Where do we stand?

Hello World!

Just a quick recap;

I am currently doing my internship at a Media and Public Relations Communication Consultancy firm. In my previous post, entitled “Unlearn what you learn!?”, I talked mostly about the gap between what we learned during the course of our studies and what really happens when working in the PR industry.

So back to today’s post!

Recently, I had the opportunity to take part in a conference held for one of the company’s client. The consultancy was in charge of the pre-event communication process with the guests and was also present on the day itself for recording purposes and last minute fine-tuning.

The communication activities included checking if invitation emails had been received, whether the individual had gone through the formalities, and if ever the person was not free, try to find another person who could attend and record the contact details.

On the day of the conference itself, we were present to finalise any last minute issue related to the conference. We also welcomed the guests, ensured that their attendance was recorded and distributed name tags and branded goods.

The main experience I gained from this event was how a consultancy interacts with a client organisation. However, I also realised that the potential and importance of PR may still not be properly understood nor maximised by some firms. The issue is that PR may sometimes be seen as only a tool for one-off/one-way communication and not as a boundary spanner between a company and its public.

Though there’s one important aspect to consider in this particular context, the PR role is being endorsed by an external party and not by an internal department of the client company. Thus, it could have led the client to perceive the consultancy as only a short-term service provider who caters for their immediate needs in regards to this particular conference.

It nevertheless does shed a light on the relationship between a consultancy and its clients. Consultancies do have long-term clients with whom they work on a regular basis and where they act as boundary spanners. However, they also have other clients who may only require their services on singular events or on an as per-need basis.

Thus showing that PR consultancies role may vary and that even though the idealistic role of the PR practitioner is portrayed as being those who create and sustain a relationship between an organisation and its public, in some cases, the practitioner’s role would depend largely on the actual relationship between the organisation and the practitioner, and ultimately what that organisation expects from them.

So that’s it for today.

Hope you enjoyed the post.

Until next time, I wish you the Best!!

Launching of Centre Citoyen du Monde

Hi to you all

For the launching of ‘Centre Citoyens du Monde’ at the National Secretariat of Amnesty in Beau-Bassin, had the honor to have as guests who were present such as the leader of the opposition, one of the minister of the government and a representative of the United Nations Development Programme UNDP. The leader of the opposition the Honorable Paul Raymond Berenger, delivered an enthusiastic speech where he showed his appraisal of the work undertaken since years by Amnesty International. His speech enclosed words which were a real source of motivation for all those devoted to Amnesty.

On the picture from right to left: Paul Berenger, Michel Ahnee and Shakeel Mohamed.

The Minister of Labor, Industrial Relations and Employment, the Honorable Shakeel Ahmed Yousuf Abdul Razack MOHAMED during his speech offered his help for the courses of ‘Global Citizenship and Human Rights’ implemented among the various activities of the centre. These courses promote integrity towards ethical issues in the society and how human rights should be respected. The theoretical aspect of Human Rights is put into practice during these courses in order for citizens to understand their responsibility towards the society. The minister also expressed his satisfaction on the initiative undertaken by Amnesty whereby easy documentation is available to all Mauritian citizens at the center.

The objective of ‘Centre Citoyens du Monde’ is to blossom out the acknowledgement of Mauritians; they must understand the importance of contributing for the society. It is a mutual process of contribution between stakeholders and in the end, everyone benefits from it. A cocktail reception followed after the formalities with all the honorable guests and members of Amnesty. Members of the association could communicate about their perception of the initiative they undertook with the guest honors and voice out the accomplishments of Amnesty for the local community. I have been doing a check list and running schedule and as always been taking pictures which were later used for putting on the facebook profile of AIMS and on local newspapers. Again it was very exciting to be part of such events. There’s the big anniversary coming soon. I’ll keep you updated.

Concert in a College

Hello again,

Organizing a concert is always something exciting and the following post will try to explain to you how I organized a concert within one week. A very hectic week to say with the meeting of the organization board to decide what was the theme of the concert, and the venue. I can modestly say that I suggested the theme of the concert which was ‘Les jeunes chantent les droits humains’ (The youngsters sing human rights) and the venue was decided to be in the hall of the Saint Esprit College in Quatres Bornes, a relatively small hall when you look at it, but we were not expecting more than 300 persons. This concert was organized in order to raise funds for Amnesty International, gain new memberships and be able to show that there are talents within the youth club of Amnesty Mauritius.

I was to come up with a nice picture and to design the poster which would be used. I was also in charge of taking pictures of the concert. I did not do photography as a module, and for me it is a passion. I do not even own a professional camera, but sometimes I do take pictures with my friends’ camera, and I try to learn from them whether it is possible.

So there we are in this hall, after I created an event on facebook about this concert, we could feel the stress of the staff of Amnesty International, but for the artists who were relatively young with an average age of 18, they were at ease. I was expecting much more coverage from the press but I only got response from the local newspaper L’express who made coverage on their website. But the fact that there were no journalists did not discourage the enthusiasm of the artists present. Music ranging from Imagine of John Lennon to Poupee de Cire, Poupee de son from France Gall, the choice of songs did reach all the categories of age of persons there. The young artists during the whole concert had a connection with the public. The concert was expected to last for 3 hours but it went on for four hours, singing, dancing and ending with the local dance the ‘sega typique’ with dancers. I had the opportunity of taking pictures for my first event. I did post some pictures of facebook on the official fan page of the Amnesty. Pictures were also taken for the “Milles Visages contre la peine de mort” campaign of Amnesty International.

It was a really nice experience for me that I hope I will get the opportunity to do it again.

Culture clash and Public Relation.

One of my last activities at Mamba was to work on a pitch for the launching of a new brand of rice in Mauritius. In fact the importing company was a well established one, but even though wanted the help of a communication company to help them introducing the new product. Once the necessary information had been gathered by the company manager and the brief received, all the staff started to work on that specific campaign which was an interesting one.

It was to last for six months, accompanied by a very interesting budget, moreover the challenge was very exciting as a product like rice, a day to day product can hardly be replaced. Thus we realized that a lot of efforts were necessary to make the launching memorable.

After a good briefing with our manager, I started working on some slogans for the rice. Mamba decided to work on a campaign quite close to the European style but at the same time keeping a Mauritian touch to it.

After three weeks of nice team work, the pitch was finally ready. After the presentation, we were all astonished of the comments made by the rice company marketing manager. He really appreciated the work but concluded that this pitch was not made for the Mauritian context. He added that there was too much of European characters in the storyboard for some advertising spots and that event the texts was too close to Europe and that his target market would not be attracted with such facts.

This is where we all realized that Public Relation in Mauritius will take much more time to improve due to the Mauritian habit to stick to culture and to be deep rooted and on the other hand, the world of communication is improving rapidly globally. This event was a rich experience for me. Until that day, I was really thinking that cultural problems like the one stated above was only present in theory.

Sponsorship and Mamba

I have already reached my fifth week at Mamba. Another great issue of Public relations to which I was introduced is sponsorship. In theory, it is mainly the funding of, most of the time, a non-profit organisation or an individual who can be a sports man or an artist.

In practice, sponsorship is really more complex with some aspects which take much more importance when it comes to real life. Personally, I think that in public relations, the "know how" is very important,know how to talk to people, know how to maintain good relationships, much more important than the knowledge of public relations tools or theory when dealing with people in the internal and external working environment.

Coming back to my experience with Mamba, I was asked to accompany the director in a meeting with a client too see how such a meeting is worked out. The issue raised by the client was that the non-profit organisation he was funding had accepted other sponsorship requests and that the amount of sponsors was really too big, thus decreasing the advantages of sponsoring such an institution.

The director of Mamba thus decided to attend the weekly meeting of the non-profit organisation, which was actively organising a dog show. The conclusion was that the dog show's organisors had no sponsorship policies describing among others, the advantage of sponsoring them, how much sponsors there can be and what each sponsor would get in return.

As far as Mamba's client was concerned, the problem which was arising was the lack of visibility. They were offering much more than other sponsors and were getting less public visibility.

Finally, after some discussion with Mamba's director, our client sent a notice letter to the non-profit organisation asking them to establish a clear and concize sponsorship policy or otherwise they would stop funding them. As he was one of the main sponsors, the organisation decided to apply what was proposed in the letter.

My internship at Mamba Ltd.

Hi everybody, I'm Olivier Sénèque, 23 years, student in Mass communication at Charles Telfair Institute. I'm presently doing my last semester and also my internship at Mamba Ltd. Well, Mamba is a communication and marketing company which exists since 2007. The company does a lot of PR but also marketing and advertising.

As usual, the first days were not so hard, as any new trainee, I had to adapt to the daily life of the company. One easing factor is that there are only four employees at Mamba, the managing director, the designer and the marketing assistant. Fortunately, I'm directly followed by the director,as he is the only one dealing with public relations.

Cups of tea, photocopying and filing are still not part of my internship after two weeks at Mamba. One interesting factor about monitoring instead is that I'm not only doing simple press cuttings but searching for low image companies, conveying the message to the marketing assistant, who will contact the spotted company to present the services of Mamba.

More information will come in the next blog.

Good luck guys.