Showing posts with label issues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label issues. Show all posts

Sunday, May 18, 2014

PR Plan= Marketing Plan or PR Plan ≠ Marketing Plan? That’s the question!


Hola everyone,


My forth post is about my favourite task done during my internship. During my 20 days of internship, the best was kept for the end. I was asked to do a PR plan for Black Energy drink which is in fact a new energy drink in the world. Our client asked my supervisor to prepare a marketing plan as he wanted to launch this product in Mauritius and she gave this task to me. I was very happy as it was something that I have done in class. The only thing was that it had to be a marketing plan. And I was like; ok is it 100% similar to a PR plan? “Do not worry,” my supervisor said. “Just do it like you learnt in class.” I felt very proud of myself. My supervisor was really impressed. She realised that a PR plan is better and more elaborated than a marketing plan. Of course, I needed to add some marketing things in it although I have not done many marketing modules as major. It was a real pleasure to make this plan. While we were talking, I felt very proud while discussing about the plan as this was something I did in class. During my internship I sometimes had some issues with some technical words as I was working in an advertising agency and technical design words were difficult to learn quickly. But when talking about the PR plan I was in my world. I have put what I learnt in class in practice and felt like yes, I admit that I learnt a lot of things during my Public Relations modules. The fact that I was asked to elaborate more on some marketing issues helped me to improve myself. Nowadays many Public Relations officers and marketing offices have to work hand in hand and when learning more about the marketing plan, I realised that we have still something to learn. In addition, this was the first time I have worked on PR plan for a product. We have always worked on clients in class. I just needed to elaborate more on the competitors and on the tactics especially when working with designers. I was asked to precise what kind of billboard advertising I wanted, what type of posters would be suitable for this energy drink product.  Moreover, I had to visit many supermarkets and hypermarkets to analyse the way the product was placed and to comment to it. I was really shocked to see how Black Energy drink which is new to Mauritius, was placed. The first bad image was that dead flies were seen near the product and as everyone would think, it is not the kind of thing we want to see near drinks as if Black Energy drink killed the flies. The second thing is that being new, the product should have been placed in a special way to attract attention and not being placed with the other energy drink. As I have stated in my tactics, Black energy drinks can be displayed in spiral shaped shelves, which turns in circular motion slowly. The shelves can be put in different places in supermarkets, not necessarily in the beverages aisles.  It was a very good experience to work in real life for a real product noting that my PR plan will be viewed by the Black Energy drink committee of Mauritius. Moreover it was a fantastic thing to work on a PR plan along with my designers colleagues who did not hesitate to give ideas in terms of creativity. They did also learnt many things about PR and enjoyed giving ideas especially when their job consists of designing something already thought about. Having their word to say when dealing with the promotion of Black Energy Drink was a really good experience. My internship was beyond shadow of doubt a very good practice where I put what I have learnt in practice and learnt also new things.

Graziella Hippolyte
15806785
Charles Telfair Institute


Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Is Media Monitoring really that Challenging?



Hi all,
I am almost coming to an end of my internship and I am feeling sad already. Along with drafting media releases for the first few times, another challenging issue that I encountered was media monitoring and I have also come to realise that Media Monitoring is not always fun. If you remember well, on my first post I said I liked doing media monitoring but now after this long I see how challenging of a work it is and it needs to be done with much care and attention. The thing the first few times I was only checking if there was anything about my organisation or its events and then digital press cutting for media clipping.


                     My table filled with the piles of newspapers (The Observer, Le Matinal, L`Express, Le Defi Quotidien, Star, News on Sunday, Weekend, Le Mauricien, Defi Plus, Mauritius Times, Express Dimanche, 5-Plus,Sunday Times, Capital, Samdi Plus, People, Business Magazine, Weekly Magazine)


But now as time flew and we are reaching to almost and end of the year, I have realised it is also important to know what your competitors are up to and record those as well. So now imagine every time I attend work the first thing that I have to do is read and srutinize over 15 newspapers/magazines to not only look for articles about your organisation but also for that of your competitors. This not only tracks the effectiveness of your organisation`s communication but also keeps you up to date about what your competitors are doing. So among all so far I found it really challenging as it needed attention to details while reading almost the whole newspapers so as not to miss anything. It even happened to me that I had to go trice thru the same newspaper to cross-check if i have not previously missed anything as I had to record whatever I have come across to into our 'research and analysis' folder to see the positioning of our organisation and that of our competitors. A matter of fact is that the angle of the story more often reflect the relationship between the journalist and the PR person. One of the reasons for why I found this to be challenging is because you have to read and understand the articles to be able to record it later. And many often it happened that after first few times of reading I still was not able to understand certain articles on our competitors because of the jargons used. So yeah, it was really a tough job and to start your day with piles of newspapers and after reading scrutising, start with the press-clipping; it is definitely not easy and takes a lot of your time.

However, I have realised that this is the real PR world and this reflects how our future will be. It is said a good PR does nothing but everything and Now having done all those I can proudly say it is true :D 
No matter how difficult it is, Media monitoring is very important in PR.  
Please find some sample newspaper and some articles about our clients below.  Thank you.

                                This is all the newspapers I had to go through for media monitoring
                                       Article on Bramer Bank who is one of our major clients
                                     While doing media monitoring, I stumbled upon one of our Press Releases

Thank you for reading :) I guess by now everyone is coming to and end of their internship so good luck with the report.

Karishma Rughoonundun
15636461
CTI Mauritius