Some of the best brains in the PR industry today have no formal qualification for doing their job. They hold no diploma from any communications institute nor any management certificate. But when it comes to PR strategy and execution, organizations seek them out. What is it that they do? Do they have some practical lessons that can become a part of every institute’s curriculum? I could think of five such points a PR school could adopt to make their students ‘future ready’. They are listed below, in no particular order. And if you are studying at an institute this information might be useful before you start job hunting.

1. ‘Presentation Skills’ – One of the most important weapons in any PR pros’ arsenal. You are judged by how you speak and present your ideas. Clients and colleagues form lifelong impressions within five seconds of you uttering the first sentence. In fact once my boss had whispered to me in an ‘X Files’ kind of tone: “They are always watching you.” Therefore before you accept your diploma, ensure your presentation and public speaking skills are top notch.
   
2. ‘P2P Networking’ – Here PR students have an unfair advantage over others. If they look around in their communications institute they will see editors, senior reporters, special correspondents of the future learning the ropes in the journalism classes. Right now they are approachable and ready to be friends. Ten years hence you will just read their by-lined article or see them on the prime time news. So start making right friends right now.
   
3. ‘What to do and what not to say’ – As a PR consultant, you are in touch with company heads and senior management, and there’s a ‘certain’ behaviour expected from you. This may include how to handle difficult questions, how not to offend people, how to shake hands, how to initiate and carry on a polite conversation, how not to get unnecessarily provoked etc. It sometimes takes years to master the art but the sooner we make a beginning, the better it is.
   
4. ‘Dress up and play the part’ – A PR consultant inspires confidence in her clients. They seek her advice and trust her judgement. Again, this is a skill honed over years but you can start immediately by dressing up the part. Always be aware of the silent signals you give about your personality by the way you dress up. I once heard an industry veteran say: “Before you pass out of your institute, ensure you have at least two business suits in your wardrobe.”
   
5. ‘Sell yourself, gracefully’ – Promote yourself and do it with style. For example, even as a student you can share your business card at formal occasions. It can carry your name, contact details and institute address. Learning early how to effectively use sites like Linkedin.com is also an asset that will go a long way.

I am sure there are institutes that already have these lessons in their curriculum but there are others who can think about them. After all a little practical work never did anyone any harm.

I am a little tired of rants including mine so here is a contrarian view, as you can see I do this contrarian thing quite well (or badly depending on your world view today).  This post originally started as a comment and as it grew embarrassingly large, I decided to claim back my Friday from Madhavi and actually graduate this to a post instead of the original comment it was meant to be!

Client and PR relationships are like marriages, they feud, but can”t stay without each other and more or less work out if both parties give it a half decent shot. There are exceptions on both ends and so let’s not go there today for the sake of the majority. On the specific question of clients not paying or paying too less or other grouses, I see essentially see this phenomenon in two parts.

Product or Services Differentiation

Firstly, it is an ability to differentiate your self in positioning. The PR Firm market has been a commodity market for the longest time with no entry barriers for hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop shows. I saw this happening 10 years ago and today is no different. There is room for both and it is good that entrepreneurship is still a possibility in the market place. What is the big difference in working for the big 5 PR Firms in the country (if you can actually figure out ever who they are by number of people employed or revenue in a transparent fashion, beyond claims) and the home office 2-3 people outfit, one can argue. I am sure there are a lot of differences in offering and durability in time of intense attrition but we who profess to be champions of branding do a rubbish job of its when it involves our own brand characteristics and touch points across websites, corporate identity markers from business cards to collateral branding including electronic collateral like the microsoft power point, the one leg of the one legged, PR Industry are all pretty crap.

How many people can recall different practices in a large popular PR Agency unless they happen to be a specialist firm? If I take names I will be slaughtered as these are all friends, colleagues, ex-colleagues, so I’ll be prudent and duck my tail in on that but there are no many opportunities lost because no one in the leadership is really thinking about it beyond lip service and also-ran measures. Practice differentiation is not something just to do as a business whenever a fat client with a fat retainer demands it or when a project turns  into a reusable solution offering. It too needs the branding and marketing that will differentiate it as an offering and help you charge a premium for the effort in doing so.

Text 100 first changed the retainer landscape in the country in late 1990s with retainer values far in excess of what was then ‘going price’ for retainers in the Tech PR game at least. Again without taking names, there were enough nay sayers who never thought such retainers were possible or rated the survival chances of Text 100 in India. When the dust settled, history had been made with the Microsoft Account and there were many red faces. To be fair Text 100 came with an international mandates, best practices, processes but whatever local clients they picked up too came at larger retainers.

They were leaps and bounds ahead in differentiation, branding, positioning, and clients loved them and paid too. This gave hope and eventually benefited so many other legacy PR Firms who over a period of time started to attain similar retainer values because they moved up the value chain and comparing. This is when they had all along been largely sedentary about the possibility of a retainer being more than a lakh or two. There are many other examples of large retainers in Automotive, Financial Services, and Real Estate etc. 

Let’s talk for a minute about the client perspective here. What clients complain about is a lack of employee stickiness and just getting legs and no brains when they employ a PR Firm. If you sit on the client side which I have many times with multiple PR Agencies, these issues become important, so there are two sides to this coin! Don’t kick what you eat as there is seldom a one sided argument and there is no smoke without a fire!

So it isn’t like clients don’t pay. If you think you have an offering that deserves more (and good old vanilla media relations ain’t going to hack it partner) Pitch it right, be bold, be brave, and state your value proposition up front, brand your offering and you can get away with a screamer for a retainer!

Lack of Employee Stickiness and Intellectual Capital Capture in Public Relations Firms

The second important aspect one would do well to consider here involves employee longevity. Measures that arrest attrition including real dedication to employee training, specialization in vertical or horizontal practices, succession planning and an ability to see the next step-on-the-ladder.

There are philosophical and conceptual question there - what profitability are you after in terms of a gross margin is something that needs to examined in the interest of growth and scaling up. ‘Reverse price arbitrage’, this time in favor of employees and an inconvenient analysis of employee cost-to-company, as compared to retainers will show the employee wage bill as a percentage of revenue. What an owner, or promoter forsakes in terms of pay and work environment can only be good for the business but it is a question of rationale and greed.  I have seen many owners and promoters lash out about a lack of loyalty and commitment in employees while they themselves have zero empathy in return. Why is loyalty and commitment only an attribute expected of the employee and not the employer? If you want your people to stay please take care of them, treat them like individuals with aspirations and pay them right! Pay peanuts get monkeys - sound familiar?

So that is what I meant by garbage in- garbage out. Although there are good things happening out there in pockets, I am inherently in love with the idea of a consolidation based on market and supply dynamics, big names with standard global practices coming in can only mean better things for the industry and things moving to a new equilibrium.

The culture of crony PR firm associations has no done anything for the Industry or maybe I have not seen it and inconvenient issues never surface as these may not be in the best interest of constituents.

Let us embrace change and not stay shackled to the hackneyed tenets of a accidental birth, as India moves into the spotlight with its integration with the world economy, the future is bright for all of us!

This afternoon at lunch, I could not help sporadically eavesdropping into a conversation between two girls sat at lunch, at a table adjacent to mine, in a restaurant in downtown Fort that I tend to frequent for mid-week inspiration. I didn’t really intend to but the profanities yelled on the cellphone and the incessant chain smoking made for distraction and so did their loud chatter; of course they were from a PR Firm. As I sat there pretending to eat, mostly I gleaned involuntary knowledge and smoke from the poison duo.

It took me back in time, to a not so distant period of time when I yet smoked, spoke loudly on my cellphone in public, I suspect my language is still peppered with the occasional swearing but I guess being put on a spot so often has made me a little more careful, a wisdom that springs from being toast. Now that I have quit smoking, on my third attempt that is, I realize how offensive smoking can be others in an ambient public environment.

Coming in to work and departing most days, I see young executives, fresh of the pan, with their flash MBAs and shiny diplomas, these ostensibly outstanding people, so sorted in their heads otherwise with ambition written large on their confident faces, strangely gathered in stairways, flicking ash from their cigarettes in these dirty ghettos, soaking in a perverse bond of cheap cigarettes, and an angst borne of real, apparent and sometimes imagined grouses. Across the world, young people and some times not so young people, with their heads screwed on the right way, when measured in all other criteria, seem so strangely out of character as they brave rain, bone numbing wind, searing heat, humidity and other adversity to waste their time in stairwells, street corners and other dives of the corporate underbelly, hooked to that nicotine fix.

It often confounds me on why they just hang around sucking cancer sticks as time ticks and deadlines bomb all around them. It is beyond reason why they are not in any rush to get home to spend time with a loved one or get a life and do whatever it is that PR consultants do beyond running the corporate rat race. This yoyo act of the pilgrimage to and fro from the dive to the desk and back continues till late afternoon at which point in the script the reality of the days’ unshakable deliveries starts to become rather stark.This then produces a frenzied nightmare where work gets produced in bum rush fashion; an output that is mostly shoddy and of piss poor quality. The mute look of incomprehension on the faces of most client servicing and account management types (we seem to share this fraternity with other brethren in advertising and market research) when a client yells their tonsils off, is sometimes in my mind directly attributable to smoking and I am not talking about smoking anything beyond tobacco!

I have often wondered in amazement at how information aggregators like Factiva from Dow Jones have used the time saved in research multiplied by cost of executive time to show savings to an organization. In a similar fashion, the cost of an executive smoking multiplied by what he or she bills per hour, wasted in this mindless pursuit, I am sure will produce some pretty damning statistics. Continuing in this direction, I am wondering if Covey ever realised the big impact this activity would have on his quadrant of time management for effective people. He did capture some other low hanging fruit like gossip, trivia, being busy doing nothing, etc.

Although the dangers of tobacco use have been recognized for over half a century, and in an increasing number of countries have resulted in the banning of smoking in enclosed spaces, I want take a minute and talk about the costs to health due to smoking both physical and psychological from nicotine dependence, including its contributing to burn out and general depression. The costs in quitting are also not insignificant.

Smokers who have attempted and failed to quit will agree, will power; by itself is often not sufficient and smoking cessation aids are often needed. Estimated to be worth just $213 million 2006, according to a new report from independent market analyst Datamonitor, the prescription nicotine dependence market is set to grow strongly at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16% to reach $4.6 billion by 2016. Nicotine dependence continues to represent a serious public health problem. Indeed, smoking is a major contributor to illnesses such as lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease and stroke, and is one of the world’s leading causes of preventable death.

Datamonitor estimates that nicotine dependence affects almost 116 million individuals across the seven major markets (7MM) – France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, UK and US – in 2007, says Datamonitor central nervous system (CNS) analyst Charlotte Mackey. “Despite the currently high prevalence of nicotine dependence, evidence suggests that only a small proportion of individuals actively seek help from their primary care physician (PCP).” Imagine the statistics, in India, in proportion, if the US and most of Europe account for 116 million people! The adoption of nicotine patches is unheard of in India and I can”t begin to think of anyone consulting their doctor if they wanted to quit. The corresponding costs in healthcare that the smoking pandemic in India will cause in the immediate future makes me shudder!

Traditionally, January is the time of the year a lot of people resolve to quit smoking. I know it can be done as I finally managed to do it an year ago after 2 previous failed attempts, so can you; in the process saving yourself a lot of agony, time, money and health related problems, besides mitigating your colleagues, friends, family and loved ones from passive smoking. I have no doubt that it will also boost your avenues as a more effective and successful PR Professional by far, so quit now while you are ahead!

The weather in Mumbai or Bombay as I tend to yet and maybe always will refer to it is amazing. For those interested in the weather, the best time to be here is from November through February.

As I look outside the window, around me the madness continues. No one has noticed the weather. When I moved back to Bombay, my adopted home from Bangalore earlier this year, the weather was the last thing on my mind. The excitement of the rubber hitting the road again in a sell side assignment is what was floating my boat. That the traffic in Bangalore is arguably and notionally more crap may have entered my mind.

Where am I taking you with this? Well, simply: Where would I rather work today, Agency or Client? For years, it has been the path of exodus from PR or Advertising or other MarComms agencies to Client or Buy side roles. Traditional wisdom seems to suggest that moving to a client role has been the staple ambition of most communications or marketing interns, a larger aspiration seemingly bordering on the infinite.

This traditional wisdom translated and still does to considering client side roles as better paying; better working conditions, standard industry best practices in HR and Benefits policy. Salary surveys and this image of the make-doer being higher up the food chain than the doer. Add to that legend, cult chatter and imagined greatness to make a heady mirage of desire and aspiration, to my mind the only other comparable oversold silver bullet solution to bliss is marriage!

So you made it to the buy side with an unbelievable hike. Congratulations. First move, I know what’s best, this agency sucks; fire the Agency! One year and two agencies later, all agencies still suck. “My budget is crap, no one understands my vision, and the boss is an idiot“. The cycle moves downstream from confusion; frustration; denial; pragmatism; cynical submission and points further. Slowly the cognitive realization of the existence of other traditional company functions like Finance, HR, Corporate Planning & Strategy, Sales, and Quality dawns, besides of course Marketing into which a traditional PR or Communications or MarComms function will report.

If I sense defiance and a few backs getting up already lets up the ante a bit; imagine reporting into Sales or its often interchangeable euphemism - Sales & Marketing or worse HR! Politics assumes a new meaning and such things as annual budgeting (read begging, negotiating, storming out of meetings and sometimes even threatening to leave are usual tricks). Empire building and head count become the corner stones of all calculation!

The news isn’t all bad, happy things include a PR Firm to flog (depending on how fat this company is lets add an advertising agency, a web agency, a media buyer, an investment relations firm and so on) on retainer who you usually never call before 7pm with new requirements to be delivered first thing in the morning. End-of-day (EOD) and close-of-business (COB) and other similar dire abbreviation start peppering your e-mail. The tyrant in you starts to surface and the latent evil becomes apparent. Alarming surveys and such non-issues at most agency jobs such as consumer media preferences in the internet age start factoring on your radar!

So you think you should be one down from the corner room and the place of Communications and PR is at the Board Table along side the CEO or MD, that’s good, Bombay weather remains amazing, no one has noticed.

So what’s happened here? From being, ‘the Business’, you have suddenly been relegated to a “Support function”. Yes, you got paid better, probably drive a car now instead of the old faithful motorcycle or a better car if you already had one, and live in a slightly more up market location. You’ve acted wisely, have decided to get married, have a child or two, settled down and become and EMI lifer too, the hours are better, it’s all coming together!

What is this thing that makes agencies more passionate, creative power houses that function on the cutting edge of innovation? I took a call and moved back to the agency end of things, there are good days and there are bad days but I am having a lot of fun…so far that is!

There are arguments for and against and while the jury is out on that one.

I leave it there for you folks to start a debate with your views. I would love to hear what you people out there in the PR Agency or Sell Side/Client or Sell Side or combination thereof in cyberspace think about being a doer or a make doer!

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india

This post is specifically dedicated to young professionals in Public Relations who in the years to come will be the change agents for the industry

I am someone who not so long back, made the transition from a PR student to a Public Relations professional (yes PR to Public Relations ) . From attending endless sessions on “what is a press release”, “what are the 5 must-dos for a press briefing”, to more exciting prospects of real-life work experience at an internship to the final placement week, I have been through the regim of any average communication student.

While I am not the right person to speak about the improvement areas for PR academia, I feel there are gaps between what one is taught in a communication school to what the ground realities at work are. In this post, I have shared some thoughts based on my experiences as a young professional –

1. Press briefing, press release, newsletter are NOT Public Relations only Public Relations tools. While we learn what they are, it is also important to know, why do we need them in the first place? How will they help us meet the objective that we have set for the client
2. One of the faculty at our communication college used to say – “it’s a big bad corporate world out there” and nearly made us feel that we were not “prepared” to take-on the expectations of this world. I have come to believe that the world will remain as “bad” as well allow it to be. Yes, we need to be aware about the rigor that our role demands. But when it comes to client expectations, they cannot be static views and the process needs participants from both ends
3. Publicity is a component of Public Relations and not a synonym for Public Relations. We often see a cynicism creep in among the younger lot who feel, “if the client has hired us to get coverage, that’s our job, how do we do anything besides that”? I think we can address this by just constantly asking ourselves, how else I can deliver value to my client. Isn’t the entire logic of having a 3rd party counsel you, based on the fact that it offers an unbiased and often a unique insight into the situation? I think the first task for us is to have that faith, that a) it IS our job to think of such unique insights b) it may require personal initiative from our end , to drive the needle of client/media perception and that it is worth the effort
4. Myth - Since Public Relations is a more operational function, you can learn it only at work place. There is no theory, no one can teach you Public Relations. During our college days, I remember our advertising and media-planning friends nod heads intently about the GRP/TRP jargon and sneer at the “how do you deal with media” sort of classroom sessions. What I have come to realise at the workplace is that understanding the value of “reputation”, is not an inborn talent that each of us are gifted with. It is something that requires a fair amount of theoretical introspection backed by practical understanding. I certainly did not read Edward Bernays during college and did not know that crisis communication is not just about reading a case study on Tylenol and Johnson & Johnson
5. (Since there was so much heart-burn about this issue during college, let me end with my two cents about it :)) The difference between advertising and Public Relations is not so much about being paid-for and free mode of communication as much about functioning in a controlled environment (advertising) and learning to function in an environment lacking control (Public Relations). As I recollect one of my friends say, “in advertising, once scheduled, only a natural disaster can stop your press insertions from appearing next day. In Public Relations, the environment is dynamic and reactions/actions from stakeholders are difficult to predict.

Photo Source: www.schoolsafety.us

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india