Coffee, Tea ... and Interview!

As a PR consultancy, one of the services given by Maverick to its clients is Media Handling Skills—a one-day training on the characteristic on Indonesian media, how to deal with media, how to communicate your messages and get it across, and on top of that: a simulation of one-on-one interview to sharpen several interview techniques. This is exactly what we’ve done for our NGO friends since 2006. Based on references from clients and other NGOs, we invite several NGOs every 1-2 months, to have a free training on the above subject.

Yesterday, we were honored to have Mas Hamid and Mbak Yuni from PIRAC, Mas Aziz from Telapak, and Mas Yudhis from Yayasan Tunas Cendekia in our media handling training for NGOs. As media’s point-of-contact in their organizations, during the training we also had several interview simulations to furthermore boost their confidence and skills in interacting with journalist friends. Turned out, this interview simulation becomes one of the most exciting (or excruciating?) session that day.

Pak Hamid from PIRAC was laughing out loud as he saw his tape on screen, because he found out that he kept on playing with his hands on his lap, and that his chair was swiveling frantically. “I didn’t realize that I actually did that!” he said, giggling. And Mas Yudhis from Tunas Cendekia bursted out laughing in the middle of an interview session, when the question got a bit tough. ”Wow, if this thing happened in an actual interview, probably they will scream: commercials!!!”








After those simulations, we had a lively chat over coffee, tea, and snacks, where the three NGOs started to share their experience in dealing with the media; and asked some questions about the characteristic of the media and its journalists. Since I was conducting this training with Rommy, an ex-journalist himself, the chat became even more interesting! :)

We do hope that yesterday's training could be of use for our NGO friends in their future contacts with media and journalists. And if you happened to know some NGOs that needed help in their communication and PR skills, please do not hesitate to contact us. We’ll be happy to invite you to our Orange House and have another media handling session over coffee and delicious snacks.