Language is a beautiful barrier

The Elite team

Following all of the excitement and buzz of Ghostbusters, there were a few tedious jobs to be completed. Calling the media to follow up press releases, invitations, etc. was a daily task in my second week of interning. However, there were also press releases to be written, media listings to be created and sent out, and media to be monitored. My team also met to brainstorm ideas for one of our clients which I found very interesting, witnessing how the team dreams up and creates events and PR ideas for different businesses. I was also asked by our team manager to think of ways to promote the same client which has created the world’s strongest umbrella, the BLUNT umbrella.

GO founder Michael de Krester's book

On a reflective note, with only days left of my internship I believe I have finally figured out the greatest challenge of my internship, and possibly PR in Malaysia. It is not the culture, or the perhaps as some would say “less objective” media, I have realised it truly is the language (as some of you may have guessed). With three key languages spoken in Malaysia; Chinese, Malay and English, it can be quite challenging communicating with stakeholders, clients, the media and the general public.

As mentioned in my earlier posts, I have made hundreds of calls to media contacts, many of whom work for non-English speaking publications or news outlets. Although this was difficult at times, I cannot imagine how the GO Communications team manages! All of GO’s work is completed in English, therefore generally the different publications translate our content into their given language. However, it works both ways and GO often needs to translate Chinese, Tamil and Malay news articles to give their clients the complete picture of media coverage.

Also this week, my team attended one of our client's events 'Ricoh's Edu Tech Day'. Although I did not attend, I followed up before and after the event with media calls regarding the press release. This was a very interesting event which revealed the latest technology initiatives in education, so I was thrilled to be helping in any way.

I also discovered a place I never imagined would link to our office space. Basically a second office space that is not too dissimilar from a typical “boy’s room”. There was a pool table (as seen pictured), couches, a stereo, a smartboard with printer attached, dozens of trophies lined up, a huge shelf full of all of the magazines GO’s clients had obtained coverage in, and a huge boardroom. After interning at GO for some time already, this space was a huge surprise! If I had not been asked to measure the pool table (one of the strangest tasks I completed), I would have never laid eyes upon this unique workspace.