What's the esence of your message? (Pamela Philip - Singapore)

Hello everyone, my name is Pamela and I am from Curtin Singapore. I embarked on my journey as a PR executive with Priority Consultants 3 months ago. Priority Consultants does B2B PR for major industries such as technology, manufacturing, oil and gas, security systems etc. Having some computer engineering background, I was enthusiastic about breaking down technical concepts into bite size business solutions for the clients Priority worked with. That enthusiasm slowly faded as 8 out of 8 media releases got rejected straight up!

Talk about feeling demoralised! After a good talk with my boss, the thing he said that stuck in my head was " What's the message? Who are you trying to get at? ". With that, he gave me another assignment to secure 10 media interviews for TruePosition, a location determination intelligence company in Singapore and Malaysia. I had 2 weeks to work on this. To be honest, I knew absolutely nothing about location determination intelligence but had to write a pitch to the media like I knew about the subject intimately.

Off I went to read up relevant verticals, business and technology and defence publications. The trick was to read the type of stories journalists wrote and to see how my client would fit in. Sounds easy? Well being a beginner with a recent confidence level the size of a pea, writing a pitch to hit the nail on the spot was definitely pressurising. The need to prove myself and get that creativity going was critical.

After spending more time with the boss and role playing how I would pitch to the media, the next task was to actually pick up the telephone and speak to journalists. Some were nice, some just wanted me to get off the telephone and some were honest. This was actually good practice, it made my skin thicker. I realised that a good pitch coupled with alot of background knowledge on the subject really went a long way.

By the end of two weeks, we got 10 interviews, stories to be published and a very satisfied client.

Now when I am tasked to write a pitch or a media release, I ask myself, what is the essence of the message? There can be many things that interest me but not the journalists. I just have to make informed choices about the type of message I want out there, keeping in mind my client's best interest at heart.

Have a wonderful 2011!

Pamela Philip