Brainpower Sessions!

Vision-Board Making

Hello everyone!

I’m Justine Lai, currently interning at Porter Novelli (PN) Singapore and in the midst of my final semester.

For my third post, I would like to share some valuable things that I’ve learnt working at the PN office.

When I first entered, the office had just begun to undergo some managerial changes due to change of employees and staffing. Our new Managing Director, Jimmy, implemented fresh practices and one of them is the Brainpower Session, where the PN team gets together every week to learn and share topics that are beneficial and could be applied to our public relations (PR) work.

For our very first session, we had guest speaker Tim Love (Biography), Vice-Chairman Omnicom and CEO of APIMA, to speak with us on ‘How Asia Got Its Name.’ Porter Novelli is part of Omnicom Group, a holding company which specializes in advertising and marketing and has a network of more than 175 companies worldwide. Thus, we all felt appreciative of Tim for taking his time off to speak with us.

Being in the industry for over 39 years, Tim Love oversaw how the media affected each of the generations and the evolution of new media. The internet shifted the influence power from traditional media to people, who now possess greater influence as well as the ability to control the social media and trends. An advice given by Tim was that clients appreciate and value the ability to shape things fast, and the right application of strategies. It was a very fascinating and thought provoking presentation.

Another session that caught my interest was by GMR Marketing, a company also under Omnicom which shares the same office as PN. Lisa Johnson heads GMR Singapore as its Asia Lead and the company specializes in sports marketing.

One of the recent projects undertaken by GMR was the P&G campaign for the London Olympics 2012 shown above. The GMR team shared some back-story of how sports marketing is being carried out, such as having athletes undertaking ambassadorial roles and how products are being marketed through sports. The team also described the challenges that they faced during the P&G Mom Campaign as they had numerous of responsibilities, like taking-charge of the linguistics and hospitality of the athletes’ mothers during the London Olympics. The session was very intriguing as it never occurred to me how huge sports marketing is in the industry and the crucial role that athletes play in product marketing.

The PN team also had our own creative discussions during the weekly brainpower sessions, such as vision-board making where we thought about our own future achievements and how we aim to balance our work-life.

Product of our Vision-board making session, guess which one is mine?

These weekly sessions are extremely refreshing and really beneficial. I think it is really good to put off work for a few hours and learn about the different facets of PR. Being too focus with our work may not always be good, and the knowledge that we gain during these sessions definitely make a difference to how we perform in our work. I feel really lucky that I’m in PN, as I’m able to take these great insights home with me every week.

With love,

Justine Lai

15215640

Curtin Singapore