“An ounce of practice”

“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching…”

-Mahatma Gandhi

During the next few days I put to practice everything I had been observing such as scouting for relevant news about clients, arranging them in a pre-designed format, scanning and making coverage dockets. I also had a chance to do translations, which was not an easy task initially; however I got the hang of it towards the last few press clippings. I was given a task by Saji Sir to make a press release for Pepper Trails, which is a tourism venture that focuses on culinary tourism and promotion of Kerala culture for inbound travelers.

As a boss, Saji Sir has been very thoughtful and considerate in terms of helping me produce a decent final report for my Internship.  He gives me an opportunity to work with extra press releases, media plans, presentation slides etc., so that I can showcase the work I did during my internship, which would definitely earn me more scores in my course.

It’s a totally different world from what I had imagined and I’m looking forward to the rest of the tasks coming my way.

In practice…

It may seem quite unreal when I say this but Respublica Consulting was exactly the way I had imagined it. The spacious working environment, limited but well synchronized, friendly staff, high connectivity and a good rapport with clients and other organizations. After this I met my boss, Saji Varghese with whom I had a little chat about what my expectations as a PR intern were and what I would like to achieve over the one-month period. He advised me on certain areas I could focus on that could be relevant for my report and internship experience.

Media monitoring and coverage tracking are some of the routine tasks that are done on a daily basis here. Every morning a staff goes through the newspapers and collects news about clients. Respublica is connected with companies such as BMW and also analyze their current position with their consumers, media and other publics.

Another team member, Joy, makes cuttings of news clips related to Respublica’s clients from all the national and regional dailies. This is sent to corporate clients and network clients that ResPublica works with. They also showed me how translations from the regional language to English are done before the press coverage is sent.

I was slowly learning the ropes and telling myself to wait and watch.

– Sruthi

Life as an Intern at ResPublica: Day 1

As a final year Public Relations student of Curtin University Sarawak Malaysia, it is mandatory for me to do an internship to complete my Bachelors degree. When I got my CV accepted at Respublica Consulting I was excited and thrilled! It was going to be my first experience in the professional world and I had already constructed expectations and imaginations on how this working experience would be. There was no lag or delay in terms of contacting them and vice versa. Everything moved smooth and fast! I was extremely ecstatic about the fact that I was finally going to put my Public Relations textbook theories and lecture slides into practise and deal with Public Relations in the real world.

I was welcomed into the office by Ann Mary who works as an Account Manager. She was also the person who I was contacting since the initial days of getting in touch with this consultancy. Ann was quite friendly and this put me at ease. She spoke about the working environment here and told me to be casual and free. She gave me a sense of confidence and I experienced a huge relief. Unlike other PR consultancies or agencies there is no strict dress code or uniforms. Just like the environment here, the key to attire is to keep it casual and modest.

And so, my first day went well, all my nervousness had been cast aside and I couldn’t wait to see what was in store for me during the rest of my time here.

– Sruthi