7 October 2021

The School of Communication organized the SCOM Talk Series 41 on 7 October 2021.  The co-founder of Start PR, Mr WONG Tsz Kin, Eiswein, was invited to be the guest speaker of the talk to share with SCOM teachers and students his entrepreneurial experience and how he led his PR company to overcome difficulties during the pandemic.

Mr WONG shared that with his experiences accumulated from working in PR companies and operating a production house and selfie studio in his early years, he succeeded in founding his own PR company Start PR in late 2018. He then recounted a few PR campaigns his company organized for its clients during the pandemic, for example, a “Masks Distributing” PR campaign for a local securities company by giving away surgical masks to its existing customers, and also allocating a significant amount of masks for donation to chronic patients, people with disabilities and their carers through social welfare organizations. These cases were used to illustrate how PR tools were employed to increase customers’ loyalty towards the company, enhance business growth and at the same time promote a positive and caring corporate social image, achieving an ideal win-win situation for both the customer and the company’s image. Students were fascinated by Mr WONG’s speech and the different case studies brought new inspiration to students who were interested in joining the PR industry.

He then mentioned that when generating ideas for PR work, he often begins by utilising the six traditional news values, namely timeliness, impact, oddity or conflict, prominence, proximity, and human interest. He pointed out that as the use of digital PR became more prominent due to the limitations induced by the pandemic, timeliness, oddity or conflict, and human interest have become more important when compared with the other three factors.

During the Q&A and chit-chat session, students raised questions eagerly and Mr WONG shared about the difficulties that he encountered when starting a business and his views on the essential traits for PR professionals etc. He encouraged students to participate in internship more actively in order to improve their communication skills, their sense of responsibility and to better equip themselves for challenges ahead in their future careers.