My internship at Watermelon Communications

Hi everyone,

I am Song XinYing, currently having my internship placement at Watermelon Communications. This is my first post to pen down my experience with Watermelon Communications.

Watermelon Communications is a full-fledged media communications agency based in Dubai, UAE. With offices in Dubai (UAE), Doha (Qatar) and Singapore, the agency adopts a holistic approach to communication taking into consideration the entire stakeholder community and aims to develop long-term healthy relationship with client. Other than excelling in traditional PR, the agency also specializes in Digital PR, which made use of social media as a platform to create awareness and enhance corporate reputation. Watermelon Communication had clients from across all sectors (Ranging from F&B to Luxury products). The agency also offers image management, crisis communication, internal communication, media monitoring, events and promotions and content creation for corporate newsletter and brochure.

I recalled the period when I was frantically searching for companies to start my internship, it was CRAZY. There were so many students looking for internship at the same time. After emailing out numerous copies of resumes to different PR agency, I was shortlisted for a few interviews. 

My main consideration when choosing my internship placement is the job scope. The second consideration is corporate culture, I personally feel that corporate culture plays a very important role if I want to excel in my internship. Although the job scope for the first few interviews are interesting, I do not have the “chemistry” with the company. I felt that I will not be able to blend in and be in line with the corporate culture. When googling, I chanced upon the internship at Watermelon Communications, I sent my resume and I was shortlisted for an interview.

My interview with the country head went smoothly, it was casual. The agency emphasis on quality, not quantity (Hours of time spent in the office). Besides that, the company is very flexible and the well being of employees are also taken into consideration.  Watermelon Communications was my last and final interview during my search for internship placement, the company with a corporate culture that I am comfortable with.

My internship was supposed to be on 1^st July 2012, but it was postponed till 12^th July 2012.  On my first day of work, I need to be familiarized with the company’s credentials so that I have an overview of what my agency PR activities. The credential includes the agency’s specialization, the services they offered, and their past and present clientele. Besides tradition PR activities like writing press release, calling media and monitoring for coverage, Watermelon Communications specializes in Digital PR.

I have learnt the term Digital PR in lectures, but I never had the chance to experience it first hand. Digital PR makes use of social media (Example: Twitter, Facebook) as a platform to create awareness for client’s product, manages and enhances their corporate image and reputation. I have always thought that the number of likes for corporate Facebook page is not impactful to a company. Internship at Watermelon Communications taught me a lot, clients use the number of likes on Face book page to gauge their market share. This is the reason why companies employ PR agency like us for community management. We manages their Facebook by regularly posting to ensure engagement, monitor the Facebook for negative comments and also carry out sponsored stories on Facebook to create awareness and increase the number of likes on their Facebook.

From this, I have realized the power of social media, it has the ability to reach out to a wider audience compared to traditional PR.  With the proliferation of social media, organizations of different sizes and nature had recognized the fact that social media can help them to communicate and attract their target audience. I believe that social media will be fully integrated into the future PR world.

This shall be my introductory post for my internship with Watermelon Communications. See you. ;)

SONG XINYING

15646570

CURTIN SINGAPORE