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!

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.

The rapid expansion in the media space has done many good things for the nation. It has provided choice in beats across entertainment, movies, news and education that earlier was simply not ever thought of or envisioned. The proliferation has brought about waves of soaps, contests and now with the first IPL season shaking India, it has brought a gaggle of new anchors anxious to make their mark.

In a landscape dotted by hungry journalists, anchors, show producer, sometimes this breed, crosses the line of prudence and fair practice in the quest for exclusives, scoops and the most dramatic of them all; stings! In times of deadline overload and a lack of any tangible research, editorial balance becomes the first casualty to TRPs, popularity polls and advertising revenue.

How many times have you had a trick e-mail or a innocuous phone call translate into a bombshell in the press the next day, or even the same day in these times of broadcast and online media explosion? If you are out there working the space, then I am sure you do this more than you’d like to and while we all employ our own ways and means to deal with the scourge, maybe the time is right for a discussion. Keeping quiet is not an option so here are a few PR plays I’ve seen practiced:

• No comment - This is the most basic defense of the scared communicator or resident PR punter in the establishment. It creates a doubt in the mind of the viewer or reader about the authenticity or veracity of the story but has the potential of making front page all the same or the lead story in the dozen or so television channels out there, business, news, and combinations thereof.
• We do not speculate on market speculation - This or another variation of the same featuring words like ‘policy’ are yet another wet blanket in terms of media credibility, will they stop your brand image from get a contentious tag or even a black eye is arguable.
• Denial - This is the last reprieve of either the aggrieved or the very stupid, especially if its a lie. It will give a pause to the editor or the journalist, who will question their gut, chances of going to print or being aired, fifty per cent.
• Half Agreement, half denial - This Molotov Cocktail is the most sophisticated of the ploys, and clearly agrees to all or some part of the allegation but uses the loop in technique to include crisis messaging. Sent as a quote and usually written, it forces the hack to use the statement in full. Only the most savvy can do this bespoke but chances of being quoted out of context or half quoted remain high.
• Retraction or Rejoinder - These are mostly ego plasters to paper over bruised management egos, striking how the size of the retraction and rejoinder is in contrast to the placement, font size and prominence of the offending piece.
• Confirming statement - This is the pushover statement, executed along with a sincere sorry note and a display of the belly in submission. These are very bad for the ego and best suited for real tragedies, fraud, accidents, calamities and other industrial or infrastructure and government type of communicators.

I am sure there are hilarious variations sitting out there in your very fertile and successful minds and would love to get any more classification here or a anonymous war story, do feel obliged to share your scary knowledge with the tribe.

These are some concerning times that need both awareness of the stakes and training, if it is your privilege to be charged as the guardian of your brand and company image. There are lots of ploys the feverish hack employs to in the get-rich-quick-or-get-fired-trying, exclusive hunt. You need to understand that it is their job to report, to analyze, to predict and to expose, the end is fine but the means are most questionable. This pool is further muddied by competition and the dirty tricks department using friendly media for planting, seeding or plain obfuscating an issue. I will not use examples but the watchful here will see and read patterns in politics, industry and most media reporting, even that front page headline or the lead story on that television channel that looks innocent at first pass. Go figure…

If they know that you know, then you will receive their respect and maybe the show can continue down the road for all. Right now these are dangerous times for Image and Brand and all seems fair in the media war for exclusives. Next week sticking to a statement and dodging trick questions on the phone. Happy skirmishing! 

I assume you know why I am late in posting this post today.

I assume you know by now what I am going to write today.

I assume that you must have got decent increment this time and your CV is not floating in the market.

I assume that you have been reading and will keep on reading whatever I write in my post.

We all assume. We all assume lot of things. Imagine a world without assumptions. Would you be able to live in this kind of world, where everything is non-politically correct and being expressed as it is? Yes, one such world exists but it may be too personal to involve anybody else than me and my wife! :) But, please don’t assume anything yet. She is the one who taught me the power of expression and she’s my biggest inspiration to continue expressing whatever I feel like with you guys without really bothering to think about whether it is politically correct, whether is this the right platform to talk about everything I have been speaking to you or whether I should just stick to whatever I learnt in my B-school or on the job. She knows quite a few things but doesn’t want to assume those and wants me to express it again and again in many ways. This is getting really interesting and I can write endlessly about my wife and what I learn from her but I have to do a justice to the platform and do not talk too much about my personal assumptions and expressions. So, shhh!!

I had a review meeting with some clients. As usual, they assumed that agency did not do any work as per their wish and command. They expressed their unhappiness to my colleagues as well. They assumed that journalists know everything about them. They spoke to journalists on the false assumption they know the business and the company they are speaking to and made lots of mistakes in the process. They assumed agency will take it easy and say ‘yes’ to whenever they will express their unhappiness.

Unfortunately, they had to deal with me and only thing they might have not assumed is my agency’s ability to express in a manner, which probably not many from service industry are capable of doing it.

To cut the long story short, I walked out on the CEO of the organization and demonstrated extreme displeasure to him about the way they are not listening to the team and agency. After a while, I went back to the CEO and obliged him by talking to them about why they don’t know how to express and living in the world full of assumptions. Told him about his inability to live the brand, informed him about how he’s losing money to us without really utilising the brain my agency has and in the process enlightened him on the power of communication.

In the end, he expressed his pleasure in one line – saying that for the first time in his long career as a CEO someone has really walked out on him to prove a point and he’s convinced that expressing it is always better than assuming it.

Anyways, the objective of the post is to let you know my friends that if you are convinced about what you are doing is right. Just go ahead and do it. Don’t assume anything, express everything and express it effectively.

So, my dear wife, when you want me to express my feelings, I know what you are talking about… I am learning and I am happy to express and admit in front of my readers that I am learning it all from you and only you.

Express yourself! Phir pata nahi kal ho na ho…

ASSOCHAM yesterday released a report on the Indian PR industry, which came as a bit of a surprise. I though they aptly called it a ‘random’ survey. It came out of nowhere.

On one hand, this report is a positive development with industry associations now starting to conduct studies on the PR industry. PR researchers have been yearning for a PR industry report and this seemed like one that authenticated a lot of trends and issues that we in the industry are witnessing and discussing about.

And then before I completed my smile, a conspicuous figure in the report attracted my attention. ASSOCHAM has boldly put the size of the Indian PR industry at USD 3 bn currently. While I would have loved to believe this figure and bask in the glory of being part of a fast growing industry, I have my doubts. Are we really that big? A USD 3bn means around INR 12,000 crores. And that is a huge amount.

From the not-so-perfect finger-counting that we do usually, the PR consultancy business in India is supposed to be around INR 150-200 crores only. We have around half a dozen ‘big’ PR agencies that rope in the majority, read 70-80%, of the revenues for the industry. Each can have a revenue of around INR 12-15 crores with the highest going to around INR 20 crores from pure PR fee (not calculating the expenses). Even if you calculate the expenses, the total revenue of the biggest PR firm is supposed around INR 40 crores. The rest perhaps bring in a just as much as one or two combined of these ‘big’ agencies.

Let’s do some more guess work. What could be the total PR spend by the organised corporate say in the top 1000 companies in India through one or the other agency or directly? Can we quote a figure of around INR 500 crores. Add around INR 125 crores from the PR spends by the unorganised sector in mini cities. Would even all these combined reach that ASSOCHAM figure of USD 3 bn?

Or is there something else that I am not aware of in the industry, I would definitely love an explanation into that figure.

Other key findings from the report:

1. Growing opportunity cost in PR industry is one reason for constant job shuffles

2. Over 90% PR professionals come in at the entry level with enthusiasm and passion for their work but within a year shift to greener pastures

3. Brand building and image management are emerging as key areas where corporates seek services of PR firms to enhance visibility and promote services/ products/ top management

4. Majority of PR professionals confirmed that during the economic boom, huge competition emerged for brand building as a result of which PR agencies are in demand and quoting high market driven prices for services

5. PR sector registered growth of 22-25% in last few years which further went up to 32% in 2007 and by 2010, size of PR industry is expected to grow to more than $6 billion

6. Indian PR industry comprises 1200-1500 agencies with manpower strength of 30,000 to 40,000

7. In terms of vertical markets, healthcare is the fastest-growing sector; however, public sector, environment and corporate social responsibility are emerging as growth areas for PR

8. Overriding concern of industry is skills shortage; almost all agencies are hiring, a trend that is indicative of growth, and some are looking outside the PR industry to bring in new skills

9. Although there are thousands of small agencies and individual consultants serving very local markets, larger agencies are forging partnerships across the globe to meet demand from clients

10. Retainer fee on an average can be anywhere between Rs2.5 to Rs 5 lakh

11. Reasons for high attrition could be the temptation of moving to the higher pay master; leadership crisis within the industry; inability of PR outfits to meet evolving needs of companies/ clients and to understand the dynamics of the present-day market place

Read media reports on the study here: The Hindu, Mint, IndiaInfoline

After doing battle with scaremongering for the last couple of posts, here’s me wimping out and spinning my own doomsday special for you. Unusually I have had more than enough sleep so this is not sleep deprivation either. The media is awash with the Union Budget news and I don’t seem to agree with anything that is being sold by various economists, interest groups, lobbyists and politicians. As is won’t, this promises to be an election budget with populist measures that will whittle away tax payers money (yes this usually represents a third of your income on the pay slip!) in rubbish schemes but nothing can make me unhappy today. I am surprisingly happy considering the fact that there is really no good news!

So to the topic of my post: Is Web 2.0 becoming Bubble 2.0 and Social Networking becoming Social Notworking (sic)? If you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve probably seen the internet bubble of 2000 and its crazy outlandish pony tail visage. Funny part is, nothing was too freak or outlandish to pitch for a business plan if it included a website in it. The market was awash with venture capital dollars and run rate or burn rate were common place terms in those circles. Not much survived that era and the remnants of this internet bubble largesse did not last.

When Google bought a loss making YouTube for USD 1.65 Billion, followed by the crazy valuations at facebook.com and myspace.com, and a seemingly crazier bid of USD 47 Billion by Microsoft for Yahoo, I knew that Free is Back! Recently AOL decided to offer free e-mail, with many free goodies including XM Radio, Anti Virus, 5 Gig online storage, etc, etc. Incidentally the poor cousin Indian version of AOL does not offer these!

There is more bad news on the horizon as Google stock fell 38 per cent on a report by comscore that AD clicks on Google had been flat in the month of January as compared to last year. This was widely reported across the world and created tremors that were felt far away from its epicentre.

Facebook has recently retreated on its aggressive advertising venture known as the Beacon after howls of protest from its subscribers, numbers which incidentally for the first time started to plateau. Google similarly is showing signs of a slow down. All this coupled with the strong privacy issues that have plagued all large players in the social networking are really a cause for worry where the future of the web 2.0 is concerned.

The benefits that it has bought to the enterprise business in terms of collaboration tools like blogs, widgets, twitters and IM as a result of user generated content can not be ignored but at the same time the impact of social networking has been minimal besides online advertising. This is even more pronounced in India due our insulation from the west both in terms of cultural differences and internet infrastructure bottlenecks across 3G spectrum as well as simple broadband. What it can do is hopelessly mix up your personal and professional life and inadvertently give access to people about your personal information, which you’d much rather keep to yourself and your social ilk.

The other is the time spent wasting company resources while on the job doing what is popularly being referred to as social NOTworking! This is a real concern as, while many managements have draconian solutions but it is important for all CIOs and CTOs to consider how much of the technology and infrastructure that they provide is actual used by employees, and how much is in the nature of freeware which certainly brings a lot of productivity to the enterprise including web based e-mail, instant messaging services as well as social networking tools.

Back into the PR paddock in India, I would love to hear from PR Firms who actually have a social media list they actively use, and dedicated resources who are real practitioners, with real customers without getting my bullshit meter in the red.

If you are bleeding from the budget take hope and have a great weekend!

Last week it was time for my ritual yearly pilgrimage to the Mecca of the IT Industry, I am referring to NASSCOM India Leadership Forum, 2008. It was a time of meeting people, some of the faces were old and some were new but the excitement was all very palpable. You can access the NASSCOM 2008 Blog here.

As is the norm, there was a rash of media in attendance to glean updates of Industry biggies both Indian and MNC. This year was big from many perspectives and saw the attendance from the likes of Ginni Rometty from IBM Global Services and Steve Rohleder, COO of Accenture. 

NASSCOM has had biggies before but this year was different for its eclectic mix of politicians like a budding Congress leader Sachin Pilot, Civil Aviation Minister, Praful Patel as well Minister for IT & Telecom, Raja. It also had top industrialists like the Harvard educated and always immaculately dressed Anand Mahindra and the scion of the Bajaj family, the very suave Rajiv Bajaj. It was also different because there was less rhetoric and more realism in terms of the stock taking and the way forward as well as some plainspeak instead of the usual geek festival technobable.

The PR consultants as well as their Corporate Communications and Marketing handlers were out in a full out display of strength as they silent worked the lunches, dinners and networking sessions positioning their spokespeople, their brands in all myriad and clever ways possible.

All is well with the IT Industry despite the doomsayers, the projections are hot, traction is back 2 quarters down and Hewitt and Watson Wyatt are hooting salary increases from rooftops and I am loving it as I cock a snook to many in the media, the Industry, as well as peers who cried wolf. If anything, the sub-prime meltdown will bring in more business for Indian outsourcing industry! All is well indeed and I am loving it!

ABC television’s Media Watch program is going to start reporting bad tactics and activities of the PR industry from next year.

A theAge.com.au’s article has quoted Jonathan Holmes, reporter with ABC TV saying that he hoped to ‘expose the more egregious antics of the industry that all too often tries to sway, or mislead, or simply stonewall journalists who are trying to do an honest job’.

He said the public relations industry permeated government and business at every level and exerted undue ‘influence these days on what we read and hear and watch’.

It is unlikely that the program would cover the Indian PR industry but definitely this is one landmark development worth taking note of. Such a media program were to start in India, I wonder how many funny antics of PR agencies will be exposed.

PR agencies with black practices, beware.

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india

Allow the heading to the writer’s preoccupation with twisting words to make an impact. No inference to the non-aligned movement the headline is triggered by the recent news of Hanmer & Partners selling out to MS&L. Before offering comments and views, let me try to quickly put this development into some context:

- With Perfect Relations also in serious marriage talks, the big 3 of Indian PR firmament will sooner or latter be foreign owned.

- Unlike dating (affiliations, partnerships and representations) which was prevalent hitherto and which meant there was no control transfer, the preference this time around seems to be marriages (buyouts/acquisitions)

- The firms at the time of selling out were doing very well for themselves

- India was one of the largest potential markets for PR across the globe where none of the global networks could make a significant dent and which was ruled by indigenous PR firms till very recently

So what is really triggering the change? Here is my two cents of hypothesis:

- Global networks are in a hurry to have a foothold in the Indian market what with all the hype around India and they are willing to pay a premium or play ball

- The Indian management of the firms see the future better as part of a larger network (aka advertising)

- The valuation offered is attractive and it is tempting for many of the founders

- At the level of Prema Sagar /Sunil Gautam there may not be many dreams left to conquer in the Indian context and if just needs a good offer on the table to clinch the deal

The next logical question is what are the various factors and arising implications?

- One of the factors that was behind indigenous firms ruling the roost was the uniqueness and complexity of the Indian market which I strongly feel even today the big networks do not understand well (for most of the top brass of global networks the experience of India is limited to attending big summits in Delhi or Mumbai or having breakfast/lunch/dinner at five star venues with the Indian top brass of big PR firms or atbest presentations/reports being churned out). Does this mean many are taking the risk and walking down the aisle simply because of the importance of the market

- Will this means Indian PR industry aligning itself to the global model and globalizing itself faster than happening currently? This is a tough question and from whatever little have learned from working with the big networks, there will be some learning and some best practices borrowing but there is no denying the fact that locals will continue to hold sway in the area of understanding of the local market

- Will it mean global work practices becoming prevalent? My answer again is mixed because global work environments need global scale revenues; With most Indian clients still not willing to open their coffers and not comfortable with the man-hour billing model, it is going to be a long haul

To summarize,

- Do not see great changes in the industry because of the development except interms of ownership and additional benefits accruing to the respective firms

- If many of the remaining big PR firms choose to adopt a different path, it might still mean we do not walk the path of advertising where there is only one agency of worthy size that is still independent

- India is not an easy market to crack for PR and global networks need a lot of time to crack the local market

- There are other large global PR firms which are preferring to go solo (Fleishman Hillard, Text 100, APCO to name a few) or take different paths which again might see the PR industry not walking the advertising path

- The choice is primarily of the team at the helm in many of these PR firms and their interest levels in sustaining their success stories.

The best bet is to wait and watch and see how the whole thing shapes. As a footnote, let me place on record that have immense respect for Prema and Sunil Gautam and infact have sought advice from Sunil on a couple of occasions for my own firm. As regards global networks, I have friends and contacts in most of the global networks and we do work with many of them at varied levels. Am bit of an insider as well to these developments and my comments have to be hence treated as purely personal and that of me as an industry professional than an agency owner.

Xavier Prabhu is a leading writer, speaker on PR in India. He runs PRHUB, a fast growing integrated communications firm and he can be reached at Xavier@prhub.com

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india

One interesting and debatable news today is about Cricket Australia deciding to charge the media for distributing the pictures of its current series.

We have always heard of TV channels fighting for exclusive broadcasting rights to telecast cricket matches, bidding huge amounts of money against one another. So this announcement seems like something that was bound to happen and so you wonder what’s the big deal anyway. On the other hand, yes this will cripple free and fair media reporting and money, not journalistic skill, will decide who gets to report what.

What’s your take?

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india Cricket Australia