The Little Things in PR

“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.”
- Arthur Conan Doyle, Author of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes –

Back when we were kids, we may have used to think that life is easy. Everything revolves around us. I should say that, particularly in my case, one of my most memorable moments are the times when my family and I go to events. It can be animals playing in the show, circus carnivals, Disney on Ice-skating show, and much more.

Nowadays we still enjoy well-crafted events (such as attending international music concert or watching musicals on live-theaters), but we also now understand the long hours of rehearsals, preparations and budget costs in running these shows. As Public Relations professionals, we take into account these concerns for the total success of the events we run or have been assigned to. We now understand that it is the small things that matters in big things, and this philosophy should apply to all PR people.

As I have mentioned in my last blog, Clubs WA was going to hold the AGM on 22^nd October. Starting with the first week of September, my supervisor had assigned me to do various odd jobs in preparation for the AGM.

The first things I got assigned is cold-calling. As I have talked about it in my last blog, it is one of the most important skill that PR people need to hone and own.

However, compared to cold-calling, I was also assigned jobs with non-PR related skills. These include putting sponsor flyers and stationaries into delegate bags; create registration forms, name tags and table number tags to be printed through word document; and fixing spelling and images of the AGM PowerPoint slide.

These jobs do not constitute PR skills, but I do beg to differ. I believe everything we do in an organisation is PR-related, as long as everything is targeted towards an audience of people. For instance, it takes me about 4 working days to finish putting all flyers and stationaries into 130 delegate bags. I have to ensure that everything is placed into order, not missing any gifts, and the presentation of each bags should look consistently neat. Again, I also have to ensure that I made the presentation of registration forms, name tags and table number tags consistently neat in word documents. Fixing spelling and images of the AGM PowerPoint slide may not be as glorious as cold-calling, but it is needed to ensure that the little mistakes will not get to the AGM attendees’ attention, as they expect professionalism and consistency of the whole AGM event.

These little things are often overlooked when we were kids or when we just want to enjoy the event itself, but PR people have to be keen in looking in these little things to ensure that they don’t distract the audience from enjoying the whole show. That is why I believe that these odd jobs – ‘non-PR related’ jobs – are essential for PR people, and they are often overlooked in favour of the seemingly ‘communicative’ jobs.

In my next and last blog, I will talk about my involvement in the AGM itself. I hope this upcoming story can enrich your experience as PR people.

Cold-calling with English as a Second Language

Writing, speaking, listening and reading. These four skills are the necessary ingredients for a mastery over communication. If Public Relations is indeed ‘the management of communication between an organisation and its publics’ (Grunig & Hunt 1984), then mastering these skills will gain an individual advantage for the PR person.

Among the four main communication skills, speaking has always been my most ‘dodgy’ skill. I did not speak English daily at home – not until I went to Australia four years ago. To be able to talk to Australians as if I am one of them, I would have said, would be an unreachable dream, since there is not many among my Indonesian community that can communicate and pronounce the English language properly to the Australian community, let alone merge into the Australian culture altogether.

How does this relate to my internship you may ask? Well, one of the tasks given to me is giving cold calls to clubs. On around the first week of September, my supervisor wanted me to inform clubs on the upcoming Clubs WA AGM for the 22^nd October, in the hope to get their awareness and attention in signing up one of their members to the AGM.

The burden of the task given to me gives me mix feelings. I like talking with people, since I like communication in general (which is why I took Public Relations in the first place). However, I know and understand the position I am in – an Indonesian guy who never joins in any clubs in Australia.

A job is a job to be done, so I am up and ready to do any tasks given to me. I refer back to PR Techniques class where we learn how to construct a speech transcript for certain leaders in a certain event. Although this does not relate to cold calling directly, it does help me relate to common attributes of making speech and telephone call transcripts. Some of these attributes are on keeping in mind who I am talking to (target audience), ensuring that the words I chose to deliver is correct and suitable for club leaders. I also kept in mind some questions that they might ask, such as “what is the AGM?” or “How do I get it?”

I have to say that having a transcript really helps me to talk. PR Techniques used well.

In the end, I called around 50 clubs in total telling them the same hello and questions. I got one or two in which I hesitated and faced awkward conversation, but in all, I was able to deliver the message to them. Not only does this cold-call job enhances my PR skills in general, but also increases my confidence in speaking the English language. My supervisor was happy when three people signed up to the AGM, as a direct result of my conversation with them.

You may have noticed (or not) that there is an AGM coming up on 22 October. In the next two blogs, I will talk and focus more about the upcoming event itself. Stay tune for my next story of my PR internship in Clubs WA!

Story of my 'PR in Writing'

Hi fellow PR interns,

This post is the first blog I’ve done so far in this unit. I do not have a habit of writing blogs, but as this is part of the grade of the PR internship, I plan to do this in four consecutive weeks (starting from today). My blogs will contain stories and thoughts I have collected and cherished in my head on my Public Relation experiences in Clubs WA – a not-for-profit organisation that associates and represent licenced clubs across the Western Australian region. <http://www.clubswa.com.au/>

I will now start into the topic with an introduction of my internship.

I first got my internship in Clubs WA, while looking for one in Gumtree.com. I got an interview, got in and one of the first jobs given to me is writing an article.

The article I had to write about is on the topic on ‘how a club can communicate and connect with their community by managing a Facebook page at a daily basis’. It is meant to be directed to club managers and would be published as part of the September bulletin. My supervisor wants the majority of the article to be emphasised on a professional business tips. So I was assigned to write and interview a business professional on pointing up the benefits of social media for clubs. I was given a week (8August to 15August) to finish it up.

After interviewing a number of club managers to support my article, I then looked for a business professional that I could interview. Coincidentally, I was helping out in my friend’s (Michelle Tran) Metier Connect’s networking event called the ‘Think-Tank Connect’, and one of the marketing mentor panellists is a Business Marketing professional. So after the Think-Tank Connect event finishes, I asked her for a very quick interview and got some answers.  The next day, I finished it and send the draft to my supervisor. I finished what I was assigned and was pretty much satisfied.

I would soon find out things were not that simple.

A week after that, my supervisor gave me back the article with lots of corrections – over paragraph forming mistakes and quote mistakes. There were also words that were not conveyed correctly; words that were too implicit; and such and so forth.

In addition to the corrections made, the quotes I got from the Marketing Professional I interviewed was not well-received by my supervisor. I would have to agree with my supervisor’s opinion; I did not find much helpful quotes, perhaps due to the rush preparation of the interview questions that produced weak quotes to my article.

It was then that my supervisor suggested the idea of interviewing a university professor in Public Relations. Liking the idea, I turn to none other than our beloved PR tutor, Jacinta Goerke. She has taught me in two classes (Corporate PR and PR Principles), and ever since, she has been one of my favourite teachers in my university years. So I made contact with her and asked if I can interview her as a business professional owner of Communicators International. With a new deadline on Monday 1 September, I was given four days (including the day I was reassigned on Friday 29 August) to fill the majority of the article with Jacinta’s quotes. I sent Jacinta an email containing a list of ten questions that she can answer over the weekend.

Jacinta is a great interviewee. Knowing the position I am in, she emailed me back with a 2,000 words document to my questions (and she did it in a night!). I was able to quote as many as I want and got them done on one whole Saturday evening until midnight. I finished it, and send it in right away on that Saturday, hoping that it would be published in the September bulletin on Monday 1 September. I got very tired that day and my restlessness did not wane for a few days afterwards.

Again, things did not go that simple as I thought it would.

It was a mix feeling of brokenness and optimism when I saw that the article I had rushed through was not in the article. My supervisor wanted it to be on the October bulletin, due to the rush of many things on the publishing day. I was given one more chance to edit my article, and besides, Jacinta wanted to check if I may have misquoted her in my article.

Jacinta is a great PR teacher. Not only has she given me her time for interview, but she also voluntarily toned up my article in a way that would enlarge her opinion on the theme of my article (social media for clubs). I was really grateful to her kindness, and she does indeed shows an immense amount of passion on the teachings and research of Public Relations. My internship experience was enriched greatly with Jacinta’s help.

So after all that, I sent in my draft and my supervisor finally received it with gladness. It has been confirmed that the article would be published on the October bulletin.

Overall, this writing experience has enriched me to the professional art of writing skills I would need to do an appropriate and professional job in my Public Relations career. The obstacles were there to challenge my skills and patience, but a true Public Relation person should indeed persevere through all the hardship. No wonder Marie-Louise in PR Consultancy class showed us the daily lives of a PR person to be pressured with hardship (especially when facing crises).

Some of the techniques I learnt from PR Techniques unit also came up in guiding my writing of an article, specifically on writing news release. Although the article I wrote does not necessarily apply with news articles writing techniques, the news release content came to mind to throttle my first words in the article. Truly, my learning experiences in Curtin has greatly prepared me for the profession of my intern job.

PR in writing is one experience I have acquired. I have more thoughts and stories to come on my experiences in Clubs WA that would hopefully share and enrich your experiences in your internships as well.

Stay tune for my next blog!