First I'll introduce myself as this would be my first post regarding my internship with a multinational company. I'm called Leonard Huang and currently studying both marketing and public relations at Curtin University Sarawak, I hail from Miri itself and can be considered somewhat of a local. I spent however half of my years living outside of Miri and have spent the last four years back in my hometown for studies.
I have previously accomplish jobs which mostly involved either management or marketing related task, however this would be the first job which I would be undertaking a Public Relations task.
I'm currently interning for a company called Li & Fung Asia Sabor Sdh Bhd Sarawak which is part of a larger multinational company called Li & Fung.
The office I'm allocated into is a small branch which handles distribution and sales for the city's big brands. Some of examples of these brands are L'Oreal Paris consumer products which range from hair shampoos to skin care, Garnier Facial washes and and shower gels. Currently, the person directly responsible to is thier Branch Manager, he's a man who has been in this industry for over 30 years of his life and has extensive knowledge and experience in running this branch, including first hand exprience in dealing with Corporate Social Responsibility campaigns and events that affect the image of this company. I was told by my current co-workers that in over the last 30 years of his career with this company he has received numerous awards in both management and marketing fields however he noteworthy for participating in CSR events held by the larger branches of this company.
In my first week with this company, I was tasked to visit each department to learn and understand the inner workings and systems associated with the company.
This man is the Supervisor for the Beauty and Skincare division
My first position was with the Consumer and Beauty care products division, which focuses on selling L'Oreal and Garnier products to the mass market. I was there to participate in a Roadshow event for L'Oreal and Garnier products, it was a five day event where I was told to understand and look into the methods used by professionals who organized events like these on a monthly basis.
Setting up and Closing down, rinse and repeat.
It was a tiring exercise, which involved spending quite a number of hours at the event and observing the behaviours of consumers who walked in and out of the booth. During the five days I also spent time with the super, (lets' call him Alvin) Alvin showed me around the mall we were in and also he gave me a extensive insight into the products which he was selling. All these information of course was closely tied into marketing and distribution, however I was learning the 'ropes' therefore I would need to understand all the inner and outter workings of this business.
The showfloor booth, ready and waiting
The idea behind this pratice was to get a better understanding of the entire process where a small team of organizers have to quickly setup and pack down an event. All while understanding which steps are redundant and which aren't, during my time with this division I honestly didn't really need to learn anything about sales or distribution however I felt it would greatly help me understand why this company does events and how effective they are at doing them.
Although during my time with the division, I was not part of the planning process as that was done months before I applied for the company, however during my five days with the event I realized that positioning, venue, public appearance (in the form of sales personel and staff), lighting (strangly I notice that people tend to be very ignorant of places which have poor lighting) and enviromental factors (loud music, competing booths and object obstacles) can greatly cause an issue to an event.
In my next post I shall talk alittle about my next division and what responsibility I was given to by the Branch manager to undertake during my internship. I do apologise for the length of this post and also the introduction I did for myself. In my future post I will greatly reduce the size of my write-ups and include more documents I'm currently using to construct a PR proposal and plan. Another point I would like to make is that regardless of how this post may sound, I am currently working on a Public relations project which is scheduled to be implemented on the 1st of December 2012, the reason is that due to no available venues during the month of December. I shall reveal more details of my project as well as the work I have done in my third post.
Please feel free to ask me questions and point of issues which may cause concern in your thoughts and I'll be sure to respond as appropriate and be sure to stick around for more post I'm working on in the future.
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