Media Workshop

This blog post was done on 20 September

The highlight of my internship happened the day before when an external PR agency was engaged to conduct a media workshop for the business leaders of the company. Having mentioned in the previous posts that the company has been building on the foundation to increase media relations and exposure, the media workshop was to provide the various business heads an idea of who the media are, how they should sell their stories to them, and what can be done to further enhance their personal skills of crafting and delivering the story and connect with the media at the same time.

Even though the workshop was only conducted for the business leaders, I had the luxury of sitting in and picking up skills as my supervisor had felt that it was appropriate and beneficial for me to do so. Hence there I was, for the whole day, in a meeting room with six business leaders, all males, two trainers and one videographer for the workshop.

The workshop was started off by a doorstop interview, where the participants were given a taste of a reporter stalking them and asking them questions which were meant to be aggressive and shocking. Following the recent news of the Downtown Line construction causing cracks in the homes of nearby residents, the trainers had prepared a series of critical questions meant for the participants. These interviews were recorded live and played back for review later on. Many of the participants found that they were unable to speak in front of the camera; and without preparation were unable to answer the questions fielded to them.

Participants were given tips on their interview skills and a debrief of the best practice to answer the questions and then given another exercise, that is to sell the company’s offerings to a key political figure in under one minute, to which many of them fumbled and were unable to communicate the core message. The messaging house concept was highlighted to the participants as well.

Following the exercise, the participants were introduced to a quadrant review system where they needed to evaluate the headline they saw, the delivery of the story, what was said and the outcome. After their self-review, they were given 3 more stimulated on-camera interviews, one of which was at a press conference, one at a talk show on Channel News Asia and the last on CNBC Squawk Box.

At the end of the workshop, the Marketing and Communications team sat down with the trainers to provide an evaluation of each participant and their potential to become a spokesperson for the company. Since it was mentioned in the earlier blog post that the company is taking small steps to build up on Public Relations on all aspects, it is crucial that there are multiple spokespeople to be groomed and utilized for media relations in the long run in order to promote ideas such as thought leadership. This will help boost the image and reputation of the company due to its heavy use of niche technology and knowledge.