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Greetings, I find it hard to believe that its been over a week now since I started this internship with this company.
In my previous post I described what the office was like and what I did in my first week with the company.
In today's post I will be writing on my experiences so far with this company and also the project I was handed to undertake during the duration of my internship with this company.
The Beverage Division
After completing my duration with the Beauty and Skin care division, I was posted to the Consumer and Beverage division, this division focused its' efforts on selling and distributing brands such as Guiness, Tiger beer and Livita. They are also responsible for seven other well-known brands that are available in any establish retail stores or outlets. This division also provided me access to thier 'Intranet' which allowed me to do research on the company as well as learn about their scale.
For my first task with the division, I was asked only to study on the LF Asia corporation, where I learnt that they also have a department dedicated to Public Relations and Corporate Relations. On thier portal, I also found out that they would organize charities and public fairs depending on the occasion permitted. It was here that I discovered that each branch of the LF Asia Corporate body would need to be involved in some form of Corporate Social Responsibility event throughout the year.
CSR and Public Relations
It was a requirement tasked by the head office in Hong Kong for demonstrating CSR to the community, therefore the task wasn't mandatory, however it was required to be perform at least once every two years. I quickly contacted the branch manager to enquire on this point.
In his explanation I was told that two years ago, they had organize a Charity for the blood bank Miri's General Hospital. However due to the lack of human resources, they decided to cancel the next event.
The manager then explained that he wanted to host another blood charity drive this year, however wasn't able to again find time to organize and rally in sponsors or supportors for the cause. He then explained that if I was willing to provide my own service he would gladly provide me the resources and guidance to organize this year's event.
I accepted the offer, and asked when I would begin working on the project.
Getting started
He then explained to me that I would need to start with locating an available venue, choose a date for the event and seek the approval from the Blood bank itself on whether they are available for the set
date.
In any case, there's alot to do and I feel as though there only a limited window of opportunity for it.
Personal Thoughts
It's odd how sometimes a large corporation such as this, can forget that they are part of a larger community and therefore neglect the need to give back to that very community for years of thier loyalty. The other aspect of this entire situation is that the manager himself never realized that what he was doing was Public Relations. He just calls it a charity event and does it. I had a long chat with him after discussing the event itself, and we discussed on the progression of a company and how the time for old methods of 'doing things' were starting to fade out. I asked him what he meant by that and he explained about how he has been in this business for 30 over years and that his methods and techniques are starting to die out. Giving room to the newer and better strategies and tactics and used the term 'public relations' as an example of how that context has changed over the last 30 years. I then explained that regardless of how many strategies or tactics a younger person can pull out, theres always a lacking of experience and that without much help from the previous generations the newer context of 'PR' would probably have never been fully developed to what it is today. We both agreed that very thing cannot be replaced.
For now, I will end my post here. In my next post I shall put up some documents in which I was able to retreive from the Blood Bank and also getting in contact with a possible venue for the future event.
(Apologies for the lack of pictures in this post as there wasn't really anything to put up in regards to what I was working as thier 'intranet' had a confidential banner attached to it denying me any screen-capturing)
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