First Day of Internship

Today was my first day at work, FINALLY!

I have been waiting for this since three months and here I am, in a place that I didn't even know existed in Mauritius. The environment is quite relaxing, no noise pollution or whatever, a bit too relaxing for me, in other words you just want to sleep under a tree and appreciate the nature.

As it is a very small company, (6 employees only, including me) it was quite difficult to feel comfortable as they already knew each other and I was the only new intern. Frankly I wanted to run away from this place but thank God, I have a very good friend who told me, “You've got to pull yourself together and take control of your emotions!”

She was right, it’s not the work that sucks, it’s the way you relate to the work itself. Everything depends on the way you see things, I decided to take it positively and do the work seriously, I did what I could and even my boss was impress by my work.

At this precise moment, the day went out quickly and smoothly. I was asked to find specific costing for an event that the company is supposed to organised. I was asked to find different venues, caterings, photographers and book publishers for the event.

What I learned from my first day at work is that good contacts are essential in public relations, without them, organising an event is impossible.

Thank you for reading my first blog entry and stay tuned :)

Anne-Laure Ferry
15886512
CTI (Mauritius)

Recognising the need to Digitize

Whether it is for reasons of going green or just for plain convenience, technology has helped pave the way for digital management when it comes to business. Not to say hard copies have become completely obsolete, but slowly but surely it may be the reality. My last task before my internship comes to an end is to digitize Miri Marriott’s media clippings. You may all recall doing media clippings in PR250, and I’m sure some of you already doing your internships have been delegated to do this.

Firstly, a little detour first of how it works around here (if PR250 didn't quite make sense and you were doing that assignment just for the sake of getting it done – guilty!): Daily newspapers are collected (all local/national/online publications) and I have to go through them looking for articles about the hotel (media presence), other hotels in Miri (competitive analysis) and hospitality/tourism-related articles across Sarawak, Sabah and West Malaysia (industry monitoring) – the articles about the hotel (excluding our own advertisements) are considered free media coverage and I must calculate the value of such articles. Bare with me, this is where it gets a little confusing: this is done by measuring the article’s length and multiplying that by the number of columns based on figure 1. The result is then multiplied by set prices for each publication (see figure 2)– as I said it's all a bit confusing at first but that’s what the tables are for.

Figure 1

Figure 2

All the articles I collect are filed to be circulated monthly within the hotel to the General Manager and all Executive Committee members. It’s not the most exciting job in the world, but it’s just one of those things that needs to be done. Personally, it’s kind of nice to start the day reading up on some news (you never know what you might find – I once found an article entitled “Know Your Poo” – and it was rather hilarious) plus you get to be a little arts and crafty. As with all hard copies, they can get damaged or go missing along the way – so my boss though it best just to scan it all, make it into a pdf and email it – easy peasy! And this is where digital management comes in: creation, storage and retrieval are now at a click of a button (or two). But it also has other perks for overall business but you will find many of the points are similar: 

• With faster access to and retrieval of information logically means faster business transactions;

• With quicker access to all of the right information means staff are better informed and can make better decisions faster;

• Less time is spent looking for information;

• Easier information sharing not just internally across the hotel and other franchises;

• (My personal favourite) saving paper means saving trees – particularly important for this part of the world;

• Clutter-free offices – it frees up some space where all the filing used to be.

The only cons to digital management is that technology can let you down, all it takes is one crash and it’s all gone, or some hacker extraordinaire to snoop, steal or unleash a virus. The solutions to such issues would be to make sure to do regular back-ups and make sure system security is top notch. We are creatures that crave convenience and the same goes for how we want to do business; making use of technology and choosing digital management is a more effective and efficient way of doing business.

Rachel Salinah Jackson

15624958

Miri Campus

Hotels, PR & Hotel PR – in a nutshell

Let me start by saying thank goodness it is Friday, the acronym does not truly give justice to how thankful I am. Don’t get me wrong, the internship is going great - but this first month has been a shock to the system to say the least. Monday to Friday, waking up at the crack of dawn, sitting in traffic, the 9 hour work day, more traffic – absolutely exhausting! It takes getting used to, coffee does help and weekends are a godsend. 

Working in a hotel takes some getting used to too. You realise in a matter of hours that you must make the mental transition from past guest to employee, or ‘associate’ as we are known in Marriott. My expectations of hotel Public Relations have been warped as well. When I applied for this job, I was told during my interview that the PR was part of the Sales and Marketing department, no real surprise at the time but once I started, I soon realised Sales, Marketing and PR all blend together – In other Marriott hotels it is also known as Marcom (marketing communications). The PR team mainly deals with the hotel’s advertising and promotions.

Hotel PR combines with advertising and promotion to generate awareness for the hotel or it services, create demand for its services, and increase its perceived value – the latter being absolutely key.  This includes media releases, promotion booklets, the website, blog and other SNS’s, even the key cards – all of which have to support your hotel’s business positioning and marketing objectives. My boss’s first bit of advice was ‘stick to the guidelines and policies’ – Hotel PR is a huge responsibility as you are the voice of the hotel – no one else other than PR personnel have the right to speak on behalf of the hotel publicly, so when you do make sure you get it right. Stating the obvious, For Marriott, it is all about the brand value and maintaining the high standards that come with it.

So from my first 3 weeks, I have come up with a brief list of what you need to know about interning in hotel PR, let’s say the 5 basics shall we, which are as follows:-

·         It is not limited solely to issuing press releases and doing media clippings – definitely not. They were in my initial ‘what to expect’ list. Media clippings I do daily but no press releases in these first 3 weeks. Instead I have been doing write-ups for their promotion booklets, designing Christmas e-cards, and most recently making ‘No Durians Allowed’ signs.

·         As much as you want to make all advertising and promotions sound as appealing as possible, it is essential you TELL THE TRUTH. Yes company and personal ethics are involved, but the whole deal of marketing (and marketing hospitality in particular) is that your product needs to be as good as you say it is.

·         CSR is a biggy – For the big players like Marriott, it is extremely important to give back to the community, and they make sure they do all year around in their ‘Spirit to Serve’ community initiatives. At the moment I am helping with their Christmas Wish Tree Project, which supports children and adults with physical and mental disabilities, orphans, and underprivileged families in Miri.

·         Know your SNS’s – as a member of gen Y, your boss will expect you to be tech-savvy and know everything there is to know about digital media platforms. If you haven’t tweeted or instagram’d before, I suggest you start and know the power of hashtags. I was put in charge of setting up and maintaining the hotel’s Instagram – being totally unfamiliar with the platform prior to this. My advice if you’re faced with the same situation is to research first, check how other hotels use Instagram, remember to hashtag, and have fun with it.  

·         And lastly, don’t start the internship with the expectation of having work to do all day, 5 days a week. You will find that there are often days where you have nothing to do and you are just sitting around waiting to clock out at 5pm. I suggest headphones and good music, and get to know the software your company uses. For example, CorelDraw is the software of choice here for designing everything from their promo booklets to their company envelopes.

Obviously these are only based on my experience so far – it may vary from hotel to hotel, hospitality to consultancy - but the essential elements are there.

Rachel Salinah Jackson

7e0b8041/15624958

Curtin Miri

First Week of Internship

Hello everyone! My name is Michelle Shak from Curtin University based in Miri, Sarawak. Like everyone else that is taking this unit, I have gone through a lot of interviews and sending out resume until I finally found the right placement. I started my internship on a full time basis at Pustaka Miri, from 15^th of August till 20^th of September 2013. Well, working in the Public Relations department for the first time, it is definitely an eye opener and a new experience for me. 

The first few days at work was nerve wrecking, as I was worried for not being able to meet their standards or expectations but as time goes by, I realized that what I have learnt through out my course have prepared me for this internship.

First day coming to work, my supervisor gave me a tour of the working place and introduced to me to the person in charge of each department. After the basic introduction, I was assigned to a desk and been given files to look through the public relations records to know their activities that they have done in the past and also future events.

Not only that, my supervisor also took the time and brought me to the customer services center to register as a member in Pustaka Miri. To be able to use their online website services for research and planning. My supervisor also taught me on how to use the Information system to search for readings, articles or books online, which I find very useful and helpful at the same time in helping me doing research.

The tasks that I was assigned to in my first week of working were doing media clippings, press release and media kit. I was glad that my supervisor trusts me enough to allow me to do the job, as I am still new. It made me very happy and felt welcomed. All the other staff was friendly and also helpful as they are more than glad to assist me when I have enquiries regarding about any task.

My next post will be updating on the 10 days of working and the events that me and another intern had organized. Well, from my point of view, working at Pustaka Miri has allowed me to meet so many new people and also learn new things that can benefit me in the future.

I wish everyone all the best and I hope everyone is also having fun doing their internship as I am.

Best Regards,

Michelle Shak (Curtin University Sarawak)

7d8b5929/14575042

PR in real action – Part 1

I thought that after being here for more than 10 weeks in my company, it will be great to provide real-life photos to my daily job scope.

A little background, I’m attached to the Healthcare team in Waggener Edstrom Singapore.

1. Media monitoring

Newspapers - my best-friends to every week day morning. The entire healthcare team 5 of us will all camp in a meeting room from 8.30am to 10am to sieve through all healthcare news from 11 media outlets that are relatable to our clients. We then summarise the articles then put them into a template and email it out to our client before 10am.

On a hectic day we can clip about 30  articles, and on quieter days we clip about 15. Yes, all done within 1.5 hours. :)

Challenges: translating articles and medical terms from Chinese/Malay into English and time constraints.

Learning point: make notes on commonly used special medical terms or hospitals and consolidate them into a list for easy reference.

2. Events

I was lucky to join the press conference event done for our client, I was involved in media registration and some back stage work included confirming the list of media attending the press conference as well as designing and making ID tags for everyone attending the event.

Challenge: It was my first time designing a template for the ID tag, sizing, and last minute additions.

  

Background: this was our event for our client Abbott. Local renowned singer Stefanie Sun was the spokesperson and we had a minute with the star.

	Challenges: I wasn’t able to identify who’s who and who’s from which media, and I was nervous to be meeting the people who writes the stories in the newspapers that I read everyday. Learning point: I made effort to try to remember who’s who at my first meeting so as to build relationships in case I’d see them again in the future and its important for me to give a good first impression as I was representing my agency. Soon, my internship with Waggener Edstrom would be coming to an end, and my coming path would still be an adventure for me. J Till then,  Joycelyn Foo 15443975 J

My First Week of Internship in Singapore Red Cross.

Hi All

I am glad that I finally got to start my internship a week ago. This was due to many weeks of waiting and empty promises but the past is the past and we must now focus on the present.

I managed to get an internship in Singapore Red Cross' Corporate Communications department.  A short introduction of the Singapore Red Cross. They are a Singaporean humanitarian organisation which is part of a world-wide, non-political, non-religious movement that bases its work on the fundamental principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity and universality. They are focused on six areas namely: blood donation, first aid,
 caring for the vulnerable, community services, serving humanity and international services.

On my first day, I was thrown into work by reading reports and brochures of services that the auxiliary of government organisation provided.

A Picture of my work desk.

 

My supervisors and colleagues have been very helpful and willing to allow me to help them out in their work. In particularly, my supervisor had already drawn up a list depicting the things I should do while I am there.

As of far, I have had the experience of collating media clippings, calling up the media and confirming they have received the press release sent, helped in facilitating a press meeting and co-wrote the emcee script for the upcoming awards ceremony.

My first task actually terrified me the most, I was given a list of blood donors and I had to call them up, find out their stories behind donating blood and send them to the public relations agency. I had a lot of phone calls to make and as the office is a open concept, everyone could hear every conversations made. This made me tune my voice down and a few times the person on the other end had to tell me to speak up. Overall, this was a very interesting task and I did well as the modules in school has already trained me to find the key points that the public relations agency could use to pitch as a story to the media.

At times when I am feeling distracted and need a pick-me-up, I always go to the cabinet picured below. Do not look down on this simple cabinet for it is filled with a variety of sweets, chocolates, potato chips, instant coffee and tea and even instant noodles.

This sums up the end of my first week. I cannot wait to start another week and learn as much as I can.

Thanks for reading!
Jacquelyn Woo
Curtin Singapore
15658504