End of my PR journey...or may be not :)

Hi guys, this is going to be my last post here. I want to take this opportunity to wish all my fellow Chinese PR practitioners Happy Chinese New Year! May your year be filled with luck and prosperity!

As promised, I will share a few corporate social responsibility (CSR) events that has been going on in my association, Curtin Sarawak. As a one of the top notch education institution, Curtin Sarawak has been implementing quite a number of CSR projects which bring benefits to its stakeholders and to maintain its long term sustainability.

I believe everyone here is familiar with media and press monitoring. I did the same during my internship too. Remember the amount of newspaper I read everyday? Through my whole internship, I have stacked up three piles of newspapers of my height! Instead of throwing them away, the newspapers will be tied up and sold to the recycle center. Not only that, the money gain from the newspaper recycling will be donated to Red Crescent Society monthly. Isn't it great? By doing so, not only that we can sustain the environment but also we give monetary aids to those in need.

If you think this is it, you are wrong. During the last day of my internship, I have attended Curtin Appreciation Night. The purpose of the event is to show appreciation to local high schools' in supporting in Curtin Sarawak's education welfare. From the presentation of our pr and marketing executive, Ms. Chen, she stated that Curtin has been organising motivational and career talks in local high schools to give students motivation in study and life annually. Besides, activities such as talks about sustainable development, health awareness campaigns and science exhibitions are also conducted for the local high schools students. All the activities conducted are aimed to advocate and promote in youth development. 

Other than that, on last Sunday, Curtin S'wak also collaborated with Sarawak Cancer Society, local enterprises and tourism board in organising an event called "Run for Hope". It is a charity event where the communities are encouraged to participate in either donating in form of monetary or join the marathon to create awareness on cancer. Although it was not part of my duty as a PR practitioner anymore, I still joined in the event along with my friends. It was fun! Plus, the joyous feeling after running for a cause is incredible!

So this is the end of my internship in PR industry. There are more CSR projects advocated by our association but I shall stop here now or this is going to be another long post! Time really flies. It is really hard to believe I learnt that much in such a short time. This internship has given me a lot of insightful experiences that I couldn't get during my study time. It also assured myself that I have made a right choice stepping into this industry. I feel there are so much more to learn and I don't want to stop learning! I am really enthusiastic about my future endeavor in PR industry. This is definitely not an end for me yet!

It's been a great pleasure to share my internship experiences here. Hope you guys enjoy this internship experience as much as I do!

Renee Tiong

Curtin Bentley

15621580

The day has arrived!!!

The stress has filled the room. We started to prepare all the brochures that have to be handed out to all the attendees. Then we went to the hall to set up the bursary awards, reception table and the table for the awards. 

My job was to make sure the food is ready and the reception was assigned with a staff to take the attendance of the award recipients. I also needed to assign a person to make sure the flow of the event was monitored. I then went to label all the seats with the attendees names.

I then went to welcome the press and brought them to their assigned seats. I then went to play some light music and instructed the media where to fix their cameras and then I went to check on the attendees.

Once the attendees arrived, I made sure that all of them sat in their seats and I debriefed them of the sequence of the event. My Supervisor then received the Special guest and came up with the rest of the board members. The event started on time and everything went as per plan.

After the event, everyone went down for food. The event was a success and my supervisor commended me on my input and the success of the event. I am so happy!!      

  

"Hello? Is this the MEDIA?"

The day arrived for me to call the media. Our two main media was the Vasantham News Channel and the Tamil Murasu. We wanted them to cover the event as they are the most popular media that reaches out to all Indians in Singapore.

I was terrified to call them as I thought I will mess it up. So, I carefully drafted out my script before calling them. I practised it over a hundred times before making the call. I asked my supervisor to sit next to me when I made the calls, just  in case I made a mistake I will pass the phone to him.

The call went very smoothly, better than I pictured it. My supervisor said that I did a great job. I felt so good and proud of myself.

Then came the floor plan. I had to draw out the floor plan from scratch within less than an hour as they needed it urgently. I used MS power point to create the floor plan. I made it very colourful and life like so that it will be easy to read by anyone. My fellow colleagues loved it. 

Everything is set... Just awaiting the day of the event! Keeping my fingers crossed!  

Work OFFICIALLY Started!

I thought this would be a breeze. However, it is not so!

Work has started to pile up as there is only a week to the event and there is a lot to do. I have been busy assisting my colleague to write press releases and do media monitoring. Sending emails is an ongoing process.

While doing this I have to create an invite list and I have to send the invites to the students to let them know about the event.

To do list:

- Media Invites
- Confirm the location of the event
- Send reminder to the students
- Create a floor plan for the event
- Confirm the catering

Fair Tradie Project

The Fair Tradie Project is a non-profit building organisation that takes teams of 10 tradies to various locations across the globe. We join forces with established organisations that are doing great work in their local communities. We supply the finances and the tradies for the project and we leave knowing that ongoing support is given through the  local organisation that we work alongside. - http://www.fairtradieproject.webs.com/

And finally I am putting my hand on event and project, currently the Colosoul group events team is now working on the Fair Tradie Project event for 2012, I am experiencing various issue while working with the event, my job basically requires me to edit several designs for tickets, invitations letter and etc. and the problem is I totally have no idea how to use software like Photoshop, therefore i need to learn and find a way to finish my work. It is very time consuming when it comes to editing, in order to finish it earlier i have to purchase a copy of Photoshop so I can do my work while I am away from office. There are several elements that I need to focus on during the editing, due to the fact that the company had decided to re-use the previous design so my work is basically changing the informations on these documents, and these informations must be provided correctly any mistakes might be a big problems for FTP and Colosoul. That's all for now, hopefully i can master my PS skills in time to finish everything before the actual date for invitations. Thanks for reading.  

The Days Prior To An Event

The Days Prior to a Large-scale Event

Dear fellow interns

Last week I introduced you to the place I work (HSBC), and breezed through what happened on my first day in the Communications Department dealing with write-ups and more.

Tonight, the communications team and staff from 7 other branches in Brunei will be assisting in a community event that has statistically recorded over 10,000 sign ups within a blink of an eye (4 weeks to be exact). The event will involve the community to Walk, Run, or Cycle, along different designated routes with the purpose to raise awareness and funds for the children with special needs in Brunei towards a better future and education.  
- HSBC Walk Run Cycle (WRC)


Days prior to the event: 


Aside from the normal work load in the office, our communications team has been busy for the past few months dealing with the media, sponsors, and partners of the event along side with the Corporate Sustainability (CS) team who take cares of the event donations and basically the 'event planner' of WRC.


As the event was nearing, it was important to remind the public about road safety and any anticipated road closures along the routes of WRC. To ensure that the message was reaching our audience, our head of department decided to remind the WRC participants to look out for recent updates of WRC on the newspaper, through sending reminder text messages to the database. The problem arises. How can we guarantee if the media is going to publish our story? The thought of asking people to read the news that wasn't there was daunting. 


One of our colleagues even had to call the media individually to check whether our press release has made the cut to be published on the next day before sending out the text messages. Personally, I think this can only be made possible through a good relationship with the journalists or editor. 


Through the phone calls, one of the newspapers even took the opportunity to highlight that it was only fair to them to publish our stories if HSBC can buy ad spaces from their paper. Lesson learnt by the communications team: Media appreciation luncheons wasn't the most appealing way of thanking our media friends :)

                                      Communications team at the ground of WRC before the event.


Nevertheless, our event is already taking shape and the event will kick start later at 8.00pm.






Xx Jasmine
heading off to WRC...