Communication

Public Relations is important in enhancing relationships between an organization and its key publics.  At Jo’ish Concepts effective communication was very crucial as communication skills are central to promoting excellence within the business.

The audience has to receive the right information at the right time; in order to make sure that the information reaches the key publics we used different tools, including press releases, advertisements, event website e.tc.

The best strategy that the organization adopted was to involve departments including marketing and advertising to work together.  The secret to successful event is to start within the organization. Internal communication plays a major role in the decision making especially when some changes have to be made on event proposals.

In order to overcome language barrier within the staff, the organization made an effort to hire an English tutor because most of the staff did not understand English language.  This made it easy for the multicultural community of Jo’ish concepts especially for me as an African as I couldn’t speak any of the three languages in Malaysia including Bahasa Malayu, Mandrin and Tamil. The organization took oral communication skills very important, as every individual had to present on the outcomes of their meetings with sponsors and at times conduct some meetings. It is clearly stated during interviews that oral communication skills and having confidence are very important within the organization.

 Eventhough there was no PR at Jo’ish Concepts the organization understood that there had to be a win-win situation. They adopted to use TWO-WAY SYMMETRICAL model of communication. They did not give information and did nothing afterwards they responded to the e-mails, forwarded necessary documents to the sponsors.

THE ISSUE OF ETHICS TODAY

Ethics is a common term often used in PR, that is to say today organizations are striving to get the meaning of what is right and wrong and the only ability to differentiate that is through understanding code of ethics. For the organization to be competitive and be more recognized it has to be driven by ethical values and for it to prosper it has to abide by code of ethics. Ethics could bring long lasting relations between an organization and its staff as well as its key publics.

Public Relations practitioners help in maintaining and establishing mutual lines of communication between organization and its key publics. PR involves management of problems or issues and it uses ethical communication as its tool to build relationship between an organization and its key publics.  Despite the effort of implementing ethical codes, the public still view PR practitioners as spin doctors; they associate pr with unethical practices that include: giving out misleading information on products, failure to give information especially during crises, giving false information in news releases e.t.c.. It can be argued that the perception that the public still hold about PR is caused by what happened in the early years of the profession and this prevents the society to see the revolution that has been taking place recently.

To my experience when working with jo’ish concepts i will say that organisations have started to take the issue of ethical practices into consideration.  Like other organizations Jo’ish Concepts have created and pasted acceptable ethical codes within the work place and when ever somebody is believed to have behaved unethically they issue is addressed during morning meetings or afternoon meetings. Addressing unacceptable behavior during meetings is a strategy that  jo’ish concepts believes helps highlight seriousness in behaving in an acceptable behavior within and outside the organization especially that the organization is new therefore striving at  building a good image in order to get loyalty from its sponsors and key publics.

 The fact that pr is associated with unethical behaviors does not give people an opportunity to label the profession as unethical and neither should it give pr professionals mentality that they should manipulate and mislead people.

The discussion today is... Do you think that ETHICS exist in the context of PUBLIC RELATIONS or the profession is all about manipulation, persuasion and propaganda? Relate the answers to your experiences during internship.

WHATS IN STORE IN THE FIELD OF PR

Hi! Everyone before I can post anything I will like to apologize for the delay and an inconvenience to all those who have been waiting anxiously to hear of my experiences during internship.  The truth is I just received my blog invitation and I hope you all understand and will take part in the discussion.

It is so unbelievable that even in this era where PR strategies and tactics have proven to have contributed to the success of most organizations there is still an organization out there without a PR department. It is an honor having worked with Jo’ish Concepts an event creating organisation  but at times as an intern it was demoralizing not to have a qualified PR practitioner to guide you through your work.

As painful as it always seem when told to reference when doing assignments, it is sad to know that doing research and referencing does not only apply in school but it is a daily routine in the industry.  The first thing in the field I was introduced to was an event proposal that I was to be working on throughout my stay with Jo’ish Concepts. Immediately after understanding the whole concept of the proposal research on the culture of the targeted minority group of the Indians in Malaysia became my daily routine. Basically for the first two weeks there was nothing much to do except getting to understand the event proposal and doing research on the events and the place its self BRICKFIELDS LITTLE INDIA