A win and a loss in my PR internship

Mikayla Wearne 17081270                                                                                           Bentley

Hey everyone,

I have now finished the second week of my internship! 

During the last half of my second week at GO Communications I was asked to get creative and rework a social media competition idea for a client in property. The idea was to create a competition that would entice young couples and individuals looking at buying their first home. The main issue with the first draft was that it was only aimed at couples which excluded a main target group – individuals looking at buying their first home. I also found that the competition mechanics were unclear. I was told I could completely change the idea and all the mechanics including the description and teaser line. After a lot of brain storming and researching I came up with the teaser line “We build your home, you build the memories” along with a whole new idea and set of competition mechanics. After submitting my idea to the team I was thrilled to be told that they loved my teaser line and were passing along my ideas to the client. It’s a very good feeling when your hard work pays off and you are recognised for a job well done. This was a big win for me!

I completed many other tasks during my second week; I came up with some interview questions for a feature article that would show off a new camera from our client, Nikon. I also wrote a media release for them and compiled profiles of bloggers and social media fanatics who could potentially gain sponsorship from Nikon.

I finished off my week by making some follow up phone calls which I found to be quite challenging as there was a barrier between me and the media outlets I was contacting. Although most people here in Malaysia speak English very well, it is still sometimes very hard to understand what others are saying and they struggle with what I am saying at times too. This made it hard to get clear answers from the questions I was asking in regards to an email sent out earlier that week. A lot of people hung up on me pretty much straight away when they heard I had a foreign ancient which was quite disheartening. I later found out that this was probably because they assumed I was a teller marketer and not to take it personally, which I didn’t. Making follow up calls was my most challenging task here so far and even though I didn’t let it get to me I felt disappointed that I couldn’t complete the job well. A loss for me!

As mentioned in my last post, Saturday was the day of one of our clients “Open House Hari Raya Celebration” which I had been involved in planning throughout the last week. It was really rewarding to see all the teams hard work pay off. As the media arrived they were given a goodie bag which included the media release I had written for the event, it was very exciting to see my writing on an official document and not just for the sake of an assignment.

                                                                      
                                                                                          The "goodie bag"                      
                                

                                                                       The media release I wrote for the event

As the event was held at our clients sales gallery I took the opportunity to look at the housing designs for their latest project "Epic Residence" which I have also been involved in over the past few weeks.

The development 

Display home

The children from the orphanage thoroughly enjoyed themselves throughout the day as they played with the bubble machines, giant snakes and ladders game, parachute game and much more.

                                                                     The bubble games

Before lunch took place the children all lined up, they were each given a gift of money in an envelope, this envelope and the decorations around the gallery were green as it is the colour that symbolises the Hari Raya season.

                                                        The children receiving their gifts

After the gifts were given out the children were invited to lunch while the media conducted an interview with the CEO of our client. I was lucky enough to be able to sit in on this interview; it was a really great learning experience as now I know how media conduct their interviews and how events like this work.