Sunday, January 30, 2011

Hello everybody!
Let me update you all on what i have been doing these past two months at work here. The first day i was introduced to my main tasks. I was given a list of their clients both for MAE PR and Key Message PR. MAE PR focuses more on big business's like Malton, Wembley and even Giant. As for Key Message PR they're clients are more beauty oriented from P&G. Their main products are SK-II, Olay and Anna Sui.
In the office there are four cubicles in total. Only three staff, four including me. One of the staff left and only three of us were left. There are also two separate offices for the respective bosses of the two PR agencies. In the office there is also an inventory where they keep all their products mainly only for Key Message PR.
Everyday a pile of newspapers is delivered to the office and it is my job to look through them and select articles about their clients or their products. I cut out the respective article, scan it in and write a report where the following things have to be saved and included in the news clipping report:

  • Client

  • Media

  • Date

  • Page

  • Headline

Once this has been written down the scanned picture are inserted into the word document and printed out for filing. The articles that i have to look for for MAR PR's clients are articles that are related to her clients. For instance Malton is a Property Developer therefore when i find an article in the Star newspapers for example that talks about another property developer not necessarily Malton i've got to make sure that the developer is based in Kuala Lumpur then include it in the media reports. It is important to know what a client's competitor is up to.
I have to do similar things for the client's for Key Message PR, not only look through the beauty section of the newspapers but also look through all magazines every month. Such magazine's include
  • Maire Claire

  • Harper's Bazaar

  • Cleo

  • Female

  • Seventeen

  • Cosmopolitan (Malay)

  • Citta Bella (Chinese)

There are a lot more. Newspapers include the following
  • The Star

  • NST

  • Kosmo (Malay)

  • Berita Harian (Malay)

  • The Sun

  • Malay Mail

  • Utusan (Malay)

  • Metro

My main task is Media Monitoring. It can be said that media monitoring is an easy job to do. It might be, however it requires a lot of attention and patients. It is not something you'll finish very quickly especially at the begging of a month where all the magazines are being piled up for you to look through them. It is a lot of work but i enjoy it.
Keep tuned in, i'll let you all know soon, more about my working environment. Until then take care!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, sounds like you have a lot to read! But I see some women's magazines in the list, so I bet it is quite fun as well ;)

lebo said...

I think this placement is well suited because it does not only teach us about doing PR at first hand and learning from professionals but it also takes us a couple of semesters back in order to do the things we learnt in class and gives us the chance to re do them all over again but this time around for real clients and knowing you have to do it to the standard of your company and also for your client sake.

Therefore I think although the task may have been too much and tiring to do, you knew what you were doing and I think it must have been fun going through all those publications especially women’s, magazines like Doreen said.