Behind the scenes Contributors’ Page
Mela de los Reyes She is known by friends to be a frustrated doctor, and still hangs on the hope of being one someday. She is fascinated by the wonders of science, as well as the psyche of people. Loves life, and lives it to the fullest.
Agatha dela Cuesta S h e i s a 3 r d y e a r O rg a n i z a t i o n a l Communication student whose goal in life is to travel, get lost and find herself. She likes listening to different genres of music depending on her mood. She is fond of snail mail and values it. She is truly a very quiet person despite having the talkative nature. She loves Milk Teas and surprises. She hopes to go to London, UK before turning 25 years old.
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Jei Saludares Frustrated singer-slash-guitarist. Nature lover. She loves out-of-this-world type of conversations. Once dreamed of becoming a bully. Milk tea is her water. Her life goal is to travel around the world.
Zeus Taller He is just a simple person with a simple aspiration in life - to be the CEO of an international company or to win a Nobel Prize. He loves to observe people and to formulate theories behind everything. He loves music, photography and food especially exotic food.
Pixy Umali Pixy likes to believe she’s an old soul, and she prefers to live in, perhaps, the 1940’s. She dreams of that day when she’ll do nothing but just sit on her front porch -old but happy, all mundane tasks done and over with- and play scrabble with whoever’s going to be with her.
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PR 101:
PR expert Kane Errol Choa shares his story on how to become successful in Public Relations BY PIXY CAMILLE UMALI
He is ABS-CBN Head of Corporate Affairs and Public Relations (PR), and a Broadcasting Professor at University of Santo Tomas (UST). Knowing the latter gave us the thought that he understands us, students, and the reason why we have to interview him. We went to ABS-CBN not knowing what to expect but the simple assurance that he is kind –the fact that he replied to our request, and despite coming up with a 7
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sudden meeting at 2pm on Wednesday, the day and time of our interview, he texted and asked if moving it to a later time would still fit our schedule. The last thing we wanted was for him to cancel the arranged interview, but we had so much faith that he wouldn’t. He was one of those people who, you know, wouldn’t let anyone down once he already said he is going to do something.
We waited at Corporate Communications Division’s lobby trying to figure out how we’ll go about our first meeting with him. He then came, asked if we were the students who are going to interview him, and let us in. He was warm and accommodating. He apologized for his small office, and laughed at that fact, making us all feel more welcome. As we introduced ourselves individually, he handed us his calling card and his short profile. After a couple of minutes of small talk, he said “Shoot! What do you wanna ask?” thus, giving us the cue that we could start the interview.
ON PUBLIC RELATIONS “Public Relations is management of information. When I say management of information, it means that you are faced with several things that you need to communicate. How do you manage that information to make sure that it gets to the people you intend to speak to and they will understand in the same context, in the same manner, in the same way you’d like to communicate to them? Remember, all of us are heterogeneous. People don’t think alike. People interpret things differently. We [ABS-CBN]
have a heterogeneous audience that is active –they are capable of thinking and interpreting. So for me, Public Relations is management of information to get the message across to your intended audiences, and that entails a lot of things to make it happen.”
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“Public Relations is management of information to get the message across to your intended audiences, and that entails a lot of things to make it happen.” THE ROLE OF PR IN THE ORGANIZATION Public Relations is important because it handles the company’s image and reputation. “In any company, you need public relations. Public Relations handles the internal and external communications. Internal, you talk to the people; they are your brand ambassadors. External, you talk to the public. You have to maintain good relations with the community, with your stakeholders.” In ABS-CBN, the public relations is under the Corporate Communications Division, it’s an independent division. The Head of Corporate Communications is Bong Osorio, and he reports directly to the President.
COMPARING PR and ADVERTISING “It [Public Relations] is part of the marketing mix.” While advertising is hard sell, and is about telling people 9
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through advertisements which better brand to buy, or which products to try, PR is soft sell and acts through the word of mouth. “In PR, you go to influencers. You tap journalists and bloggers to try this product maybe, and write about it. [You] invite them to watch this movie in this mall, and write about their experience. It is when you read it, and you say“Oh this respected person loved this movie, it must be good,” you watch it right? You say, “I heard this movie is cool. I read somewhere that this movie is good.” That’s PR. Advertising puts up print ads like, ‘Box office hit, standing room only.’ Maniwala ka o hindi bahala ka na. You know it’s paid. You know it could be a lie. It’s different when you read it on a newspaper or in a blog, you know if something’s good or terrible. It influences, that’s the work of public relations.”
Name: Kane Errol Choa Company: ABS-CBN Corporation Position: Corporate Affairs and Public Relations Director Job Description: Oversees the groups handling the external and internal communications. Education: Obtained an AB Communication Arts degree at University of Santo Tomas, Cum Laude Obtained a Master of Arts degree in Communication at Ateneo de Manila University Obtained a Master of Science degree in Media and Communications and graduated with Merit from The London School of Economics and Political Science in 2005 as a British Chevening Scholar.
ON HIS STARTING YEARS AND PURSUING A CAREER IN PUBLIC RELATIONS Public Relations was not Kane Choa’s first choice as career. After he graduated from high school, he was certain of two things: he wanted to be a Broadcast Journalist or he wanted to enter into Culinary Arts. The latter, however, wasn’t that popular in his time as it is now, so he chose to take up the former. “You at your age, you are so idealistic. You think that you can change the world, right?” Looking back at his younger years, he was reminded of how idealistic he was then, “I thought that being a reporter, that being a journalist, I can change society.” He really wanted to be a reporter; hence, he took up Communication Arts at UST, and initially, pursued a career in Broadcast Journalism.
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Work experience: - Has been in the field of media and communications for 17 years. - Worked as a broadcast journalist for the Associated Broadcasting Company (Channel 5) for three years. - Led the public affairs team of Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago until 2011 - Became a PR writer for Senator Manny Villar until 2004. - Worked as a PR Division Manager at Euro Agatep Associates, Inc. Achievements: He and his group (in ABS-CBN) had entered and won awards from the International Gold Quill, Asia Pacific PR Awards, IABC CEO Excel Awards, Anvil Awards, and the Philippine Quill Awards.
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“I had my internship in Public Relations when I was in college but it wasn’t because I love PR.” Trying to remember the years, “that was in 1993…in the years, 1992 to 1996, the Philippine economy was plagued with brownouts. We were plagued with a power crisis. That means in a day, every day, we had brownouts, hours of brownouts and imagine that we were in school, our classes are from 6am to 9pm, and we were using candles.” Since there were no generators yet from that time, considering that the power crisis was new to Filipinos, he thought that he didn’t want to do his summer internship in a place that had no generator. “So I went to a Hotel. I am in a place where I have an air-conditioning the whole day. So how did I get my internship in a hotel? PR Department.”
During his internship, he had an idea of what it was like to be in Public Relations, as he was able to produce copies of promo in-house posters and press releases that were published in the newspapers. “As a student journalist, my skills as a student writer were put into use. Because in PR –in internship – you are lucky if they entrust you to write press releases, and that’s what happened with me.”
alternative career for most journalists because PR people and journalists work together; they interact. Public Relations people release information through the media, so you get to interact with the media. And then the media, when they need information, they go to the PR people. As a journalist, you understand what the media people like, what the media people dislike, how the journalists work. And that is very crucial in being a He soon became a reporter for Channel 5. PR practitioner.” In his three years of being in the network, he got the chance to interact with a lot of HIS TYPICAL DAY PR people, and when the time came that Kane shared that a typical day at he felt he needed to grow financially, he decided to move to PR. “Two things: first, their office starts by monitoring the media. financially, I think I would earn more “The first thing we do in the morning is in PR. Second, I saw how PR people we read the newspapers and online sites. work, I can do what they were doing and We check what the [people in] media are it is something that I liked and got me talking about ABS-CBN. And even blogs in social media, what do they say about interested eventually.” ABS-CBN? We summarize the items He found that as a journalist, he had an and then send it out to the executives so advantage, and moving to PR wouldn’t they will know if there are any issues require that big of an adjustment for that are needed to be addressed or not. him. “When you become a journalist And then the rest are meetings, planning, you realize that Public Relations is an checking emails, responding to Pixy’s December 2012 • Compass
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request (laughs), and basically planning and executing PR plans.” He works five days a week, eight hours a day, but there are times when he has to stay at the office until 9 in the evening, or bring his work at home. When asked if he still thinks of work when outside the office, “Depende. Kasi if there’s an on-going project, yes. Up to the time when you’re about to sleep and you have that big idea; I put it into my BlackBerry already before I forget.
When you have that idea, that spark –sometimes it comes when you’re taking a bath, when you’re eating, when you’re about to sleep – never lose that, write it down. Those big ideas come at the least expected moments.
“When you have that idea, that spark, never lose that, write it down. Those big ideas come at the least expected moments.” CHALLENGES ON THE JOB Being into PR comes with a lot of challenges, no doubt about it. To Kane, if there is any challenge a PR person must always face, it is having good media relations and being able to respond to the issues that confront the company. “And I guess you have to monitor what your competitors are also doing and make sure that you are not outwitted,” he added. When asked what is the hardest thing he had to deal with, so far, he thought for a moment and simply answered, “wala naman. Though there are small fires 13
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that you have to put out.” He, however, thinks that the most difficult thing he had to manage was Willie Revillame and the issue on Wowowee. “Willie is not popular in the online world. Willie is not popular among the students. Willie’s following are the mothers belonging to the lower social economic class. You go there, they love him. But when you go online, the people hate him. As I say, audiences are heterogeneous. Those who are so vocal are the ones who are not the followers of Willie. So the challenge there is, you know, you cannot convince somebody. Like in any elections, you cannot convert a person. If you hate Villar, you are not going to vote for Villar. If you hate
Noynoy, even if I tell you a hundred times via ads, you will not be converted. The most that you can do is to raise some messages and key points that you want for people to think about. See, I can’t say that my PR plan is I’m gonna convert everyone online to like Willie, ‘cause that’s not gonna happen.”
HIS SUCCESSFUL PR WORKS “If it’s any measurement, it’s winning a Philippine Quill award or an Anvil award for some of the PR programs that we did.” Kane shared one of these programs; the intranet site of ABS-CBN, eFrequency, which contains news, videos, photos, stories and milestones of their employees. The electronic newsletter aims to engage employees inside the company.
back to your goals. You go back to your objectives. Then you can measure now. Say, you want to increase it by five percent, and then you measured it just increased by two percent, then it’s a fail. Go back to your goals. Set your objectives then measure it against your objectives. Then you will know if you fail or succeed.”
“A few years ago, the Philippines was chosen among the three countries in the world to be doing the Deal or No Deal Around the World. They showed in America how Deal or No Deal was played in the Philippines. In other countries, they don’t have the dancing briefcase girls, and [in the Philippines] the audiences would dance and would cheer when there’s a good decision made.” They entered the Public Relations component of that campaign and it won awards. We asked him how he measures the effectiveness of a PR campaign and he emphasized the importance of setting Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely (SMART) goals. “It depends on your goals. You go
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THE BEST AND THE WORST THINGS ABOUT BEING IN THE PR INDUSTRY Being in public relations, or in any business for that matter, has its share of good and bad things. What does Kane think is the best thing about being in the industry? He shares, “you know in media, you get all the perks (laughs). Well, I guess you get to be exposed to many different aspects of the company that you are working for, because you are not just stuck in your division.”
“HIS ADVICE ON THOSE
WHO WANT TO GET INTO PR
“Are you interested?” was the question Kane raised when asked on what advice he can give to aspiring PR practitioners. He pointed the importance of knowing what one really likes, “because if you like what you’re doing, you love what you’re doing, it’s no longer work. It becomes a hobby.” “If you are aspiring to get into Public Relations, I have two pieces of advice, 15
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On the other hand, Kane thinks that the worst thing about being in the industry will have to be dealing with different types of people because you have to have patience to be successful in doing so. “Not all people will like your campaign. There will be haters, there will be fans. And with social media now, you cannot end up like Robert Carabuena or amalayer. There are some people who will pester you; there are some people who will adore your company. You just need to know how to deal with people.”
either you start as a journalist, or you start working at a PR agency. Journalist, because it will give you the advantage of knowing how the media people work, and you get to develop your media contacts. That’s your first important step and that will be the reason why a lot of companies will be pirating you. If you’re a journalist, they will pirate you because you know the people; you know the contacts, and the media. The second is start in PR agencies, because in PR agencies you’ll be handling different accounts, you will be exposed to different industries, different brands. It will widen
your perspectives. It’s not monotonous, the pay initially will be very low, but you know it’s the experience that counts. You have to devote a lot of hard work, and you will be exposed to a lot of people. It will train you to do multitasking. It will expose you to different industries and eventually you will learn which industry
are you interested in; are you interested in a pharmaceutical, are you interested in media, are you interested in telco (Telecommunications), are you interested in consumer brand, are you interested in automobile, real estate; that will help you make that decision.”
“If you like what you’re doing, you love what you’re doing, it’s no longer work. It becomes a hobby.” LESSONS LEARNED Kane has been in the field of media and communications for 17 years. He was very honest admitting that PR wasn’t his first love and hasn’t really grown to love it, but he liked it and he is grateful for this career. He has experienced a lot of things and has carried with him lessons from the years of his work. “When I was working in the senate under Miriam [DefensorSantiago], I would say the greatest lessons that I learned are two things: be resultsoriented, and when you work, never trust anyone to get things done. You have to be accountable.” In ABS-CBN, the greatest lesson he has learned, and the same reason ABS-CBN has been very successful over the years, is the importance of looking at the target audience. He shared that when ABS-CBN creates a program, it doesn’t create it just for the sake of, it looks at
what its audience needs and fulfils it. “You respect the audience. And as PR practitioners, that’s a valuable lesson. When you write a press release, you don’t write it for yourself, you think of your audience. Understand your audience. Understand the media channels. Know what you want to say. Mix them up. Send your message. That is public relations.”
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Magazine Holder
DO-IT-YOURSELF BY AGATHA DELA CUESTA
Hey readers! We are just a page away from the end. So after reading this magazine, where are you going to place it? On a countertop, on a table in front of the sofa, under your bed, or on your dusty bookshelf with all the other magazines and books that you haven’t touched for as long as you can remember? Well, if you don’t have anything to do for the next hour then why not make a DIY Magazine Holder? It’s easy and fun. Plus, you can decorate it any which way you want!
MATERIALS: • Box (any kind, e.g. cereal box, pet food box) • Scissors • Glue • Adhesive Tape • Colorful Wrapping Paper
Estimated Time To Complete:
30 mins 1 hour
STEP 1
Cut the top flaps of the box.
STEP 2
Draw a curve line on one side of the box and cut it out.
STEP 3 Wrap the box with colored papers.
VOILA! A magazine holder that is so easy to make!