First Step towards the Public Relations Industry

Hello! I’m Priscilla, and I’m a student at the Singapore campus for Curtin University, undertaking the degree for Bachelor of Commerce (Marketing and Public Relations). I’m currently working at Foxysales Pte Ltd, a relatively new company which was founded in 2010, and it’s an online retail shop that’s catered to busy mothers. They hold sales on their website every day, and each sale usually lasts for only a week.

Since they are a fairly new company, there have not been many chances for me to interact with the media. However, I am still able to put the skills I’ve learnt from the Public Relations modules at Curtin to good use. Small start-up companies are usually tighter on budget, and thus look to doing more public relations than advertising on the whole. This means a lot of social media updates, blasting of e-newsletters, and writing of blog articles, which is very similar to the tactics we recommended for most public relations plans we had to write for non-profit organisations.

However, in the public relations plans, we merely suggested these tactics, and never really put them into action. Therefore, it was a situation where I knew exactly what my job scope was, but was unsure of how to carry it out in reality. At Foxysales, I really had to carry out all these public relations tactics to communicate with our stakeholders, and it put a lot of stress on me as I wasn’t sure if I was doing it the right way. Thankfully, my colleagues have been very kind to me, and will guide me along by telling me when I did something well, and giving me constructive advice when what I did wasn’t up to their expectations.

Of course, even as a small start-up company, we need to try to reach out to the media. Thus, I also need to put together a media kit, create a media list, and think of good angles to write press releases which we would then send to various relevant media. After all, the best way to reach out to the mass public is through traditional media, which is still very much alive in this century. I’m really glad to be able to put the skills I learnt from school to use in this internship, as we were only able to learn about it theoretically in the past. With adequate hands-on experience, I should be ready to start my career in the Public Relations industry after graduating from Curtin University!

So far, my internship has been really fun, and I hope that it will continue this way! Till then, see you again!

Tay Si Min Priscilla

15909891

Curtin University (Singapore Campus)