Mauritian delight

Any communication professional is under the pressure of being respectful and careful with meanings in general, but especially since the CHARLIE Hebdo’s Scandal in January. Although this event clearly spread all over the web, physically it seemed far from Mauritius. But on the contrary, similar communication aspects are ubiquitous on our island and I have experienced this very clearly for the Chinese New Year.

At ARCADIA we were working on promotional posts and setting up a port-folio of posters to publish on special events. It was extremely interesting, we worked on what some target audiences are attracted to in terms of layout displays, catchy colours and power words. I was thrilled. But then came the hard part.

In Mauritius, since we are the most exceptional multicultural society of the Indian Ocean, or as we pretend to be, public relations practitioners have to double efforts in research and creativity to please everyone. This gives Mauritian communication students more perspective and a kind of open-mindedness that is very proper to us I think. As my father would say; that’s our little extra.

One post that I particularly remember is this one:

note: It didn't make it finally, due to some misunderstanding. (the side-effects of a double-holiday working week). Nonetheless, It presented itself with numerous flaws and difficulties, some you wouldn't even imagine were possible: 

1.    50 shades of red

When I drafted the first poster, I used a very dark-blackish red for the fonts and the pictures because they matched better with our logo’s color. But during the first revision of the portfolio I was told that it is disrespectful to use different shades of red for the New Year. An issue that was resolved within minutes.

2.       The drawings that speak Chinese

The Symbol in the middle of the picture was something I found on the web, it means “Fu” which is a way to wish prosperity. And the symbol in bold red are the Chinese translation of “Happy New Year”. Still, since I do not speak Chinese and that web resources are not exactly always accurate, we had to find a way to verify the meanings. And since I am extremely lucky to be surrounded by such a wonderful team, one of our collegues sent the pictures to her friend who spoke fluent Mandarin and validated our post’s content.

3.       It’s Chinese not Chinese

Another Issue was that I initially wrote “kung hei fat choy” instead of “kung shee fat choy”. The Incredible part in this is that both sentences mean the same thing and both are in Chinese, but they speak to two very distinct cultures. Again thanks to my super colleges we found the right meaning once more.

4.       Save the date!

At university holidays mean replacing classes during tuition breaks. So really they’re not that much of a big deal. My mistake again! In Fact we could not post the Chinese New Year Picture on Facebook since two days before that was the Mahashivaratri festival. So in the meantime, the post was forgotten about and it eventually created a big misunderstanding among our team. But nothing that could not be resolved.

5.       4 means death

As for the design, the little clouds would represent travelling and thus personalize our poster for references to holidays and business trips because after all it is a type of promotional tool. But in the beginning I designed four little clouds, and again I was reminded to consider that in Chinese culture the number four was avoided because of death connotations. So the last cloud rolled away in the wind.

Basically, we need to pay attention to every single detail in customizing a communication prop because all audiences do not perceive messages in the same way. Meaning can be surprising at times and our job is to be able to visualize those different perspectives while creating our key messages. It is very enlightening in the way that we are learning more about different cultures by doing what we do and this is the magic of public relations.

Features of a childhood memory

A remembrance of those moments when we were young, hyperactive and enthusiastic about the simple things. Somehow I felt like I was 7 again last week, when we were walking to The Labourdonnais Hotel to monitor our latest conference.What it meant was simple: less planning, more action.Yes people, those surreal things in Events Management, when you get to see the final results of weeks of hard work, do happen.

A souvenir of the day - myself at The Labourdonnais Hotel

Here’s how it went:

As I was comfortably sitting in the office dealing with phone calls and emails, it was time for the last challenge of our current event, the running schedule of the day. This strategic plan of the monitoring of the event is basically 10 % on paper and 90 % sweat. It was an important meeting with the senior management of IBL so we had to be perfect, as always.

I got there quite early; 2 hours before. From there I was allocated to the conference room and we verified the set-up, one important part of this was to get acquainted with the hotel staff (later on it proved to be extremely helpful). Eventually, we saw the trainers and attended to their last minute requests – in this case, to get email address sheets so that they could send the slides to attendants later on (so then we had one attendance form + the email verification sheet at the registration desk): Lesson here – always bring more pens.

Then everything happened all at once:
attendants had arrived 
and the hotel staff were serving them breakfast, 
the trainers were rehearsing on the main room, 
we were collecting attendance 
and verifying e-mails 
while we had to continually inform the attendants of the running schedule of the day.

One skill that I noted in particular was to recognise the attendants. It was important in terms of time because we needed to know their name in order to direct them to their email address on the list (which was NOT in alphabetical order by mistake)

Our pilgrimage continued as everyone entered the conference room. In the mean time, we walked back to our office on John Kennedy Street (which is exactly 600m and 80 steps away). But first we would stop at the IBL House to see our client’s personal assistant for some feedback, we had left the sheets with the hotel staff in case someone would walk in late.

Another 600m/80steps later, we were back at The Labourdonnais, Following the running schedule for 10:45; tea and coffee break. And we left once again, when meeting had started. (Yes, it means cardio session all over again). We went back one more time, after lunch to put the evaluation sheets (training department obliges) at their disposal. And one last time finally after the conference was over to collect the forms.

So from this exciting experience, I understood that in Public Relations, professionals need to be ready for anything. Consequently, a practitioner will need to be able to adapt to all circumstances and have the capacity to process information quickly even if sometimes it means serving the coffee yourself, or staying at the office until 7 p.m waiting for the event to end so as to be reachable at all times.

Still the thrill of your plan finally coming to life and the overcoming of last minute challenges make the hard work worth it. 

What was your first Public Relations Cardio Session?

x

Gaëlle