HIGHER EDUCATION
gets some new options

Wilai Keangpradoo spends her days doing PR work for Advanced Info Service. Last Tuesday night she shared her insights into the business with students at AIBC. INSET: Suvimol Decharkom of Aziam Burson-Marsteller.

Steve Vincent, Aziam Burson-Marsteller

That doesn’t bother him for two reasons. "One is we’re not sharing competitive information and secondly it’s to help raise the overall industry here. And I like teaching," he says.

Vincent is one of a team of top local business professionals who have signed on to lecture at the brand-new Asian Institute of Business and Communication (AIBC). When fully operational in a few months time, the AIBC will offer a wide range of course options, ranging from short courses for young professionals seeking information on specific topics to certificate and diploma programmes in business fields like public relations, event management, internet marketing and hotel management.

This is an ambitious project and to carry it off the AIBC is partnering with a number of educational institutions from both Australia and the United Kingdom. The public relations course Vincent is involved with, for example, is overseen and accredited by the London School of PR & Branding.

In addition, the institute will shortly begin offering courses from the APM Training Institute in Sydney, Australia that will lead to a certificate in marketing and public relations or a diploma in marketing and events management. An international webmasters certificate and a diploma in Internet marketing will be on offer from the British Study Centres of Hove College, Brighton.

Starting this September, AIBC is also partnering with Pathways International to offer certificates and diplomas in hotel management accredited by the Confederation of Tourism Hotel and Catering Management (CTHCM).

Rounding out the initial set of programme offerings will be Oxford Foundation Year Course from the Oxford Media and Business School. This is a nine-month programme designed to prepare students for study at British universities with six months in Thailand and three months at Oxford in England.

The AIBC is located in the Golden Land Building just off Ratchadamri Road in the heart of Bangkok’s business and financial district. Recently the learning post spent several evenings there talking to the staff and observing classes.

Jeremy Rush, AIBC

"We believe we have an interesting concept," says Jeremy Rush, one of AIBC’s founding directors and a long-time public relations professional himself. "It’s about continuing education – or vocational education. The concept is fairly novel to Thailand, but certainly not to Australia or to the United Kingdom," he observes.

"There’s a gravitation towards continuous education because many university graduates don’t quite know what they’re going to do at the end. They may do a B.A. and find that that’s not what they really want or they get a law degree and have no particular job in mind. An increasing number of them then go on to a vocational college to find what they want to do."

Rush and his colleagues at AIBC are also betting that there are significant numbers of local students who will want to begin their post-secondary school education with AIBC.

"Vocational colleges offer the best of both worlds in the sense that you can get a qualification that’s attuned to your need, your job specification, and it also gives you credits, in most cases, to a university degree later on," Rush points out.

Rush readingly admits that attracting secondary school graduates will likely take take time. "I think our biggest challenge lies in convincing a very university attuned community where lots of people think the path to success is getting a university degree. Here, they haven’t moved on in the way they have in the UK in understanding that you don’t actually have to go straight to university. But we do offer a very credible alternative," Rush says.

For the time being, however, Rush believes the professional development courses will likely appeal predominately to people who are already employed in business, particularly those who are looking to upgrade their qualifications or who are seeking a change of employment.

AIBC’s first course, Introduction to Public Relations, began early last month. Conducted on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, it, like many of AIBC’s courses, is a single module of a larger certificate programme. Students can take it as a one-off course or as part of the certificate.

The 22-hour, 11-unit course is taught by a diverse staff including directors of AIBC and top managers from several PR and communications firms. These include Vincent’s Aziam Burson-Marsteller, Weber Shandwick, Creative In-House, Sovereign Associates and Spark Communications.

This time around, Vincent’s topic is strategy and planning, research and target audiences. The basic outline comes from the London School of PR & Branding but he can and does add a great deal of information from his own experience in Thailand and other Asian markets.

"I talk about how to get ready – how to take a 360-degree view of what you’re getting into," Vincent explains. "We do a lot of strategic work in my company where we analyse things thoroughly. We do a lot of research and really think about what we are trying to accomplish by considering various scenarios and their implications.

"The key ultimately comes down to who you’re talking to — your target audience. If you don’t connect with them and motivate them to do something, none of it matters. You might as well spend your money on a good night out on the town," Vincent says.

Vincent’s colleague, Suvimol Decharkom, the firm’s media relations director, covers – appropriately enough – the media relations section of the course. In her two sessions, Ms Suvimol, who has been in the consulting business for ten years, says she covers the various types of media as well as the techniques and format of publicity.

Students will learn how to consider which type of publicity programme best serves their clients’ interests, she says. Ms Suvimol also stresses the importance of understanding media needs and expectations. She says the key lies in creating a proper relationship between the media and public relations.

"They have to achieve mutual benefit – a win-win situation. The media has to do their job in getting news. The PR professionals have to perform their job as well. So if they can understand each other, they will both benefit," she explains.

Peter J. Emblin, Weber Shandwick

Peter Emblin, a Senior Vice-President at Weber Shandwick, is teaching a segment on basic business and finance operations. A banker by training with 11 years experience in Thailand in both banking and corporate PR, he says he is focusing mainly on how to manage a small business – which is typically what PR firms are.

"In a PR company, your biggest asset is your people, so it’s all about managing people and how you allocate people to the right clients," Emblin explains.

"In PR you generally deal directly with the chief executive or the owner of the company, so you can’t afford to put the wrong person on an account at an early stage."

According to Emblin, in Thailand PR is typically viewed as being very mechanical – sending out press releases and organising press conferences. "But the real value added in PR is when you can get into consulting and advisory situations and get away from the mechanics," he stresses.

Emblin says he is happy to contribute his time to the course. "I think it’s always important in a company that you train the next generation of employees. And I think it’s important as a foreign company operating in Thailand that you give back something or else you really have no mandate to be here," he says.

Emblin says one of his colleagues is also teaching a segment of the course and the company will sent 15 employees for training at AIBC as well.

One of the largest groups of students in the first batch of students consists of a team of consumer product market specialists from the Central Marketing Group (CMG). Interestingly, they are not directly from the public relations field.

That is why they are in the class, explains Achara Wisuttiwongrat, CMG’s media manager. All have solid knowledge of advertising, but they know relatively little about public relations.

"As far as advertising is concerned, we have a bible for how to do things. But as for PR, because the field is not as developed here as it is abroad, our methods are quite basic – news releases, press releases, photos and captions, interviews, and so on. We would like new and innovative tools. We would like to expand our understanding of PR," Ms Achara says.

Orapan Thunghatthakarn, left, and Achara Wisuttiwongrat, both of CMG’s Central Trading Co, Ltd., relax before a class.

Orapan Tunghatthakarn who handles Clarins cosmetics for CMG agrees. "I am in marketing and I don’t have a good understanding of PR. I’d like to know more about it."

She says she has been quite satisfied with what she has learned so far. "I think what we learn can be applied to our work. Take making a proposal, for example. We need to know how to clearly define the steps involved and how we will promote the product if we do get a budget.

"Before, we had no clear idea what to do as the first step, the second step and so on," Ms Orapan explains.

The teaching staff also gives the course high marks. "I think it’s a great initiative," says Ms Suvimol. "In the university, I graduated specifically in public relations, but the course structure was very straightforward, very traditional. This course really widens the spectrum of knowledge. It pulls in a lot of lecturers from different industries, so the students can get different points of view," she says.

Vincent is very positive about other AIBC course offerings as well. "We’d always been looking at viable training options for our company and when he (Jeremy Rush) came over and showed us some of the curricula, it resonated with us really strongly," he says.

"There had been an occasional seminar, but pretty spotty, pretty dicey in terms of quality. So after we met and had a talk with Jeremy, we decided this is something we’d like to be involved in," Vincent explains.

Since most of his employees already have one or two university degrees, it will be individual modules, rather than certificate and diploma course, that will be the main attractions.

"It fills gaps," he says. "For example, event management attracted a lot of interest and things like the upcoming course on being a webmaster – a real definite skill that people can add on to what they have already. There was a lot of interest in that. And branding – everybody is always interested in something to do with branding," Vincent observes.

AIBC Managing Director Siriwimol Sithiprasasana believes continuing education will catch on in Thailand.

One of the key persons responsible for getting AIBC up and running is managing director Siriwimol Sithiprasasana. Last week she was pleased to be able to open a second section of the introduction to public relations course. Unlike the first section, this will be taught entirely in Thai. Leading the first session of that course was Wilai Keangpradoo, Assistant Vice President-Public Relations of Advanced Info Services.

"Next, we’ll be focusing on the APM marketing short courses," Ms Siriwimol says. "We’ll begin on June 16^th with one course that will be taught in Thai. It will be 22 hours and the credits can be used towards the certificate and diploma."

She believes the relationship between APM and AIBC is an exciting one. Indeed, APM could provide a useful model for the future.

"APM is the leading vocational college in Sydney. It was established 17 years ago. They began with only seven students in marketing and PR courses. Now they are running many courses, even courses in drama and fashion. They’ll have 700 students altogether this year. For the time being at least, our focus will be on marketing and public relations," she says.

Her mission now, she says, is to change local attitudes that value the standard bachelor and masters degrees as the be all and end all of education in Thailand. Hence, AIBC’s new advertising slogan: parinya rue kue kamtop sut tai? Is the degree the last answer?

"We are trying to offer something shorter," she says. You don’t have to travel overseas, but you can get the same knowledge."

For more information you can contact AIBC at 662 684 1129 or info@asianbizcom.com. The school’s website is www.asianbizcom.com

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Last modified: June 3, 2003