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

Jump Out Of The Book

It is always good to encourage students to undertake internship during their semester break. It provides you an opportunity to jump out of the book, learn from the industry’s expert and have a peek on the real world. I found that in the beginning you might found it difficult to adapt to the workplace as you might feel pressure to work with the expert who are experiences and skilled. However, don’t worry, because you are not the only one. I believe that there are people who are also share the same feelings with you. For example ME. However, when you go through all of these obstacles, it will help you grow better. Working in that environment will always trigger you to proactively in learning fresh knowledge, execute and practice it times and times, so that it get better.

Thaipusam's worship routes

During my internship at Eastern and Oriental Hotel’s Public Relations and Communication Department, my daily job is media clipping, online monitoring, general support and so on. It just like what we had learnt from the university, but are more practical. Monitor on the printed and online media is the things that need to be done by every day. I was assigned to screen all the news, articles, and advertisement that are relevant to the industry. For example, the government policy towards hoteliers, the strategies of other main competitors, transportation situation on festival seasons and others factors that might directly or indirectly influence the hotel industry.

Media clipping collected during internship period

Sometimes I even have the opportunities to participate in media conference, inspection activity, SWOT analysis on public relations’ program and so on. These experiences help me to gain a boarder view on the public relations industry. I had read and learn the words “media conference” or “media tour” from textbook and other journal articles, but after all I realized that I can only and actually learn it when I participate in each of the activities. From these experiences, I learnt that theory is just a theory, but when you involve yourself in these events you can have the chance to have a look on the real life situation as sometimes things can happen. For example, the mismanagement in time will cause kiosk in the media conference. From this incident, you can observe how your colleagues manage on that kind of situation, thus in the future you will be aware of it and gain more confidence in executing on each operation.

I’m very appreciate to have this opportunity to learn from all the expert as it gives me an idea on what is the roles of public relations in hotel industry and how it works. As my supervisor told me don’t be afraid of making mistake, because you are a trainee you have to opportunity (or rights) to make mistake. But after that, we have to learn from the mistake, bear in mind and improve in the future.

Soah Hui Sing

15414748

Miri Campus