Come Away With Me.... Media Relations In Malaysia (2)

Greetings my fellow PR students and Interns, and welcome to my second blog. In this blog I will be discussing my experiences with Media Relations whilst interning at GO Communications in Malaysia.

Media Relations was a great part of my role as an intern, this ranged from everyday things such as media monitoring and media clippings, to more exciting things like running events for clients and having the media there. I will discuss much to do with media monitoring and clipping, as I have already outlined this in my first blog (Click Here). However, I want to focus on the relationship between PR Companies (specifically Go Communications) and the media in Malaysia.

The media landscape in Malaysia is bigger than I previously thought, they have a range of popular newspapers such as the News Straits Times, Harian Metro (Malay), and Nanyang Siang Pau (Chinese), as well as many Radio and TV stations. The Malaysian media is very involved with PR companies, and I realised this at a client's, event.

Kenny Rogers Roasters (A restaurant chain in Malaysia) annually host a 'Roasters Eating Day' (RED) event, where customers come in dressed in anything red and receive special deals on their meals. I was lucky to be part of the 2014 RED event, which was held at one of their restaurants.


Along with the special meal deals on offer, the team at Go Communications were also able to get the Malaysian junior squash team involved in the event, which created an even bigger media buzz.

Malaysian Junior Squash Team at the RED Event (The Star Newspaper)

This event was very successful, with a lot of media presence and coverage. It felt great seeing all that coverage the next day, because I was apart of organizing the event.

I found the media in Malaysia to be very approachable too. Another one of my tasks included compiling a media contact list for the newly published "Women's Health" magazine, and I found it very easy to get in contact with the editor, who was very friendly and happy to help.

(Photo from Mongoose Asia)

Liaising with the media is often daunting to many (myself included), but my experience in Malaysia has definitely helped me with this. The media isn't so intimidating anymore!

Keep up with my Malaysian PR experience on my next blog.
Thank you for your time.

Naomi James
Curtin University, Bentley.