The Awesome Moment When a PR Intern Attends her First Media Conference

Hello fellow interns.

This has been a busy week.

The company I intern for is sponsoring the Football Republic Cup this year and in this regard, I got the opportunity to attend my very first press conference. A number of influential people in sports were present on that day, such as the president of the Mauritius Professional Football League, Mr Georges Chung, and the head coach of the Mauritius national football team, Mr Didier Six. Of course, there were quite a few tasks to complete before and after the conference, needless to mention the phone calls that had to be made to confirm logistics for the event. I also wrote a media advisory and a press release. These were easy tasks compared to the speech I had to draft for the CEO of the company. 

Journalists waiting for the CEO of Omnicane to deliver his speech at the press conference held in Port-Louis.

It was definitely challenging, especially since it was about the Republic Cup and I’m not really into football. I was not very inspired and had to do some research on local football. I also looked for tips online and came across a nice article on Forbes, called 10 Keys To Writing A Speech. It basically says that your speech should be well structured, have a strong opening and ending, that you should repeat yourself because people tend to drift off, and most importantly, keep the speech short (let’s face it, short is sweet). Well, except when we’re talking about ‘short notice’.

Given the short notice and my lack of experience in this aspect, it was no surprise that on the day of the conference, the CEO delivered a speech different from the one I had written. However, it’s been a really good exercise as I’m pretty sure I would not have listened that attentively if I had not drafted the speech. As a result, I was able to note the things that I should have included to make it perfect. On another hand, one of the journalists asked a question to the CEO, concerning how long the partnership with the Republic Cup would last. While he had not mentioned it in his speech, I did write about it in the one I had drafted. I think it’s a good sign if, as an aspiring PR person, I can predict journalists’ questions and so I was nevertheless satisfied with my work.

I also wrote a media release after the event and I was excited when my supervisor told me that I did a good job and that I did not need to edit it.

If you have any other suggestions as to how to write a good speech, feel free to share them.

All the best,

Haddiyyah Tasneem Futloo