Engagement is only a couple of rings away.

Community engagement, especially for a political office, is a peculiar beast. A long time staffer once tried to sum up the situation, he said: “People come to political offices for one reason; they want something,” and while that is true in so many ways, I don't believe it give credence to the scope of what people actually want.

In my experience there are two kinds of people who go to politicians for help. The first are lobbyists of one kind or another, and the second are people who are at their wits-ends with no where else to turn. The latter, the people who are at their wits-ends, are the reason I went into politics.

During my internship there have been several cases where people have come into the office desperate for help having no where else to turn. Some people cannot be helped but others you can help untangle the bureaucracy that is Government and have them walk out the door with a smile on their face and their problem solved, and that is incredibly rewarding. Form helping someone with an immigration problem to assisting with a Centrelink quandary sometimes people just need a leg-up.

Do I think any aspect of my Public Relations degree is able to assist with this kind of community engagement? No. Not really. You can’t teach empathy.

But Community Engagement isn’t just about inbound calls, outbound is, as we’ve been told often enough, just as important, and keeping good relationships with sporting groups, community advocacy groups, residents, schools etc. is another key aspect of what I do and an aspect in which the skills taught in Curtin's PR degree have helped.

This week we did a mail out outlining the Government’s new dental health scheme for kids and lower income Australians. This went out to several thousand houses and is a great example of the kind of outbound communications tactics we use. But of course, as any PR101 lecturer will tell you, outbound doesn’t work effectively by itself, which brings me to the final two important aspect of Community Engagement in my job.

The first is face-to-face ‘open air offices’ whereby people are given the opportunity to meet with the Member at a predetermined time and location and ask questions or seek advise. These are always hit and miss and often depend on the level of apathy in the community, but they are none the less an important part of the democratic process, politicians do represent 'the people'.

Finally, I want to touch briefly on social media and specifically Facebook. One of the first things I did when I started this job was create a social media presence for my boss because it creates those very important symmetrical lines of communication, which has worked quite well but is still in its infancy.

So, that’s me for today. All the best with your own experiences - Ron.

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The key to being John Malkovich.

“Politicians employ speech writers as ventriloquists,” says Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist George Will. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. 

By far one of the most difficult aspects working in a political office is writing letters, speeches and remarks in the voice of your employer. It’s a skill that takes a lot of time and effort to get right.

I have worked in my current roll for a little over 18-months, yet the ability to be able to determine what my boss would say in any given circumstance, from a speech to a room of mining executives, to a Q&A with a bushel of primary school students, has taken a not insignificant amount of time, research and consideration; improvement has only come, like with most things in life, with constant repetition and plenty of mistakes. 

But there are tricks to help along the way, and while it’s not something that I was taught in Curtin’s PR degree, knowing some of those tricks can be useful. The task of learning to write for someone else is made easier if you have a large group of sample documents at your disposal; which raises the importance of filing all outgoing correspondence and speeches.

When broken down, most people have a practiced and structured writing style they tend to follow consciously or otherwise. For example, a letter might open with a brief paragraph about its content and generally would contain the words: ‘regarding’, ‘in relation to’, ‘enquiry’, or something not too dissimilar. 

Following-on some writers get straight to the thrust of the matter while others like to give a rich contextual background for an issue; both options are correct, but whichever option you choose should reflect the personal nuances of the originator (the speaker or sender). In many ways it’s about removing your ego from the equation and putting yourself in the mindset of the other person.

In the case of speeches, most speakers like to use words and phrases they are comfortable with and would use in everyday conversation, and while ‘programatic specificity’ works for some, it doesn't work for others and there is nothing worse than watching a speaker stumble over his/her words (click here for some wonderful examples provided by the comedic talents of George W. Bush); and of course you always need to consider your audience. In any case the key is to review previous examples and pick up on the style, structure and language of the speaker, and recreate those. 

This is not creative writing, superfluous language should be avoided. There are however a few important things you should do in any good speech: First, tell people what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, and then tell them what you’ve told them, this is the key is getting your message across and making sure people remember what you want them to take away from your speech. Always know what you want them to take away.

If you’re being employed to write for someone, that person most likely someone who receives a lot of correspondence or who often does public speaking and like in journalism you can apply a structure to your writing, leaving you more time to focus on the  individual words and phrases the originator likes to use, of which there are thousands and the best you can hope for is a constant decrease in the number of changes to your draft each time. 

So, that’s my two-cents based on my experiences so far in relation to writing for others. If you've got tips, advice, suggestions, thoughts, queries, qualms, quandaries or questions, don't hesitate to comment below.

Best - Ron

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A Bene Placito

Something I've yet to touch on in my blog posts is social media, and given this is my final instalment, now seems as good a time as any. 

Part of my role in our office is to manage our social media and online presence. This encompasses Facebook, Wikipedia, and to a lesser extent YouTube. Throughout my degree, social media planning has, in general terms, consisted of, at the most, a page or two in the context of larger public relations plans. In reality, a social media plan can in and of itself, be almost as long as an entire public relations plan and, believe me, planning is important.

When I first started in my role we had very little social media or online presence, and almost no monitoring abilities. My first role was to rectify this by developing a social media plan, planning and drafting content, going through approvals, implement the plan, and then assess and adjust as required.

This, I believe, more than any other time, is where I have relied heavily on the skills I learned during my degree.The constant repetition in each unit of producing public relations plans has given me a good skill that can be slightly modified for different circumstances. So... thanks to Curtin for that, 

Now...

Watch This

'A Bene Placito' translated from Latin means 'At One's Pleasure', and despite my extreme cynicism about the value of having to share my experience through this blog, I wanted to finish my final instalment with some good old fashion youthful lofty idealism.

By now you should have clicked on the link and watched the video that says 'Watch This First'... kinda logical. If not, go do that now!

So... it's dramatic I know, but in all honesty there are two important aspects to that video which I want to touch on. First, 'Let Bartlett be Bartlett': In Public Relations there is a tendency to see everything from an angle: Who are the stake holders, what does the research say, what will be the push back be, what's a good compromise? Sometimes,  you need to step back from the bullshit and you just need to do what is right, not what is right now. You might lose a few battles, but you can at least say you did what was right and you did your best doing what was right.

A Bene Placito: I am fortunate enough to serve at the pleasure of one of the most morally sound, ethically uncompromising, and tireless politicians in Australia, a fact for which I am proud. If I can say one thing from my degree it is this: Do what you're proud of, don't compromise, don't spend too much time in the grey areas, you'll get lost, and above all, don't let the bastards grind you down.

Signing off for the last time and bidding you all adieu - Ron.

Time for a Sea-change.

Meeting the US Ambassador

Hi Guys!

On Tuesday the organisation Via Appia Networking WA where I am completing my placement held the event where United States Ambassador to Australia Jeffrey L. Bleich spoke about visionary leadership and overcoming today’s challenges.

The event was a great success with over 100 people attending the event at the Parmelia Hilton.

Leading up to the event was getting pretty stressful, with all of us working hard in the office to make sure the Ambassador enjoyed himself at the event, and the people attending were going to think the event was worth while, a lot of time and effort went into the planning and marketing of the function as well as many aspects of PR and of course a lot of Social Media.

On the day we were there early to set up and decorate the function room with American decorations as well as set out name badges and get the place organised. Mr Bleich wanted the event to be very interactive so we had a twitter wall, where people could ask questions and make comments or opinions on for the Ambassador to answer. This was very effective and successful as it gave individuals who could not attend the event a chance to be involved.

Mr Bleich himself was very interesting and down to earth, bringing his family into topics talking about looking forward to heading down to Margret River this weekend to relax with his family, as well as discussing the major points in today’s society including interesting aspects of political issues and the economy.

The attendees of the event were very impressed with Mr Bleich’s words of wisdom and they all believed they got something out of attending the event, which from an organisations view was very pleasing to hear. I was very fortunate to be able to sit on the same table as the Ambassador, which gave me the chance to meet him, which was very exciting (and a little nerve racking)

So now that, that big event has finished we have already started working on our next big function, I am very excited because we are partnering with Perth Fashion Festival in a Fashion Icon High Tea.

I have already stated contacting companies for opportunities for them to have their products in our gift bags that attendees will receive, or give vouchers or products as door prizes and raffles. It’s great to see so many companies interested and wanting to get involved with the event. I’ll be sure to keep you all up to date with what happening with the event.

I hope everyone’s enjoying their placements as much as I am!

Tess

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Oopsie Daisy, Dixie

This week some of you may have seen the piece in The West's Inside Cover regarding the Mt Weld mine media release sent out by the Premier's office. (If not, here's a screen capture above. It may be a bit tricky to read, sorry!) It's a great example of a potentially damaging situation being fixed by a PR professional.

As the article says, the media release included quotes from the Premier, however it was later found one of these quotes regarding the 'rare earths' being mined in the area was actually a passage from the Lynas Corporation's website.

So firstly, a bit of context as to how state government releases work...

Sometimes as an electorate office we will recieve media statements drafted by the PR and media people at DPC (Department of Premier and Cabinet) for use in our electorate. Obviously if the issue is relevent to other electorates they will receive a copy as well, so the same release (or perhaps slightly changed) release will be sent out to more than one office for use. That means it's my job as the John's research officer in Kalamunda to make sure everything in that release is a) relevent and suitable for the area, and b) the quotes are cleared with John and if necessary new quotes are made by him. Whilst it's okay for the same information to be sent to multiple publications in multiple electorates, (you can't, and wouldn't, change information that is correct) we don't want the same quotes to be attributed to more than one politician. The releases of this nature are always labelled as drafts and are to be edited by us, but provide us with a great framework filled with first-hand information from reliable sources. While the release for the Mt Weld mine was not a release of this nature- it originate from the Premier's office for the sole use of the Premier, it's still good to understand how these things sometimes work. A lot of research goes in to everything sent out from State Government offices, and a lot of liaising with different offices and departments goes on behind the scenes to make sure information sent out to the public and the media is correct.

Dixie took the blame (very skillfully in my opinion) for the quote mix-up, and I think she did a great job of explaining the situation. The information in the release wasn't wrong, (in fact it was spot on) the mistake came when the quotation marks were put around the paragraph as a quote from the Premier. At least it goes to show she's gathering information for the release from the appropriate source!

As is often the mantra in our office- "We don't want John ending up in Inside Cover!" Thankfully we have a good record! Except for the City of Melville John Day/Malcolm Day mix up a few weeks ago where John was captioned as Malcolm Day - the Adultshop guy- in one of their press releases. A rather obvious mistake that Inside Cover (and we here in the office) had a bit of a laugh at!

Niki Comparti

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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.

I'm on a roll..

Hello lucky ducks, I'm back again...here's my second post...no photos this time though, sorry..

As part of the Liberal Party Electorate training I attended two days’ worth of seminars this week relating to the running of an electorate office. The first day was based around media, with three seminars; ‘communications planning’, ‘local and national media relations’ and ‘digital and e-campaigning’. It was interesting to see the PR practices and tools I’ve learnt through uni be applied specifically to the political world. The first seminar was all about building communication plans, so I had a pretty solid background knowledge on the subject, but it was still good to learn it from a political point of view.

The second day’s morning seminar- ‘fundraising and events management’ was by far the most enjoyable. It was run by the Head of National Training and Operations Adviser from the Office of the Leader of the Opposition. She had so many campaigning stories and it was fascinating to see how a campaign works from the inside.

Her main mantra for fundraising and campaigning is “what’s in it for them, not what’s in it for you”. People aren’t going to want to donate money to your cause if there is nothing in it for them. Changing “can you please donate some money so I can be re-elected” to “I need your help to get re-elected so I can continue to fight against/for (insert local issue here)” (or a more, somewhat aggressive approach which can also be extremely effective in some cases… “I need your help to get rid of Julia Gillard”, “I need your help to get rid of the carbon tax” etc. etc.). Getting rid of the carbon tax is a good example of how this kind of things work; Giving away money isn’t something companies generally like to do (the purpose is to make it, not give it away!) but if an MP was to approach a mining company, or even a small business, in their electorate, and explained to them their need for support in running a campaign to get re-elected and get rid of the carbon tax, it is in their best interest to help them out. Even if they can’t supply them with money, they may be able to provide goods or services. It’s the kind of mantra that can be used for anything, really.

Relating it back to PR-(uni student cap back on) a perfect example of this working is the relationship between journalist and PR professional- if you as the PR professional provide the journalist with fantastic quotes, an exclusive and a local angle then the journalist is likely to want to turn up and print your story. They get a good local story and you get your boss/company in the paper. Good deal.

I can’t tell you everything about my training days as some of you may be Labor party enthusiasts and I can’t go around giving out all the good ideas!! I want to keep my job!! Haha

Niki Comparti

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Curtin Bentley campus

All in a Day's work

I’m a bit behind when it comes to this blog as I’ve actually been at my current job (for which I’ve been allowed to carry out my professional placement) since late May and have been avoiding having to write a blog post since then haha. My role is Research Officer at The Hon John Day MLA’s electorate office in Kalamunda two days per week. (yes, it does take about 40 minutes to type out his proper title at the end of letters and releases haha). John is the Minister for Planning, Arts and Culture, and Science and Innovation, however the tasks I do in his electorate office relate to his role as the Member for Kalamunda. I work alongside his Electorate Officer, Nola, and during the week it is just the two of us in the office, except on Fridays when John is here too.

As the research officer it is my job to liaise with the local media – organise photo opportunities for events John attends, respond on behalf of John to letters written to the editor, and respond to stories in the various local papers (if there's a story about a local or group succeeding in some compacity, John will write them a letter of congratulations).

I’m also in charge of (and started) the monthly e-newsletter. The e-newsletter consists of a variety of ‘good news’ stories from the various media releases relating to the Kalamunda electorate that come to me via email from the respective MPs (stuff about seniors from the Minister for Seniors and Volunteering etc), wrap ups of events John has attended (and hopefully a nice photo) and a local issue that requires John’s response. The first e-newsletter’s main article related to hooning on the local Zig Zag road, and the second e-newsletter (due to be emailed out tomorrow!) focuses on the new Optus mobile phone tower in Gooseberry Hill. The pictures below are from the putting together of, and sending out of, the budget newsletter- which was sent out following the budget announcement (obviously ha) to every letterbox and PO Box in the Kalamunda electorate…..

The third area of my duties here (for which the phone tower is a great segue into) is responding to correspondence from people within the electorate. Every letter, email or phone call received relating to an issue is responded to with a signed letter. The Optus tower has been the hot topic over the past few weeks and yesterday was spent collaborating a written response with John, typing in the individual addresses of each person on the letter and the envelope and sending them out… all 800-odd of them! This is the me-eyed-view of me entering in the names of the people who contacted the office into our online feedback program..

And lastly- we do a lot of stuff for local community groups (Lion's Club, PROBUS, etc). We do photocopying, type up and print newsletters and other odd jobs. The picture below is the name tags I made for the Perth Hills Wine Associtation wine judging night. Fitting them in the name tag thingos took a bit of trial and error...

In regards to PR (and journalism, my other uni minor) I’ve found my studies have definitely helped me so far. Writing media releases for the papers, putting together budget newsletters and John’s e-newsletter, and the public relations skills required to deal with constituents (both happy and mad) have all stemmed from the skills I’ve learnt at uni.

Standby for further thrilling updates haha...

Niki Comparti

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Curtin Bentley Campus