Organizing a Press Conference for a Client

                                      
Hello buddies,

It's my really first blog post and I am on my third day of internship at Immedia Agency. My first day started last week and it was quite relaxed I shall say. I came to met my new colleagues and discover my new working environment and how things work out there. I was really surprised to see a lot of newspapers of practically every media outlet in the country.

Basically Immedia is an Art, Entertainment, Advertising, and Public Relations agency mainly specialised in event making since 1987. Their events featured some artists like: Gad Elmaleh, Yannick Noah, Pascal Obispo, Khaled, Mathieu Chedid, and Groundation. At this point of time they are busy planning for two major events namely: The Phantom of the Opera and Tikoulou which will be held at the end of August and September respectively. 

On my second day, well, I received a phone call from my supervisor on the eve telling me to attend a press conference for one of their client. Before that, Immedia has as main client, Emtel World, whereby Immedia is in charge for some communication projects for CSR programs of Emtel.
This time both Immedia and Emtel are working together for the program: Emtel Painting Sensation 2014.
On the day of the conference I was quite anxious as it was my first press conference. We arrived early to settle everything. Then I discovered how things worked while organising a press conference, firstly when I entered I saw the sound technician installing the sound system and secondly the catering service settling a table with a lot of food! I haven't ate nothing since the morning and...   I was really hungry!

The first task my supervisor asked me to do was to welcome the journalists at the reception, take down their names and which media outlet they work for. I liked this task as there were some pretty nice journalists who gave me their phone numbers (I don't know if it was for working purposes or personal...).

I was already given a list of media outlets which had confirmed the invitation of my agency. After everything was settled in the room and that my supervisor had prepared the CEO of Emtel for his speech, I was given the signal to bring all the journalists upstairs.

After the conference, came the question time for journalists who did not ask too many question (only two in fact) and when I asked my supervisor why they didn't ask that much, he told me that journalists in Mauritius had become very lazy. In fact, I think that they were more interested in the food we were offering them.

The best part was when we invited everyone including the managers of Emtel and journalists to eat and drink something after the conference. It was a way to invite everyone to socialize and build contacts which is important when being a Public Relations practitioner or even a simple journalist. I myself was presented personally to the CEO and other managers at Emtel by my supervisor who gave me their business card too. The worst part was when everything was over and that we had to get back at the office and had to write the press release concerning the press conference.

To finish, I spent only three days and I already had some good experiences and there are more (including bad experience too)  to come. For the moment, Love My Job!

Mehdi