It’s all out there in open. The media is going gaga about it. Everyone is talking about it. It’s an open secret. Some obnoxious figures are floating out in open, and many of our so called ‘Netas’ in white clothes are busy collecting all the black money they can, in these next few days. Someone’s father is being laid on the tarmac so ‘Nawabs’ can fly off and on from his holy name.

I wouldn’t be surprised, if tomorrow Mr. Musharaff would be projected as our Prime Minister! Yahan par sab Maya hain, mere bhai! But actually, when I come to think of it, it is actually not a bad idea to have Mush as our Prime Minister. His initials are PM. Almost everyone of the pseudo-secularist brigade would be very happy and yes the most important part is that N-deal or No-deal they would be able to solve many critical issues of national interests – 1) they will help us get rid of the government which has just few months to serve (oops! Sorry rule) the country before we have our general elections. 2) We may not get much needed power due to some power hungry or powerful politicians. 3) We will lose faith in democracy and turn many youngsters away from voting. Are you listening Mr. Karat? Mr. Bardhan? Mr. Ajit Singh? You may win, but we all are going to lose and you are going to be responsible for it.

Well, what’s the connection between all these madness and PR?

The insiders know it very well, that how well-oiled PR machinery is working overtime to make or break the government. The media contacts are being used to the maximum. The buying & selling is taking place. The stories are being planned and planted. Dinners are being hosted and lunches are being thrown upon. It’s a time now when everyone worth their salt in political journalism is high on ecstasy and enjoying every moment of their lives. Many business houses are playing their cards and using all their power to stabilize or destabilize the government according to their comfort levels.

PR is playing its role and whether you like it or not it is affecting your life for better or worst. Everything is fair in business and politics. My grandpa always said that if you have to be happy in life you have to stay away from four Ps: Press, Police, Politicians and Prostitutes. Well, the old man died before I came into PR, otherwise he would have added it also to this list.

Grandpa, I have a confession to make. I dealt with everyone on the list. Hang on guys – before you jump the gun, the last community in the list was part of an NGO I serviced as a client. And yes, I have one more confession to make – I found some humans in each of these communities! In PR as well, we still have few humans left.

We started the Linkedin Group: Network of PR Professionals in March 2008 and in the last four months or so, the group has grown to more than 1,000 members. I did a quick search and these are some findings:

Number of members from specific countries: US: 500plus; India: 335; UK: 33; and a few members from other countries too.

Number of CEOs: 34; VPs: 75; Director: 174; Managers: 196; Executives: 131; Heads (Group Heads, Practice Heads, Corporate Communications Heads): 38, and so on.

Thanks to all the members. Hoping that we all can connect and benefit from this common platform.

Click here to join the network now.

After investing many years in the field of communication and dealing with brand owners and managers for ages I have seen the gradual change happening in the field of marketing communications. Be it a PR or advertising or any other medium of communication, every domain has seen the shift happening from product driven communication to consumer driven communication.

Let’s see, what we have seen in the past and what we are witnessing now. If we have look at ads in the past, they were full of product attributes and tangible benefits (some of them are even today following the same beaten path) – about size, shape, price, and shouted sabse sasta, yeh to jhaag wala hain and so on…

Come to 21st century and we are bombarded with extremely talented mothers, super kids, rich dads and a grand pa who go for jogging every day! All of them trying to sell some or the other service or product to you with emotions. Kyonki kabhi pyaar ke beech duriya na aaye…

Welcome to the ‘emotional economy’. This is nothing new and many of the management experts have spoken about it so many times. Many books have been written on the subject. The benefit of developing and demonstrating a personality of a brand has become a key element of strategy in every marketer’s workbook. Many of the successful brands have created a personality with which consumers are connecting themselves emotionally.

Now the billion dollar question is not whether Singh will remain king with support from another Singh who claims to be King as of now, but whether we as PR professionals have been able to embrace the same shift in our strategy or not.

Does PR as we know it and practice is today allow us to establish the emotional connect with the consumers the way advertising does. Do we have the same creative liberty to express ourselves? The answer is both, No & Yes!

No, because in traditional media relations model of PR where you are dependent upon the journalist (well some people would disagree to this statement, but it’s a politically correct perception) to share your story, he or she may speak the way he or she wants. There is no message control. There may be several other ‘NO’ as well, which I want my readers to suggest as part of their comments.

Yes, because the PR offers many more avenues than traditional media relations model. You have the opportunity to directly reach out to your consumers (prosumers, participants, partners, co-creators – many such jargons for people like you and me who spend hard earned money to buy many unwanted things throughout our lives). Social Technologies are really social in nature, which allows us to reach out to the real people in the virtual world and connect with them emotionally. I am sure there would be many more ‘YES’ to this which would come from you.

Until we meet next Thursday, take care and God Bless!

Image Courtesy: AMA Japan (http://www.amajapan.co.jp/e/)

It is a mess and it is all over the place and it is not going away in a hurry. The stock market is toast, the oil price is freaking out in the USD 150s, real estate and financial services are tanking like the titanic! Everyone knows that we are in the middle of a meltdown and the effects of inflation have just about started to ruin the financial results of companies.

The politics of the nation are in the gutter and the uncertainty that clouds all decision making both in the public and private enterprise will continue well into the next year, if and when another government comes into being. A government that is cross subsidising the oil bill and some other future government will reap the whirlwind and some whirlwind it will be for sure, and I quote Rahul Bhasin of Barings in the DNA, where he said, “We are frittering away our gains made in the last 15 years”.

Against the background of this carnage in corporate India, the bean counters are finally seeing resurgence, like desert plants, they have waiting out the decade of exuberance. Today they are rising like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes, and promise to be the bane of many brands, marketing campaigns and other assorted still born initiatives. Austerity is back like the rude shock of a cold water bath in the freezing winter!

When the accountant’s chop does come down on big-ticket advertising, out-of-home and television commercials, these being the pet peeves of the accountant  PR promises to stay untouched. Having said that budgets for travel, off sites, media training, and all those nice fuzzy things are bound to dry up real quick, if not disappear all together. In all this skirmishing, fortunately for PR, most corporates have come to understand that it is not an on-and-off thing and if anything, some might even find it the last refuge of the marketing to reach their target publics in times of budgetary paucity.

The job market for PR professional and Communicators promises to retain traction and the moaning for talent will stay the wail it is, so here is one area that I again see no effect of the slow down, if anything it could lead to many more corporates hiring for the reasons above.

Challenges bring opportunities and usually constitute the need, the same need that spurs innovation and fosters new paradigms and discoveries. These are the times to service your customer better and to vow to be closer to the business and not lose accounts on reasons of tardiness, inefficiency or downright stupidity! I see many avenues that were shoveled into the “not important or urgent” quadrants due the presence of other ‘lazy cheque’ populars suddenly becoming fashionable. The medium I am talking about and maybe one who’s time has finally come in India, is the online medium.

This is the time to knock again and dust off those online plans, whether it is a programme to engage key bloggers in your space, or kick off that e-mail campaign or spend your remaining rupees in the pursuit of a web-only viral marketing or buzz marketing campaign!

I wish you well in these nasty times, so get dug in and wait it out, this too shall pass, maybe not soon enough but you can always take the time to do something you always wanted to attempt, something forbidden, constructive, intellectual, delicious and inspiring! I look forward to comments here!

Please accept my sincere apologies for missing out an opportunity to be with you last Thursday. But I am extremely happy that the newly win friends Hemant and Renu are really writing some amazing stuff on the blog. Some original and refreshing thoughts are being shared by every one of us on the blog. But unfortunately not many people are like us and today I want to share a small story about how to lose respect and become fool in front of 1,000 IPRB readers.

My friends who read my column regularly must be remembering my ‘Thursdays with Tushar’ of May 2 9, 2008 wherein I wrote about ‘How to win votes and influence people’. Last morning I received a copy of June issue of ‘(Name deleted on request)’ – a house journal of PR Body (Name deleted on request) . I was reading it and I discovered one article by a known PR person (Name deleted on request) with a headline ‘Political public relations making emphatic inroads into India’. The objective was to know more about how people are looking at political PR but within first few lines I got a real shock!

The article I was reading in ‘(Name removed on request)’ by distinguished (Name deleted on request) was totally inspired (Sorry Anu Mallik & Pritam for using your copyrighted language, but can’t help it – mentioning that it is lifted is so uninspiring!) from my article. I am uploading a scanned copy of the article for your reading pleasure. If you feel that you have read it before – don’t blame me, you can write directly to (text removed on request) and thank him for such wonderful originality and inspiration. This is an absolute insult to my readers.

(Please note: We have removed the scanned image of the article from the post but IPRB has kept it in its archieves for internal use & refernece purposes. It is not for public viewing any more - sorry for inconvenience)

I have nothing personal against (Name removed on request) and I don’t care about him. What hurts me the most is that faking has not remained limited to porn movies but it has reached our profession as well! I am sorry (Name removed on request) , I wouldn’t have written this post today and might have given you an opportunity to lift someone else’s article from my blog and print it as yours in some other magazine but I had to do this as, you didn’t even bother to respond to my private mail sent to you. Now, do you want me to print that mail here as well?

Friends, let me sum it up today’s post with just two jewels of wisdom from me. It is for you (Name removed on request)

“If you don’t have it, you don’t have it. Stop being a pirate”

“Being original is difficult, copying and not being caught is even more difficult”

God Bless and Take care!

Hope to meet all of you my friends {(Name removed on request) not included} in my journey of life and searching its meaning.

An interesting part of our work-in-progress ‘PR agencies and PR freelancers directory’ project might be the community ratings of PR agencies. Any reader of India PR Blog can do a rating out of 5 stars on an agency or a freelancer listed on the directory. We can use the comments section to share our constructive views on any agency. That will be nice.

Have look at some of our pages (in progress):

Index of the PR agencies and PR freelancers directory

Delhi PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

Maharashtra PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

Tamil Nadu PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

Chandigarh PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

Update:
Orissa PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

We are adding more. Keep your information on your agencies and services coming. Details on submission are here.

Some time back, we announced the ‘Directory of PR agencies and PR freelancers in India’ project here at India PR Blog, and now we are ready to provide the initial listings of the agencies from Mumbai and Delhi. We thank all those who have taken the time out to send in their information. This is a work in progress and we plan to add all Indian States and many more details of agencies and freelancers soon. So here we go:

Index of the India PR agencies and PR freelancers directory page.

Maharashtra PR agencies and freelancers page.

Delhi PR agencies and freelancers page.

In order to make this project successful, we hope that those who haven’t yet send in their details do so asap. Guidelines for submission are here.

About this directory:

The directory is an endeavor to showcase the diverse talent and local know how of the various PR professionals across the country. As the India PR blog is becoming a comprehensive resource for not only PR professionals and agencies but also for corporations and organisations seeking professional information on their PR and communications requirements, this directory will serve as a ready online guide available to them free and 24/7.

Recently I picked up a book called “Why So Stupid?” by Edward De Bono and this post is inspired by it. In fact, I wanted to write about why we stopped thinking about PR in our business but ended up writing something else courtesy a copy of a magazine landing on my desk.

Well, to be very honest I haven’t finished reading the book yet, but it seems that it would be fascinating to read through it. In the first few pages only, I disovered many things. One quote fetched my attention beyond doubt and I would like to share it with you. It helped me to put headline for today’s post as well. It reads and I write, “You can analyze the past but you have to design the future.”

Now coming back to the recently published report about “The Future of Public Relations” in one of the marketing magazines, I have few observations which I want to express for you lovely friends. While it did mention about the future of PR but the irony was that I haven’t seen any of the future leaders of PR talking about the future. I saw the same old faces trying to analyze the past without realising the present situation in many of their businesses or agencies and pretended to be designers of the future. I am sure many of you guys must have had a good laugh reading through it and some of their views must have been swallowed by many of us with a pinch of salt, some pepper and cold water.

The thinking in the industry has been stale and stopped somewhere. I was discussing the same with my wife and she said that it is happening probabbly because in earlier days leaders were born and born leaders are great thinkers, but today leaders are made, and they expect some reference as they are made like that. I think she has a point here. Most of our leaders are coming from ‘recoginition’ background and they always need a reference point to begin. The recongnition here is the worldview they have been living with since 70s and trying to impose the same upon their people. Do you have a high attrition rate - stop blaming the new generation, please. I have had the luck of meeting many of the agency heads and since I have to be politically correct here on this blog and have to remain in the industry where I belong to, I have to say a big lie that almost all of them have inspired me. (sigh!!) But, I am sure almost everyone who is reading my blog today knows ‘who is who?’ in the business and I do not have to give you any recognition or refernece point to think outside the box to arrive at any conclusion. I am sure you are smarter than me.

By the way, who am I to pass on any judgment on the industry or some of our so called leaders. After all, some of them have created the industry we are all working in now. They are the ones who are driving growth of their agencies and dipping the fees. They are the ones how are corrupting the business eco system and doing things which are not required in the name of building and maintaining relationships. They are the ones who are not willing to let their people grwo and try harder to make them feel inferior. After all, they are the ones who are drving the industry, where the accelerator is on a left hand side and brake is faulty with a gear lever lost somewhere on the way.

Why am I behaving so stupid and writing such a post? May be because I am like that only. I care for each one of us. I love what I do and it really hurts when I see my love being treated the way it is being now by many of them. SOS! Please respond, before its too late.

Take care friends and wake up! Jaago re… Jaago re… Jaago re…

PS: I wrote this heartfelt post with complete honesty and with an intention to hurt few of them in the process. If you are one of them and felt hurt, please accept my apologies and look into the mirror. Do you see the horns emerging from sides… ??!!!???

You are a small company and have just started out. You do not want to hire a PR agency but would still like to work on your company’s image. Yes, there are teething problems but what can you do to show to your business partners and prospective clients that you are different, serious and enthusiastic? To begin with there are a few small things you can do immediately. These tiny bits you might just ignore but they are the same things big daddies pay special attention to. So read on and feel free to add new ideas…

1. ‘Don’t design your own company logo’ – Unless you are a creative hot shop, it’s best to leave the job of designing your company logo, branding and stationery letterheads, business cards, brochures to professionals. Very often in our enthusiasm to start a new company we ignore the importance of ‘soulful’ branding. A logo is like you at a business meeting – confident and dignified. It’s just that your logo works 24×7x365. Therefore, never use Microsoft Word to design your company branding; seek out professional help.

2. ‘Stop using Gmail’: If you are still using Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail to send official emails, stop it immediately. You may not realize it but you have been silently telling your business partners that you don’t take your company seriously. So go out and get your own domain name and let the world know that you are here to stay.

3. ‘Phone etiquettes for employees’: Many small businesses suffer from the ‘small business syndrome’ (syndrome discovery credit rests with the author!). Companies suffering from this disease don’t pay attention to the way their employees respond to phone calls from strangers. Remember the next phone call could be from a prospective client, who is likely to be put off by the dry response from your staff. What to do? Energize your people through proper training and make them talk like they are your company’s brand ambassadors.

4. ‘Look sharp’: Always be smartly turned out for meetings. Business suits for business meetings help. You represent a small company and it’s important that your prospective client understand you do not perform the here-today-gone-tomorrow trick. They should absorb your seriousness and what better way of doing it than by looking your best.

5. ‘Exploit the Net’: While you may not be ready to spend on public relations and advertising, internet provides many platforms to small companies to talk about their products and services. For example, your corporate blog can attract people who want to try out your services; YouTube can showcase your creatively done product video. Think about it…

But I am here. Or not? It is still Thursday, so I am here. I wanted to be here early. I promised that I am going to be here every Thursday morning without fail, but I wasn’t there as promised. I did receive few messages and calls from many of you my friends. One of them even said, write whatever it is even if it’s just ‘Hello’ or ‘Hi’ or why not just create a blank post with ’smiley’ in it but she should see ‘Thursdays with Tushar’ in her mailbox every Thursday without fail! It’s an addiction for her. Now, that was too much but it did happen. And I don’t have any words to express but to say thank you to her and many such wonderful friends. I am blessed!

I am writing this small post just to say ‘Hi’ to all those who called and to all those who did not call but missed my column. I reiterate my promise that we will have more meaningful discussion next time around. This time, I am leaving you with a wonderful forward, I received this morning…

Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world. If you compare, you are insulting yourself.

No one will manufacture a lock without a key. Similarly God won’t give problems without solutions.

Life laughs at you when you are unhappy… Life smiles at you when you are happy… Life salutes you when you make others happy…

Every successful person has a painful story. Every painful story has a successful ending. Accept the pain and get ready for success.

Easy is to judge the mistakes of others. Difficult is to recognize our own mistakes. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to cover the earth with carpet.

No one can go back and change a bad beginning; But anyone can start now and create a successful ending.

If a problem can be solved, no need to worry about it. If a problem cannot be solved what is the use of worrying?

If you miss an opportunity don’t fill the eyes with tears. It will hide another better opportunity in front of you.

“Changing the Face” can change nothing. But “Facing the Change” can change everything.

Don’t complain about others; Change yourself if you want peace.

Mistakes are painful when they happen. But years later collection of mistakes is called experience, which leads to success.

Be bold when you lose and be calm when you win.

Heated gold becomes ornament.  Beaten copper becomes wires. Depleted stone becomes statue.  So the more pain you get in life you become more valuable.