washington. Can you spot the error?

By the way, here are some local news for you to read - not PR related but just to cure your boredom:

1. Idris: Improvements on PBS accepted by educators
2. Marine turtles lure foreign tourists
3. Ninth Borneo Jazz Festival 2014 expects 9,000 visitors
4. The Obama double in Malaysia
5. Have a break, Malaysia

Well, that is all for now. Until my next post, cheers!

Vivian Lee
15442668
Curtin Miri

Brett Lee, the Deep End and Faking It Until You Make It!

Wow. This is, by far, the best unit I have ever taken.

I started my internship back in February and have now been with my company, Onsite Health Solutions, for just over 3 months. Not only am I completely devoted to them, but am constantly reminded why I chose to pursue Public Relations and how lucky I am to truly enjoy something I will be doing for years to come.

Working for a health company that supplies health programs to mine sites would never have been my first choice, however when the opportunity came up I did my research, had my interview and suddenly found myself in the office very much a part of the team 7 days later. Of course, I felt daunted and completely nervous that I had managed to talk myself into a job that barely existed in a marketing department that had never really heard of PR.. the thought of finding myself unable to deliver anything of value to the company constantly played on my mind. However, instead of freaking out and quitting, I decided to give it everything.. "fake it till you make it girl!" Turns out, I barely had to fake it at all.

Thrown into the deep end my internship started with only one week until one of the biggest events for the organisation ever. Having just been acquired by and slowly getting integrated into the Sanitarium 'Health and Wellbeing Division', my organisation was throwing a 'Healthy Breakfast' and tour of some of the sites we work on to announce the new partnership. Hosted by Brett Lee. Oh my god, Brett Lee.

With a whole heap of excitement and a head buzzing with creative ideas, I set about finding out what kind of media strategy the marketing team had put together and how I could help. None. Oh no. So with two days in the office (one working week) until Brett Lee landed in Perth, I jumped in and began trying to find out as much as I could about the organisation, the new partnership, their current programs goals and objectives, and the itinerary for Brett's stay in Perth.

Within one day, I had several Press Releases, a Media Kit and event running sheets for the Breakfast and Brett's tour of an FMG site in Port Hedland. Within two days I had been on the phone and email to several journalists, some nice, some rude, and had secured us some press in a local newspaper in Port Hedland. The event the following week went smoothly, Brett was amazingly down to earth and friendly and our clients were absolutely delighted when we produced our bright red OHS hats to them to be signed by Brett Lee.

There was really only one problem encountered for the week, and that was a small thing called cyclone Rusty. Ah. So I forget about the issues management document, oops.

Luckily cyclone Rusty wasn't too bad in the end, but unfortunately it did mean that the tour was called off and Brett Lee never got to see our sites in Port Hedland, so much work for what felt like nothing. Looking back now though it is never nothing for the experience and huge learning curve I tackled in my first week, and we did in fact get some press. I meekly showed my boss the news clipping from a local paper in Port Hedland (from a journalist I had been talking to in the lead up to the event) very disappointed with the small article that could have been a front page spread, only to have her jumping up and down in excitement at getting some press! Even though it was a small article in a local newspaper, I was suddenly the bright new star in the office, the directors and my fellow colleagues all congratulated me on such a fantastic job. That was the moment I realised just how huge an impact public relations could have for this company, and (more importantly for my nerves) how supportive they would be over the coming months as I set about carving out a solid PR foundation for the future.

3 months later and it just keeps getting better, but you will have to wait until my next blog post.. 

East Coast Reflections

I wanted to use my first blog entry as an introduction to my professional placement and my current position as a student... I am in my third and final year of studies as a public relations major, studying a bachelor of commerce. And as the name suggests, I am no longer residing in Western Australia and will complete my degree as an external student in Sydney.

So I have recently (one week ago!) made the big move from Margaret River,WA to Bondi NSW to complete my professional placement at Surfing World Magazine. I have grown up around the surf industry and have worked and volunteered for associated non-for-profit organisations over the past 3 years, which has resulted in me being offered this amazing internship. After living on the east coast for ONE whole week I made the 2 hour journey up to Avalon and started my first day at the office.

For those of you who aren't familiar with surfing world I will give you a brief insight into the company... Surfing World are an Australian print magazine who are highly regarded in the surf media and have a circulation of approximately 20,000. They are closely linked to Coastal Watch, who provide the magazine with a multi-media opportunity and are the number one resource for Australian surfers. This means that my role looks at the PR and communication strategies for both Surfing World and Coastal Watch. I could go on for hours explaining how many things these guys do but for now i'll keep it short and simple, as later blogs will show this to you.

I have begun my internship at a pretty crazy time! The Quiksilver Pro begins on Saturday March 2 on the Gold Coast and as Surfing World and Coastal Watch are major sponsors of the event I have had a really interesting first week on the job. My first day consisted of compiling a list of surf industry contacts on the Gold Coast to attend 'The Garage Party' that is being presented by Coastal Watch. Before inviting our selected guests I was given the task of communicating with the printer and getting invitations printed for the event. I then worked alongside the editor to create some interesting copy that was used to email along with the invitation to our guests... On the Surfing World side of things I had to get 300 copies of the magazine delivered to the event site on the Gold Coast, as these will be sold at a pop-up store at the event. 

Another part of my internship involves working with non-for-profit organisation SurfAid, who aim to improve the health and wellbeing of people living in isolated communities (such as the Mentawai's in Indonesia) that are connected to Australia through surfing. SurfAid are closely linked to Surfing World who support the organisation through their media and events. At the moment I am working on two upcoming events for SurfAid - the SurfStitch SurfAid Ball in Sydney and the SurfAid Cup Margaret River, that will be held during the Drug Aware Pro Margaret River. At the moment I am using my local knowledge to create a database of local media contacts that we will approach within the next week with the SurfAid media kits. I am also developing run sheets for our events and have just discovered the best site for managing events (trybooking.com) have a look at the site, it's such a great system and hopefully it will help some of you out as well!!

I hope this has given you an insight into my placement... I will give more detail into specific tasks and my experiences throughout the next few weeks. But so far, I have learnt so much and I can't wait to learn more as I am given more responsibility and learn more about my organisation and my role within the team. 

Stacey Mann

FATHER I'VE LIED!

(Courtesy of NBC News)

Hi everybody, my name is Ali and I have started my internship with this well-established branch of an international humanitarian relief NGO in Malaysia, which I am not intending to disclose its name here. So what did I really learn in my first week?

Upon the first day of my work, I was tasked to a list of assignments in which one of them is to organize a charity sale of some kind of menswear in Malaysian universities. Both the country manager & my supervisor told me that the actual cloths’ price of which they intend ‘to market’ is more than RM1000 and the NGO is happy to provide the public the chance of RM200 per piece as a gesture of a win-win fund raising event! That is to say, consumer/donor will buy branded cloths, NGO will raise some fund for the poor…and it looks good nah?

So get this:

I ‘myself’ looked at the samples from the stock and by the first glance, I realized that they are not genuine…They are Chinese stuff...But I had to prove it with strong evidence. Therefore, I started to check the manufacturer’s websites and they had nothing similar on their site! Then I found this:

An advertisement on a Malay e-shop in which the negotiable retail price of the exact products, in exact variety of colors! with precise size range! comes as RM300 only! Here are some facts:

Fact #1: Philanthropic donors do not like to be betrayed by their favorite charity organization. I had to inform my supervisor about my findings. This NGO can cause more damage to itself in promoting and selling fake products as branded stuff than to help the poor people. I mean people are not blind and they can easily distinguish the not real from the genuine one. I still wonder why they ‘lied to me’ about the origins of the materials and introduced it on the first day as “branded and worthy of thousand”!

Fact#2: As a future PR practitioner, I have to only suggest transparency in communicating the origins of the commodity. But is this NGO willing to tell the donors that these menswear are fake?? Imagine saying, “Would you buy some fake materials with a reasonable price for charity?!” Well, it sounds silly to me really.

Action: I emailed the advertisement link to my supervisor, to the gift/donation officer I am working with, and they both ‘noted’ it and guess what?

Reaction: A day after, the advertisement in that Malay website WAS BROUGHT DOWN!! Coincidence? Indeed! People look at me differently now! My supervisor said “But the price is still reasonable, isn’t it?” What she really meant by this, is that she was confessing on their insincerity regarding the menswear without bothering to fix it for the future matters even!

Lesson#1: Do not lie to your interns! Because it will only damage your organizational reputation (especially if you are doing charity and humanitarian relief on the world scale) and will create a bad memory that may linger on.

Lesson#2: Do not underestimate your interns! Nowadays very few secrets can remain in the closet, especially when the world is connected through all types of search engines and social networks as the image above also portrays!

Leson#3: Be honest and candid with your target public. It does not matter whether you want to do marketing or PR, transparency is the key to credibility and credibility leads to reputation. No transparency, no reputation.

What would you do, if you were in my position? Please share your views.

Ali.

LUCT.

My First Week

The week earlier, on November 30th, I had an interview with the human resource manager of Global TV, Mr. Febie. He had informed me that I could start my internship right away as I wished on December 1st 2008, for two months up to 1st February 2009.

After the interview, I was assigned in the media relation department. I was informed that I would be dealing a lot with press releases and more of public relation work. I was also told that I would be attending a lot of events in the two months of my internship.

My first week of internship was basically introduction of how everything works in the company. I was mainly doing minor tasks such as faxes and photo copies. This is also because there were a lot of other interns who were finishing their work and they handled all the other tasks.

As a media relation practitioner, obviously the work that we have to do revolves around the media. And one of the task is to make sure that we get enough coverage by the media. I was asked to cut out clippings from newspaper that cover our programs, whether advertisement or a review. I was asked to file them as proof that the newspapers have covered Global TV events and usually there will be a signed deal that a certain newspaper have to advertise Global TV programs, usually the news paper is Seputar Indonesia.

I noticed that the clipping that was done were mainly of a past event of Nickelodeon, Nick's Kids Choice Awards and of an upcoming event MTV Staying Alive.

Global TV is the sole rightful broadcaster for Nickelodeon's and MTV's programs in Indonesia. Thus, Global TV events were usually of Nickelodeon's and MTV based.

Other than that, I was asked to translate a press release for Nick's Kids Choice Awards from Indonesian to English, because the release has to be sent out to the Nickelodeon head qurter in Singapore. This was an advantage especially for me because I speak both language and it was relieving that I finally get some proper work in my first week, because it started to feel dull.

Basically, that is all that I done in my first week working in Global TV.

Going into the second week..

Hi all,

I'm Imaan from Limkokwing campus. It's good to read all of our experiences. Sorry for being a bit late with the first post, but let me tell you what I have experienced so far.

The first week itself was a mixture of boredom and interesting moments.. Having worked quite a lot before in a high-profiled NGO in Maldives, as well as having had worked in projects for UNDP back in Maldives, I was not at all new to the work field. I had handled many events, seminars and fund-raising Maybe, this was the reason why I expected a lot of work (not just scanning, making calls and such, but work really related to PR) and i got bored and frustrated when things did not happen how I thought it would.

However, what I did not realise was that I was brand new and fresh into the CORPORATE world of Public Relations AND having worked before SHOULD have made me realise that I, like everyone else must start from scratch. Well, atleast that was what I tried to convince myself, specially since I had to drag myself up and get going from 5.30am in the morning to make it on time for 8.30am before work started.

Even with this, I was praying for something which would make me look forward to go to work when I was presented the opportunity to take part in a media launch for on my fourth day at work. I called the media and asked them if they were attending, gave them information about the event and helped prepared the press kit. The final event was grand itself and because of my involvement I was asked to write a debrief report on the event and the launch. After that the jobs I was asked to do have been both boring, tedious as well as important and fun.

So as I go into my second week, this is what I have learnt so far: no job starts at the top, specially if you are new to the industry and the way to get ahead is accept all the jobs (even if they are boring) and then when you do a good job at it, you get recognised. Also, take iniative and offer your help anywhere and everywhere you can (I often do this and have told everyone that I do not shy from work).

I am hoping that the boring part subsides altogether and this job becomes as interesting and as ful-filling as I hoped it will be.

Well, I'm signing out for now.. take care and catch you all laters.. Good luck in your internships..

Xoxo
Imaan