360 ° Changes

Hurray!!!! My two months internship placement in Hill+Knowlton Strategies finally came to an end. New working environment in a consultancy firm really do change my whole mindset thinking about the PR knowledge in this two months.  I sincerely want to say a millions of thanks to the Managing Director of Hill & Knowlton Malaysia, Mr Justin Then, Senior Associate, Mr. Burhanuddin Omar who is my internship supervisor and also all the colleagues for their willingness and kindness in giving me the learning opportunities and providing me proper guidance, training skill, and sharing their useful personal experience and knowledge with me throughout the internship period. Before I step into the real public relations industry, I really did not know much about PR. In fact I was just a student who barely understands the actual operation process of how public relations carry out their work in order to achieve their goal of any communication project for their client. I also always had a perspective of public relations that it is just like a professional career which uses communication skill to facilitate the relationship and understanding between an organization and its stakeholders, all about practical daily routine of working closely with media to secure positive media coverage in order to protect corporate reputation and image of company, mainly handle crisis issues and community project, organizing press conferences and others.

After I accomplished the internship, now  my perspective towards public relations have changed and my personal working attitudes have much more improved than before such as the way I think and analyze current issues became more critically and skeptical, communication style with clients and media became more friendly and straightforward to the important point without wasting time, be more aware of my dressing and talking style which might affect the company image and work ethically by following my company policy. Moreover, I still remembered one of my associate director advised me that public relations nowadays actually can be defined as ‘people relations’ which means human networking and contacts are very crucial as sources for  getting information and medium for disseminating information to a diverse range of audiences. This made me realized that when you are in the PR industry, you must make friends whenever and wherever you can. Internship placement in a multinational consultancy firm have made me get the chance to expose to the variety of client from different sectors such as telecommunication, automobile, healthcare, consumer goods, technology and finance. Eventually, this has improved my general knowledge in every aspect that related with my client business. Throughout the internship, I also realized that employee communication is very important in every company to keep engage every staff for making them keep aware about the current business updates and policy of the company and also strengthen  the relationship between the  colleagues by using their in-house news portals, newsletters, email, weekly meeting, staff training, festival celebrations and others. For instances, Hill & Knowlton have organized a Christmas party and Lou Sang Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner to celebrate the festival joy with the staffs. On my last day internship, they also have organized a farewell lunch in the office for appreciating my hard work and contribution towards the company. All these various types of company events improve employee engagement while providing a platform for employees to socialize and be positively motivated.

Based on my personal experience, year end semester break or the month of December could be the best time for students to do an internship. This is because all the clients’ projects and annual report would be due on end of this month. It is the busiest time of a year that everyone in the public relations consultancy firm will be  rush to finish up all the workloads and most of the time the intern will be used to  assist them in finish up their work. This means intern can learn a lot of new working skill or extra knowledge when assist them in handling client’s annual reports. Internship placement at Hill & Knowlton Strategies Malaysia have let me able to experiences and seen the dealing process of a professional PR consultant with client and able to participate in helping the colleagues to engage our client business with the media. In addition, my supervisor have given me a precious feedback regarding my internship performance which is he advised me that as a professional public relations officer need to keep ‘READING ABOUT  EVERYTHING’ on the news information of every industry sector because this extra knowledge could help us to think critically while designing an ideal and reliable communication project for every client. Once again, thank you everyone in Hill & Knowlton Strategies for giving me lots of golden opportunities in learning about the professional public relations frameworks throughout the internship.

Photos below are my best memorable moment in Hill & Knowlton Strategies Malaysia. 

Awesome people in the house HK Strategies!!!!

My Supervisor, Burhan & Me J

Farewell gathering food       

Intern from Taylor University & Segi College

Christmas Party and my Christmas present from company J

Our client brings along their product visit us!! Red Bull Wings!!!!

Lim Min Yuan
Curtin Sarawak
15625074 / 7E0B7821

Memorable event journey with Chevron Malaysia

I was really excited today as finally my senior executive brought me out from office to our client’s launching event after one month of internship! It is a launching event by Chevron Malaysia to introduce a loyalty card program called Caltex Journey Card which in partnership with Berjaya Corporation’s BCARD loyalty program. My senior executive, colleagues and I arrived at the launching venue, Bukit Kiara Equestrian & Country Resort early in the morning around 8am. The reason was that we had set up media registration counter, prepare press kits & media kits, and also brief the speaker about the speech before the event starts. The press kits include official news releases, biographical information about the company, event agenda and flyers of the Caltex Journey Card. Is it the contents of press kit sound familiar? I think we all have learnt the way of preparing press kits such as media releases, backgrounder, factsheet, newsletter, speech, running sheet and event checklist earlier before in the unit of Public Relations Techniques 220. So what is the difference of press kit and media kits? Press kits is the information materials about the client and event that distributed to the media for getting them have the clear message of the event whereas media kits  act as an appreciation gift or promotional freebies for the media who attend the event includes of food & beverage vouchers, calendars and notebooks which related to the client and commercial partners.

Caltex media kits

I have been assigned to the media registration task such as requesting the media to register their contact detail on a log book upon arrival, distributing media kits and also guiding the media in the process of complimentary sign up for the Caltex Journey loyalty card. Media registration is not only doing the following tasks, it is also the best time to strengthen your media industry network by having a quick and small conversation with them to establish a good relationship base. I also found out that normally media person like editor, reporter and blogger from the automobile and technology section will be more interested to attend and cover this kind of event news which is related to petrol industry. My senior associate also have told me that public relations consultant usually will handle all the media works during event planning such as distribute media invitations, prepare question and answer (Q & A) sheet for the press conference, prepare the emcee’s and speaker’s speech, train the media spokesperson, suggest the client to produce what types of promotional video can bring out the key messages, meeting with client to discuss the event program and others. This event made me clearly understood the role that PR plays in organizing a product launching.

As a professional public relations consultant, we must be well prepared for this one-off event because event can be a powerful public relation technique to bring up the company profile to another higher level and effectively disseminate the corporate key messages to the large range of diversity target audiences. Moreover, I finally understood the main reason of why public relations must participate in the preparing event management task that is because public relations will plan accordingly with a properly well research based on latest company business strategies plan and current issues from the aspect of politic, economic and social. For instance, my senior associate have prepared the Q&A sheet about the question that might be asked by media such as price hike of petrol and the upcoming plan of the 100 petrol station outlet of  Caltex before the event. This Chevron event has given me a golden opportunity to gain experience of organizing a product and press conference. I hope I can attend more events like this in future.

Official launching ceremony of Caltex Journey loyalty card.

Reporter register at the media registration counter upon arrive.

Press conference after the loyalty card launched by Mr.Jeremy Oh, Country Chairmain of Chevron Malaysia and Mr.Gary Yeoh, Director of Loyalty Sdn Bhd.

Introductory video of Caltex Journey Card was showing during the launching.

Lim Min Yuan

Curtin Sarawak

15625074 / 7E0B7821

Ring~ Ring~ Media is PR best friend

In the past few weeks I have grown significantly in respect to media monitoring, newspaper clippings and monthly report. Now is the time for me to step up and do something that is much more challenging so far in my internship.  As such my supervisor acknowledged this and began to make me involve in more significant media relations tasks such as media calls and meeting up with media for discussion. Media relation is one of the important work tasks of public relations consultant which is to primarily facilitate the communication between the client organizations and media. Therefore, public relations consultant must work collaboratively with journalists and editors to build positive long term relationship with media by regularly keeping them abreast on what is going on with client organization and giving them accurate newsworthy information in order to generate positive editorial coverage of your client organization, product and person in press, broadcast and internet.

The days of my involvement in these tasks finally let me to the moment when my supervisor requested me to call the media. At that moment I did feel a sense of nervousness as it is after all my first media call at H&K. Did anyone here feel the same as me during your internship? Anyways I did finally managed collect myself and remain calm as I realized that it was a very good opportunity to get to know further in depth of how people in the industry actually interact.

Before calling the media, I must prepare a list that consists of the latest contact number of various local media outlet. Different people have their different way of working, so I always have a small habit that writing up a script about what would I going to say or ask during media call. This script can ensure myself communicate well and confidently with the journalists during the media call by asking them the right question and giving them the accurate information to avoid any confusion in the phone. The press and broadcast media outlets have various editorial desks such as news, business, automobile, health, metro and others. Therefore, we need to specify clearly which desk we want to find when calling up to the main operator line of the media.  Normally I will make twenty to thirty media call in a day for checking whether they receive the media invitation, the publication date of our client press releases or attendance confirmation (RSVP) of journalist for cover up the client events. The best time to make media call for checking up whether they would send reporter to cover the event is around 5.30pm-7pm on the last day before the actual day of event. Before that, I don’t know which publishing company own which newspaper. But after making media call, I have  found out that News Straits Times, Berita Harian and Harian Metro are the press all under a same publishing company which is New Straits Times Press (NSTP) that owned by Media Prima Company.

The three key messages that must be disseminated during the media call for inviting them to cover the event is the date of the event, the title and the company name of the launching event and also must inform them if any big gun like minister or famous artist would be attend the event to attract the journalist to cover the news. Besides that, I also call up some of the online media like Driving Motion, Mekanika and Autofreaks for enquiries about their media rate card and readership of the website. Rate card is a document that shows the prices, news values and description of various advertorial and editorial news placements of the media. It is a very useful and important reference source for the PR consultant to calculate the PR value and news values of the client media coverage. I am so lucky that I got the chance to meet Mr. Leonard Wong, Assistant Manager of Advertising Sales and Marketing from Big Oranges Media for discuss further details about their rate card and advertorial sales. We also had a small conversation about the brief overview of current operation and readership trend of print and online media in media industry Malaysia.

It is a rate card for The Star Online (Rate Card 2014). Sources from: http://adrates.thestar.com.my/page01_welcome.asp

In my opinion, a few tips that can ensure a smooth and pleasurable media call is identify yourself clearly like you calling on behalf of client or your PR firm, contact with the right person or editorial desk who in-charge the news issue, straight to the topic, giving a clear and precise information, and speaking in a moderate loud and polite tone.  During media call, normally I will speak in Malay, Mandarin and English accordingly to the main language of the media. For example, I will speak Mandarin whenever I call to Sin Chew Jit Poh and Oriental Daily. This action can make the media feel the friendliness and honesty of us in working line. This eventually also can improve the relationship between the organization and media as well as my communication skill.

Lim Min Yuan
Curtin Sarawak
15625074 / 7E0B7821

Be alert of surrounding, it might affect YOU!

It has been two weeks here in Hill & Knowlton Strategies. I am starting to adapt to the busy working life in KL city by waking up early every single morning and squeezing into a crowded LRT in order to get to work on time. This is probably the first aspect of working life that you would experience after university stage & once you start working for a paycheck.

Now let’s talk more about what I learnt from H&K. Before starting to handle any PR report, I did a comprehensive research on all of the company’s portfolio of clients and their current business activities. Why am I doing this? This is because the most basic & important requirement as a public relations consultant is understanding and analyzing your customer’s needs and  wants, which would become your single most reliant tool to make the right decision and advise your client accordingly using a suitable communication plan for their business. Therefore it is crucial to be alert of the surroundings and the changes in client business activities as it will directly impact their organization.

In the case of H&K, they practice having an updated database of the entire client’s media coverage. To do this, my company prepares monthly report and I have been assisting my supervisor in two monthly reports for our two main clients; Maxis and Sony. This PR monthly report mainly will tabulate and evaluate all the media coverage of the Maxis, Sony and also their competitor’s news stories each month. Our company has subscribed a service of news monitoring system which is provided by Nama News and Ads Monitoring Agency that tracks all the news stories of the newspapers and magazines in Malaysia.  This can ensure that we don’t leave out any of our client news stories and it makes the process of monitoring easier.

Following is the official website of nama media monitoring that consist the coverage of national media outlets. Click in and take a look  http://www.namaasia.com/aboutus/ .

All the news stories will be extracted into the Microsoft Excel files and then the news coverage will be categorized into competitor and main client tab. This is the moment that I can polish up my Microsoft Excel skill since all these time I just only using Microsoft Word and PowerPoint during studying. All the PR value of news articles will be calculated accordingly with its media publication rate card which specifies the amount of news values based on various size, length and placement of stories. Even though both reports are only submitted on every end of the month, we still need to do it as weekly task to ensure the quality of work and punctuality of work submission. 

Online coverage monitoring also needs to be included in the report as well. Therefore, every day I must monitor the online media coverage on several target websites or blogs such as Lowyat.NET, SoyaCincau and Malaysian Wireless by using internet searching tool or what we usually calls as ‘Google-ing’. The most interesting part during the process of calculating the PR values of online coverage is using our hand to calculate it. In addition, we also need to identify certain relevant words that are mentioned in the article & event activities and also decide the news tonality. This is the crucial part that requires me to always keep myself updated about our client’s latest activities or their industry news on their official company media portals. For example, I knew that Maxis recently launched some Christmas promotion for mobile data package and introduced the new Hotlink 4G Internet plan, so I can easily & accurately name out the event activities as well as list out the spokesperson who in-charge of the event and decide the news tonality as a positive coverage without any hesitation whenever I found the related news stories.  

This picture shows how to measure the PR value of online news coverage. One span of the hand is equal to one page of news story.

Sometimes I might feel a little bit bored of doing monthly report, but from doing so I have realized that monthly report not only can let the client know of the portrayal of organization’s image in media outlets and it also can be a minor analysis report in guiding the public relations consultant to analyze the current business trend in certain sectors such as telecommunication, automotive and consumer technology from time to time. Eventually better understanding of business trend can boost the company revenue and improve business communication strategy. By reading hundreds of industry news per day while doing monthly report have broaden my mind in various aspect such as politic, global economic, foreign affairs and social change which is will be the most crucial lesson from my internship at Hills & Knowlton.

Lim Min Yuan
Curtin Sarawak
15625074 / 7E0B7821

First Chapter of PR Life

Today is the first day of my two months internship placement in Hill+Knowlton Strategies Malaysia. It is a famous international public relations consultancy firm under its parent company WPP, a well known British multinational advertising company. My internship journey began with these three questions:

• What do you know about PR
•   How do you find out about our company
•  Why you choose our company 

These are the most common questions your supervisor or managing director might ask you on your first day or interview session. As for me I got to know this company from one of the famous ethic case study in the lecture slide at Curtin. The other two questions seeks to understand your knowledge in PR and pitching skills; after successfully getting shortlisted from a vast pool of potential candidate, my internship finally took off today.

On the first day morning, my supervisor brought me around the department and introduced me to all the staff in the company. The new working environment has its own unique working system and style. Soon after the tour a friendly human resource staff briefed me on the operation system of computers and working rules & regulation. My company has its own online messenger which operates under Microsoft Lync and everybody called it as OCS which is the acronym of Office Communication System. I observed that all staffs depend heavily on it as it provides easy access for working conversation between the colleagues anytime and occasionally used to carry out project discussion smoothly without wasting time.   Every staffs need to achieve a minimum eight working hours per day. Therefore, the company has a clock-in system to calculate the billable and non-billable hours of account by filling up a timesheet for tracking the hours spent in a day. This system can boost the productivity of project & ensure that it is done on time while assisting efficient project planning. Eventually, this has made me think of account management theory which mainly talks about the operational pattern of PR consultancies work, economic of consulting, capacity management and utilization, payment system and business development.

Newspaper monitoring is one of the ‘MUST’ do things every morning as it is a priority to monitor and keep media clippings of any news stories which is related to our client. Normally I don’t have the habit of reading newspaper, but this job made come out of my comfort zone by giving me the opportunity to read all the total 17 copies of main three languages of newspaper in Malay, Mandarin and English in Malaysia. This task enlightened me further on the publishing pattern of each media, respective news placement and their publishing scope. Throughout the newspaper monitoring process, I got to know of the circulation and readership details of each media. One of the unexpected facts that I learned at Hill+Knowlton is the Harian Metro is the biggest press media in Malaysia which has the largest circulation and readership. Such facts are crucial for us in order to target media effectively when we want to publish any specific client press releases to the right medium by aiming for a large readership base.

Since I have the capability of reading Mandarin, my supervisor has assigned me to monitor all the Chinese newspaper and magazines. Apart from that I am also assigned to help my colleagues and senior associates to translate the Mandarin news into English for clients & for our own documenting needs. During the media monitoring task, the client news on the newspaper will need to be cut out and made into a media clipping for the client to easily observe their current situation of business on the mainstream media. This also acts as a guideline to monitor the public sphere reaction towards the organization which in turn can assist the consultants in effectively analyzing the current trend of client business and enable them to provide ideas of improving corporate communication in business world. Besides that, news updates of government regulatory system and technology changes could easily affect the client business operation. For instances, our company have kept the clippings of many news about the announcement of National Automotive Policy (NAP) 2014 which can affect the automotive business of our client, like Ford. Moreover, media clippings must be scanned in a softcopy form and send out to client through email at 11am sharp on a daily basis in order to keep them alert constantly about their corporate news. Throughout the process I had to learn how to use the Microsoft Office Picture Manager which is new software for me; it was deemed important as Hill+Knowlton required me to edit the media clippings articles & photos so that the final presentation form looks professionally neat and readable.

Lim Min Yuan
Curtin Sarawak
15625074 / 7E0B7821