Showing posts with label Publico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Publico. Show all posts

Sunday, May 18, 2014

PR Plan= Marketing Plan or PR Plan ≠ Marketing Plan? That’s the question!


Hola everyone,


My forth post is about my favourite task done during my internship. During my 20 days of internship, the best was kept for the end. I was asked to do a PR plan for Black Energy drink which is in fact a new energy drink in the world. Our client asked my supervisor to prepare a marketing plan as he wanted to launch this product in Mauritius and she gave this task to me. I was very happy as it was something that I have done in class. The only thing was that it had to be a marketing plan. And I was like; ok is it 100% similar to a PR plan? “Do not worry,” my supervisor said. “Just do it like you learnt in class.” I felt very proud of myself. My supervisor was really impressed. She realised that a PR plan is better and more elaborated than a marketing plan. Of course, I needed to add some marketing things in it although I have not done many marketing modules as major. It was a real pleasure to make this plan. While we were talking, I felt very proud while discussing about the plan as this was something I did in class. During my internship I sometimes had some issues with some technical words as I was working in an advertising agency and technical design words were difficult to learn quickly. But when talking about the PR plan I was in my world. I have put what I learnt in class in practice and felt like yes, I admit that I learnt a lot of things during my Public Relations modules. The fact that I was asked to elaborate more on some marketing issues helped me to improve myself. Nowadays many Public Relations officers and marketing offices have to work hand in hand and when learning more about the marketing plan, I realised that we have still something to learn. In addition, this was the first time I have worked on PR plan for a product. We have always worked on clients in class. I just needed to elaborate more on the competitors and on the tactics especially when working with designers. I was asked to precise what kind of billboard advertising I wanted, what type of posters would be suitable for this energy drink product.  Moreover, I had to visit many supermarkets and hypermarkets to analyse the way the product was placed and to comment to it. I was really shocked to see how Black Energy drink which is new to Mauritius, was placed. The first bad image was that dead flies were seen near the product and as everyone would think, it is not the kind of thing we want to see near drinks as if Black Energy drink killed the flies. The second thing is that being new, the product should have been placed in a special way to attract attention and not being placed with the other energy drink. As I have stated in my tactics, Black energy drinks can be displayed in spiral shaped shelves, which turns in circular motion slowly. The shelves can be put in different places in supermarkets, not necessarily in the beverages aisles.  It was a very good experience to work in real life for a real product noting that my PR plan will be viewed by the Black Energy drink committee of Mauritius. Moreover it was a fantastic thing to work on a PR plan along with my designers colleagues who did not hesitate to give ideas in terms of creativity. They did also learnt many things about PR and enjoyed giving ideas especially when their job consists of designing something already thought about. Having their word to say when dealing with the promotion of Black Energy Drink was a really good experience. My internship was beyond shadow of doubt a very good practice where I put what I have learnt in practice and learnt also new things.

Graziella Hippolyte
15806785
Charles Telfair Institute


Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Going twice for a photo shooting session and standing a whole day– this forms part of the job

¡Buenas tardes everyone!

Today I will talk about my photo shooting sessions experience at Publico/Creative. After three weeks of learning about how designers deal with clients for billboard, magasines, business cards, posters, pamphlets or brochures which were really interesting, I was asked to go for photo shooting sessions with our photographer, Robert. I was very happy as I was able to see how things work before the designers edit the pictures. I learnt a lot of things in terms of photography and this can be very helpful. When taking into consideration that Publico/Creative works with different clients at the same time and having only one photographer, learning about photography is an important tool where you can easily go yourself for photo shooting sessions. During my internship, photo shootings sessions were the tasks which I did regularly. At the beginning it was amazing to see the different perspectives of taking a picture. After several days, I was promoted if we can say J, where I was in charge of supervising the photo shooting sessions to ensure that all the products were present. It was like a checklist to be sure that nothing missed. What was painful if I can say, was that we were asked several times to go again for photo shooting sessions as the client wants more pictures. Again, standing a whole day to take more pictures and finally the clients choose only 5 pictures among the 50 shots; this was horrible but it forms part of the job. During those photo shooting sessions, I was able to experience this situation about how the clients themselves are uncertain and the hard job rely on yourself. Anyway, it was a good experience to see the photography world, the different perceptions of taking a picture before the final step.

See ya in the next post guys
Graziella Hippolyte
15806785

Charles Telfair Institute

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Publico Bonjour (part of my internship) Is that PR??



Hello people,

For my second post I will focus on whether picking up the phone is part of PR tasks. This was what I did for 2 days during my third week at Publico. At the beginning, I was like: ok is that PR? I think that it was a very good experience for me. Thinking of PR tasks we tend to think firstly about really big projects and presentations and dealing with the media directly on first occasions. Picking up the phone, transferring calls, taking messages, calling back the clients were really helpful. I think that it is the first step for a communication student. Instead of stepping directly in the public relations world with presentations, client brief and so on, talking via the phone is a good beginning. This can help to have a first approach and contact with the clients, understand more about the relationship between the client and the agency, know about the different issues and how the designers as well as the marketing persons are dealing with them. It gives an overview of how to deal with crisis and can prepare me for a crisis period later on. When transferring the clients’ calls to my supervisor and seeing her dealing with the issues is very interesting. Eventually I will not be able to list the different issues here (confidentiality) as firstly it is about the clients and secondly it concerns some projects which are not completed yet. But what I can say is that picking up the phone is not as boring as others might think. If you think well, it helps you deal with future issues where you can therefore handle them easily as if you have some experiences with the matter. If you think about only sitting and picking up the phone without trying to understand the matter or only transferring calls this will undoubtedly not help. One advice is therefore try to take every task done during an internship very seriously and when analysing it deeply you can see that it really helps.

That’s it for now guys
See you in the next post
Graziella Hippolyte
15806785

The Charles Telfair Institute

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

PR my world- Who said it was easy to find an internship!



Publico/creative

During my first year first semester, I was told that we will be having a PR internship module and my first reaction was Hell Yeah! Time passes and here we are, this is the last line. Searching for an internship was no easy task in fact. I am very glad that we were asked to have an internship as it helped us to enter the real world and to understand how things really are as well as how the procedures are. I did not realise that this could be so difficult. And then I realised what the issue was. In Mauritius many companies either do not know what the PR field consists of or they simply merge PR and HR which I think are undoubtedly two completely different worlds. This is crazy. A human resource manager can do Public Relations tasks but this does not work in the other way. Luckily, the orientation slides really helped me and when sending my curriculum Vitae and my application letter I simply attached the PR tasks which we have seen during the orientation session. The respond from some of the companies where I sent my application was quite quick. I did have some positive responds where I was asked to work in the CSR department of a famous company in Mauritius but unfortunately there was not enough PR tasks to be done within the department. Time passed, it was already the first day of university and again like every assignment or presentation period, I started to stress. And then the miracle came: a call from Publico/Creative. My first day was exceptional. I visited the place and learnt a lot about how the company works which is very essential before starting to work there. My colleagues are wonderful, the atmosphere and the way they work are really amazing. My supervisor explained what will be expected from us (and yes, I am working with a friend from CTI also). My first impression was: the place is wonderful even if it is found in Port Louis, my colleagues and my supervisor are wonderful; yes this will be an amazing experience for me.

See you in the next post,

Graziella HIPPOLYTE
15806785

Charles Telfair Institute