Happy Birthday, Mauritius! – “Celebrating our diversity the Blast Way”

                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                  Courtesy of Blast

Hello aspiring PR Professionals,


I know, it’s been a while since the last time I’ve posted something on the PR 393 Reflective Blog and I'm truly sorry about the delay but I was hoping I could make up for the it with this vibrant post. So today, I’m going to share an incredible experience with you: the celebrations of Independence Day at Blast Communications. For those who don’t know, we were celebrating the 45^th anniversary of Mauritius this year and because the 12^th March, which marks that occasion is a public holiday, the Blast team has chosen to observe this event on the 8^th March instead.

Luckily, I have been able to participate in this glorious event that created a very spirited and fun atmosphere at Blast Communications and I was truly mesmerized when I saw all of my colleagues play a part in this event. To put it in PR terms, it was basically an internal campaign which took place for a few days. It first started with the design team proposing a few visuals for an advert of Blast Communications to show its patriotic pride to the public. Brainstorming sessions were carried out so that everyone could agree on a visual and the tagline that would accompany it. After that, my colleague Emilie, PR Executive, negotiated with specific media outlets to have the advert placed in their newspapers at an affordable price. Of course, we had a very limited budget allocated for the placement of these adverts.  

Moreover, a list of activities on the 8^th March has been devised by the PR Think Tank to mark this event by involving everyone at Blast Communications. They are:

- Lunch served with typical dishes of the different communities in Mauritius (entrée: Chinese and main course: creole etc...)

- Handkerchiefs for lunch decorated with Mauritian flag ribbon and all desks adorned with a miniature Mauritian flag.

- All Blast employees wearing personalized t-shirts (black as the background color with the logo and the chosen tagline “Celebrating our diversity”) and a badge of the Mauritian flag.

- A photograph of the Blast team forming the number 45, taken from the roof – photograph which will be used on the website, Facebook page, E-newsletter and also on an e-card which will be sent to all Blast’s clients and partners.

- Launch quizzes/guessing games also known as “Sirandanes” (which forms part of our Mauritian culture and tradition) throughout the day and a winner will be announced in the afternoon.

- Have all Blast employees plaster their handprints on a canvas board to make a four-colour chef-d’oeuvre (using acrylic paint of the four different colours of the Mauritian flag: Red, Blue, Yellow and Green)

All of the above mentioned activities have been successfully put into place, with the help of every Blast employee. On that eventful day, everyone wore the same personalized t-shirt at work, thanks to the designers, Kim and Ritesh who came up with the t-shirt’s artwork and to the event coordinator, Diane who ordered the t-shirts and had them ready for that day. Lunch which was taken care of by the administration was really delicious and it was an opportunity for everyone to joke around and get to know each other more. 


Moreover, it was nice to see everyone get their hands dirty with paint and sing the national anthem, just like school children. Eventually, the winner of the “sirandanes” turned out to be Valérie who works in the media monitoring department; she practically guessed most of the answers before everyone else and earned a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates as prize, which she generously shared with everyone. Lastly, the Managing director, Mrs Aisha Allee-Mosaheb was really pleased with the outcome of this internal campaign and she congratulated everyone for their part in it and for planning everything in so little time.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this post because I’ve actually enjoyed recounting that experience with you. If you have any questions concerning my internship, please feel free to leave a comment on any of my posts and I shall get back to you shortly :)

Best Regards,

Houmaira Ramjaun

15102108

CTI, Mauritius

The importance (and fun) of internal Public Relations

Name: Christoph
Campus: LUCT

Internal Public Relations, the way an organization communicates with its employees, is one of the most important yet often neglected aspects of Public Relations, as we already learned through the previous PR modules in university. 

So how does a PR agency itself handle internal public relations? For my placement at Maisberger PR agency I can say that the company is very well aware of the importance of employee communications and engages in a lot of activities to keep their employees satisfied and ‘happy’.

The first day I joined Maisberger started with a ‘lunch meeting’. This lunch meeting is a weekly activity at Maisberger, where all employees come together and discuss about a current issue, for example about a new client acquisition, about a current PR project the company is doing or just about any topic that is important for PR work in general or the company's work in particular. Because the employees ‘sacrifice’ their lunch time and stay in the office for the lunch meeting, the company provides lunch for everyone. 

Each week, one or more employees of the Maisberger team will prepare the lunch meeting and present ‘their topic’. In the eight weeks I was there, topics ranged from the creation & development process of a new client's website or the strategy behind a social media campaign to the topic of how to pitch to clients in a self-confident way and the presentation of a research study about the upcoming PR trends. 

But more than learning about a lot of interesting things that are useful for your PR work, the weekly lunch meeting was also a great opportunity to get to know my colleagues. As I also mentioned in my previous post, a good working climate and good understanding between colleagues is very important as it helps you to be confident and happy with your own work. Being included in the team from day one made me much more confident in my work and encouraged me to rather ask questions when I faced some difficulties instead of losing confidence and just giving up.

A highlight each year for the whole team is the Maisberger Christmas staff party. I was very lucky to do my internship during this time and was invited to join the staff for the Christmas party, which I felt was really nice from the company since I just joined them as intern. Every year, someone from the Maisberger management team is organizing a surprise Christmas trip for the whole staff. Only the management team knows what place we go to, the rest of the team just gets informed about what things to bring with them and what kind of clothes to wear. This created a very exciting atmosphere in the weeks before the trip, where everyone was speculating about where the trip this year would go.

And this year’s trip was an overnight excursion into the Bavarian mountains near the Austrian border. We had to climb up a hill for about 45 mins in the light of the torches to reach a small idyllic hotel with a beautiful panoramic view of the Alps. Here we had a delicious 3-course dinner, a great entertainment program with traditional Bavarian music and much more. This was a great opportunity to get to know more about my colleagues and it was a lot of fun to spend some time together in a very relaxed atmosphere. 

Below you can find some pictures from the Christmas celebration. It is also tradition that all new employees, trainees as well as the intern ;-) , have to do some entertaining performance for the team. This year, the ‘new ones’ had to dress as Santa Claus (all women) respectively angels (all guys) and sing some popular Christmas songs in a special version for Maisberger. After being a bit worried about my performance, it was actually a lot of fun, as you hopefully can see from the pictures.

So from my point of view, my internship company Maisberger is truly committed to satisfy their employee's needs and can be a leading example for great employee communications. 

What about your placement, did you also feel welcome from the first day or was it more hard for you to adapt to your new environment? Do you also think that internal Public Relations is extremely important for any organization?

Our hotel for the night

                                  The peformance of the 'new ones' dressed as Santa Claus / Angels 

                                                                   (I am 5th from right)

                                         Entertainment program with traditional Bavarian Music