This blog was written by Naomi, Influence Matters Account Executive after her first press conference.
Today I want to say something about the first important PR event in my life, to share with you the memorable experience and to mark down my feelings. I joined Influence Matters, a tech PR agency in Beijing, China, in January, 2016, entering into PR industry, and nearly two months later I supported my team to organize and handle a press conference for one of our clients, my first PR event.
The client is a French semiconductor company called Soitec who wanted to promote its FD-SOI technology and expand its ecosystem in China. The difficulty of this project is that the semiconductor industry in China is quite cautious and even a bit skeptical about FD-SOI technology’s development despite the technology and the ecosystem being both mature now and ready for mass production, but we were confident to achieve a better understanding for the media with our solid PR strategy. That’s why we won this project. This is the first project that Influence Matters founder Simon and account manager Lucie briefed me about on my first day in Influence Matters, but honestly, I had no idea, at first, about event organization or any technical background of semiconductor industry. In order to get familiar with this client as soon as possible, I spent some time on reading over all the relevant websites and previous press material about Soitec and FD-SOI technology, which was also the fastest way to put me into motion. After Chinese New Year, we had a conference call with the client to get into more details and then finalized the action plan. All of the prep work, including media invitation, venue booking, press kit localization, and material purchase, were fresh and meaningful to me. I’ve learned a lot during this period: How to control the time line, how to pitch the media, how to choose the best vendor within the given budget, how to prepare press material and the most important thing — communicate with the client closely and put their needs as a priority.
The event day arrived soon. It is amazing that everything was getting smooth in spite of how messy things seemed a week ago. The event was successful as we expected, at the end of the event the client hugged us and told us how happy she was and will looking forward to future cooperation. I felt awesome, this is what I believe we call the sense of achievement.
After the event, we followed up with the media to discuss with them about the event, FD-SOI technology and Soitec to gain useful feedback for the client. We also closely monitored published articles and issued an overall media monitoring report. Different types of media have different tendencies towards the event, which can be clearly seen on the published articles. For example, we invited 17 trade media for the press conference and 3 business media for one-one interview. As a result, trade media focus more on the company and technology’s future in China, while business media care more about the investment information and financial news behind. Altogether, there are 21 articles published from our invited media and 138 reprints monitored from both online, print and social media platforms like WeChat, all in a good tone about FD-SOI technology and Soitec, making the client very satisfied with the final results.
When I was asked about the motivation for joining Influence Matters on the interview day, I told Simon that I was chasing the sense of involvement and achievement, as well as the passion for what I work for. I am happy that I am enjoying it now. Lucie said what I look reminds her of her first event, and no doubt that the first PR event is essential to each PRer. I am lucky to have such a different feeling, and I hope I can keep this passion and love even as a continue gaining more experience in the future.
