Give PR its dues
By Madhavi Mukherjee on Feb 10, 2008 in Indian PR industry
Very recently the Publicis Groupe one of the world’s most respected and bigger Communications Group picked up stakes in one of the best PR agencies in the country…Hanmer&Partners. Given the fact that it was a big acquisition, that it was going to have a change of identity, that it gave MS&L a larger footprint in India and Publicis the commitment to expand in high growth markets, it was a pretty significant news. Am sure it must have been as significant a news to the industry when Burson Masteller acquired Genesis PR and many other acquisitions that have taken place in this industry. And yet they are passed of as just another news. It’s not that all of the media did not cover these news items, but everyone did not.
Many publications do not carry news of the above mentioned types or rather never profile PR professionals, or talk of PR case studies et al in the country. One meets with answers such as these from publications, “As a policy we do not cover PR” and while one refutes saying, “but you do have a media page or an ad&mktg page” but to no avail. So the reasons to not cover PR in mainline dailies and business dailies can be as creative as you want them to be. So you have to disguise and say that it’s not a PR agency but a Communications outfit and if you are lucky, you could get written about.
We need the media industry to recognise the fact that we are contributors to the process of communications and shaping brands almost hand in hand with brand managers and creative directors in the creative agencies. Try placing an authored write up by a Creative agency guy on brands and there is a 100 percent chance of him getting published. Try that with a PR Agency counterpart and chances are you will be told that PR is not covered.
Thank God for the trade publications, yet not all, in the A&M space who are now beginning to recognise PR and getting their POV too. PR is a sunrise industry in this country…so while everyone is talking about giving that valuable lift to sunrise industries because you see potential in them to take the country forward, how come you don’t see PR contributing in the larger scheme of things?!
PR professionals will no more be about CEOs in their cabins only when you have the rest of your peer group give you the same respect and stature that PR so deserves.
I’d like media to discuss this and let us know as to the real reason for not recognising PR as an industry and giving regular updates about account movements, people movements, great case studies and speaker opportunities?! Is it because the account wins do not run into crores of revenues and the people are not as large in stature as the Prasoon’s and the Piyush’s of the world?! But isn’t PR about non paid form of publicity and hence PR fees seldom run into crores or billings?! And isn’t it media who give the exposure to people to become who they are and grow in stature to the creative people mentioned above?! So how will you ever have leaders and PR gurus if you don’t get the world to know about them.
The other day a Media professional (that is a journalist for you) came to our office as a guest speaker and pleaded us to not think of us as PR guys but as Media professionals because we were supposedly their better halves in the communication process…oh how I wish everyone in the field of journalism, advertising and marketing thought of PR professionals as such since somehow that does not translate into action.
This article is not to moan about why we are not treated well or respected as an industry..this article is to get a discussion on how we can get to be as well profiled and get our place in the sun as PR professionals and as contributors in the larger process of communications.
Cheers, Madhavi
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On Feb 11, 2008, Kavita Lakhani said:
I so agree with you, Madhavi. Unfortunately clients have understood the value of PR but the editorial media is yet to give this discipline its due importance. I think a step forward would be to personally convince the Editors of the Advertising and Marketing supplements (we could start with the Brand Equity…the rest of the media fraternity generally follows).
On Feb 11, 2008, Madhavi Mukherjee said:
True that may be getting Brand equity to write about the industry could lead to others wanting to write about us too….but what is a long term strategy? What is a more steady approach by which the industry gets written about as and when incidents, events and initiatives happen in the industry? How do we all work towards creating the buzz and urgency that the advertising fraternity enjoys…that is something we all need to collectively work upon.
On Feb 11, 2008, Pradeep Rajshekhar said:
Hey Mads… while a lot of people may treat the PR profession like it’s a four letter word, there are a few people in the journalist fraternity who actually appreciate the value of what a PR Firm / professional can do for them. The problem is that this is a small minority!! We’re the guys who are bullied, tossed around and have sand kicked on our face by the two most important people in our professional lives (the media and the client)! I think its time we started making it easier for the press AND our Clients to appreciate us… while it is easier for the latter to like us (cos we have monthly coverage reports and media perception audits to prove it), I think getting the press to do that is our biggest challenge!
We often get congratulatory mails from Clients… how often do we get similar mails from journalists? I think it has a lot to do with the way we come across… we need to position ourselves as ‘CONSULTANTS’ and not as mere ‘IMPLEMENTERS’.
And most importantly, the PR industry needs to grow as well… what we need the most is to bring out the size of our industry. We need to attain a critical mass as far as revenues are concerned for the media to recognise us as an industry and write about us! Nothing’s gonna change before that!
On Feb 11, 2008, Madhavi Mukherjee said:
yeah….I agree…and collectively I think we all have answers to that. Basis all the write ups on this site, one would notice that we are continuously talking about how PR professionals can better themselves at their jobs, the knowledge quotient needs to rise, there needs to be deeper understanding about how the press works and what is the best message strategy for our Clients et al. But while all this happens, one would appreciate if the Press started profiling the organisations, the people who have taken this industry to its current stature and at least provide a speaking platform, somewhere.
On Feb 12, 2008, himanshu kapadia said:
i agree with pradeep, also i would like to add that we collectively do not have an industry asociation of the stature to talk about , also we ourselves sometimes are not proud of what we do, i know some pr professionals who say they are in marketing depart and not in pr. I dont know how many have seen the yash raj dubba film laga chunri me dag where a prositute is introduced as a pr professional. I also would like to add now that jounalists have become pr professionals there is a good flow of good news to their counterparts about the profession, it will take time but we shall see front page stories.