Media Coverage for A Memorial Oration

Service Category: Press Release Writing / Editorial Assignment

10 Years of Reporting Murugappa Group’s Endowment Oration

Organising endowment oration is a meaningful way to remember great people. Murugappa Group, a four-billion dollar Indian company, hosts one every year in memory of late Mr M V Arunachalam, a legendary businessman and one of its past chairmen. The event features an eminent health professional from the fields of neurology and psychology addressing the general public.

Dr Ennapadam Krishnamoorthy, a neuropsychiatrist, and the brain behind the event, makes the endowment oration a memorable one by lining up excellent orators with remarkable insights. And I have the honour of being the favorite press release writer for this annual event. Since 2010, this relationship continues.

How It Works

The Corporate Communication department of the Murugappa Group would send me the details of the programme for the year weeks in advance so that I have time to familiarize myself with the speaker and the subject. I would listen to the oration, take notes, and once the speaker is through, I find a quiet place in the venue (always a star hotel) and complete writing the press release (usually within an hour or so).

Once the press release gets cleared internally, it is sent to the PR agency (for a long time, it is Ogilvy & Mather, Chennai), which in turn reaches the release - and a few photos taken during the event - on time to the newsrooms of the leading publications in Chennai.

Oration 2018

This year I wrote the 16th edition of the MV Arunachalam Memorial Oration in which Mr Kousuke Kanemoto of Aichi Medical University, Japan, addressed the general public on “Brainstorms and the Mind: Exploring the Borderlands Between Epilepsy and Schizophrenia”.

Here is the link to the press release. The event was reported in the following publications - most of which found my press release useful.

The ability to pick newsworthy points from the speech and present them within a short span of time, in simple English but without misquoting the speaker is important in such event based press release assignments. I thank people at Murugappa for entrusting me with this prestigious job every year.