Experiencing PR for the first time

Hi everyone, I am Bing Shun and this is my first blog post for PR 393. Currently, I am doing my internship at Eastwest Public Relations Singapore for a period of 3-months. Looking forward to posting on my public relations internship experience fortnightly. For today, I will be sharing about writing a pitch and working on the same press release with other agencies.

Writing a Pitch

We learnt in school that writing a pitch has to be engaging and interesting for the editor or journalist to want to read it, as such the pitch usually has to be able to capture the reader’s attention from just the email header. However while doing my internship, I realized that this is something that is very difficult to achieve.

Most of the time you do have sufficient time to write a fantastic pitch, however this fantastic pitch may not be in line with the organization’s image or come across as unprofessional. The best way forward will actually to just paraphrase the first few paragraphs of the press release and push it out hoping that the editors or journalists will pick it up and publish it due to the content of the press release. Now, usually the press releases are industry centric so editors or journalists will definitely be interested to publish them. You will probably require a tighter follow-up with the media the following day to ensure that the email does not go into the junk mail or the editor does not miss it out. =)

1 Press Release, 2 Agencies

Ever had a situation when your client company is working in collaboration with another company and there is a need to publish this press release on this collaboration? What will happen is the collaborated company also has their own PR agency that will be pushing out the press release at the same time just probably targeting different trade media.

I had this situation where my agency had discussed with the other PR agency and agreed to send out the press release at a certain date and time. However, at the eleventh hour, the other PR agency informed my side that there are been a delay and requested we send the press release out two hours later instead. Unfortunately, we had already sent out the press release on our side and it was too late! Nothing can be done. Well the lesson learnt here is that despite confirmation and ensuring both parties are on the same page, things can still mess up at the eleventh hour. It may seem like a small issue, but it is actually very bad for our clients if it is pressing or critical news.

This will be all I can share on my first blog post as I am only 2-3 weeks into my internship. Will look forward to sharing more knowledge and experiences soon! To my other course mates, all the best!! Feel free to comment and share your two cents worth on what I have shared too, welcome a discussion.