Media Coverage and Exposure

This blog post was done on October 4.

Finally after two months plus of my internship here, we have received media coverage on a project which we were involved in. The project ‘Travel Smart’ is an initiative which promotes a more even distribution of travel demand during the busiest times of the day (http://app.lta.gov.sg/apps/news/page.aspx?c=2&id=add9c932-28f7-42e7-a3be-1e9d0b6e2847).

At the media launch, the associate director for transportation of my company was invited to present on the scheme and provide the media with details on the scheme; how it works and the benefits that participants will gain by taking part in the scheme. The media launch was organized by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) of Singapore; although I was not present at the event, it was one of the rare times where our company received media attention and exposure. In the press release done by the LTA, my company was mentioned and several media called later on to clarify some details with regards to our company background.

After the media launch, the associate director received invitations to “Talk Back”, a show on 93.8FM which discusses current affairs. We provided her with a very rushed and brief message rundown the day before the radio show. It being a “live” show gave her more pressure to perform well and to put across the messages that we had drafted for her. However, we had to be given the green light to proceed with participating in the show by LTA; given that they were our clients we were rather tied down by what they had to say, should the messages contain any information that were considered confidential or sensitive, we would have been liable for the mistake.

The media coverage that was given to the project had helped to introduce the company to the media, many of them had queried if we were from the UK or US and not based in Singapore; and what is the description of services that we provide for our clients. Given our extensive range of services rendered to our clients, it became apparent that it was hard for us to categorize the service that was rendered to the LTA; a study and implementation along with recommendations for a strategy to ease peak hour commuting for the public.

This is an exceptional case whereby the communications team had not really done anything for media exposure but it was given to us in terms of approximately eight newspaper headlines, short air time on both radio and television; and provided us with a chance to introduce the company to the media and build up media relations thereon. Most of the clients however, are unlike LTA and would not have included our company’s name in the press release. Architectural feats would have only mentioned the property developer and not the architectural or engineering firm behind it. Public Relations have always been done independently by the clients; instead of joint ones along with our company. Hence the LTA project has been one of the rare cases which have helped us obtained media coverage.

Of course there are plenty of upcoming projects such as a small part of the Resorts Worlds Sentosa (RWS) which cannot be named due to the confidentiality of the project that can garner media interest. More plans would definitely need to be drawn up with the clients to co-release press releases.