By Tang Pei Yi

GEORGE TOWN: Maggie Chooi who is the founder of Spice Marketing is “living the dream” by working in the public relations sector. She is also feeling grateful for fulfilling her dream and looking forward to a better future in her career.

After graduating from Han Chiang University College of Communication (HCUC) in 2007, Chooi was offered an opportunity to move to Hong Kong and work for Eight Custom Media, a major magazine publishing house, in a marketing and event capacity. Then, she joined the travel industry in 2010, first handling the marketing activities in CI Events at Flight Centre which is a major international travel company. While working at Flight Centre, Chooi was offered a marketing role at regional level at Turkish Airlines’ Greater China office, where she was responsible for promoting the airline’s corporate products in Asia.

In 2016, Maggie founded Spice Marketing, a comprehensive public relations and destination marketing agency, whose clients include Tourico Holidays, Dining Concepts, Gagfare flight booking app and many more.

Chooi said choosing HCUC was just the first of many great decisions she has made over these few years. She pursued her studies under the School of Communication and Media majoring in Public Relations and graduated in 2008.

The syllabus of the programme helped her greatly for the future of her job. She got to learn about news writing, designing, using graphics including Photoshop. The strong foundation and well- designed syllabus offered by HCUC helped her a lot when she started work.

She is really impressed by HCUC with the approach to constantly be in touch with the industries and also continuously upgrading their syllabus to meet the current market needs. She praised that this will actually help all the graduates, including herself to be more prepared for the job market and to be part of the communication world. This is important, especially in public relations, as it is essential to be open minded and constantly moving ahead along with the developments in the industry. 

Chooi (front row fourth from left) has come to HCUC to share her journey of success with the students.

“I think if you decide to become a public relations practitioner one day and you choose to study at HCUC, be prepared to acquire as much information as you could and always be more engaging and knowing what’s going on in the world,” Chooi said.

A good public relations practitioner will be able to help the brand of a company irrespective if it is a small brand or big brand.

“I think the future of public relations is more crucial because everything is digitised now, everything is online and I think everyone has a lot of access to online information now,” Chooi added.

She thinks that with the support of technology and seeing everyone on Facebook, Instagram and all sorts of social media and digital news daily can help a brand to become integrated and also be more visible to create a success story. The media also needs a person with comprehensive media talent. As a Malaysian with good language skills, Chooi has excelled greatly in her career. She has also mastered four languages to date.

Chooi is grateful for growing up in a multicultural environment which has prepared her to become a well-rounded person to have a better understanding about what’s going on in the world. Being a Malaysian is also definitely going to make her prominent in becoming a more successful public relations cum marketing professional.