#CoffeeTalk invades UP Manila’s PR Month celebration!

Taking learning beyond the ever traditional classroom set up gives students a dozen of opportunities to absorb their book-learned concepts and put them into practice. Learning becomes more effective when students are given the opportunity to interact with executives and managers from the corporate world as they are presented with real life scenarios about the workplace. Taking students outside of class and placing them into a more realistic context to learn and think together with other student leaders from other universities unleashes the students’ critical thinking and problem solving skills, harnessing constructive competition while strengthening interpersonal and social skills among others is a vision put to life by a group of creative thinkers at BrandSpeakAsia, a young but dynamic PR firm that defies traditional PR with its out of the box ideas.

Just recently, student leaders from UP Diliman, UP Manila, De La Salle University, University of Santo Tomas, Mapua Institute of Technology, Philippine School of Business Administration and Enderun Colleges among others converged to take part and get a deeper understanding of Public Relations through #CoffeeTalk, Creativity at Work,a 3-hour free PR Workshop which is designed to hone independent, proactive, exemplary and like-minded students who are curious enough to go the extra mile to discover and learn about public relations outside the box.

“The best thing we can do as a company is to impart and teach young minds principles about our craft that we feel they can only learn outside the classroom. These principles are married with real life scenarios about PR and are presented creatively to engage them actively,” shares Leigh de Armas, President and CEO of BrandSpeakAsia and workshop speaker, about the underlying principle of the conception of #CoffeeTalk. “Public Relations is bringing a company’s brand closer to its consumers in ways that will touch the heart. The potential of PR is still underused in the country and we want these

young minds to emerge with a head start in this field as they graduate from college,” de Armas continues.

The workshop was designed to teach actual cases to students giving them real facts and data about PR campaigns that were effective and was concluded through a brain collaboration activity to encourage students to interact with each other and inspire ideas on how they use public relations to promote the industry itself. “What sets PR different from other marketing tools is that it always hopes to engage and focus on building relationships. The key here is effective communication and by effective communication means capturing the heart of your target market,” says Nina Gerodias, UP Diliman scholar and attendee of the Pilot Launch of #CoffeeTalk when asked what she learned from the workshop.

3M Philippines proudly supported #CoffeeTalk having a unified vision in helping the youth express their unique ideas and make an impression to their key publics. It's infamous, colorful Post-Its were used for the workshop to allow students to share their thoughts on a Though-Xpress Wall.

After #CoffeeTalk’s pilot launch held at Sophie’s Mom in McKinley, it also recently invaded UP Manila in partnership with the university’s Public Relations Student Society of the Philippines (PRSSP). A series of this PR Workshop is slated to be sparsely conducted to various places and schools around the Philippines this 2014. Do you want to be part of the next #CoffeeTalk? Follow @brandspeakasia on Twitter and Instagram to get updates on the upcoming PR Worskshop series.