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!

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!

We launched the India PR Jobs Board six months back and since then, there have been 25 job postings, more than 4000 views, and more than 150 applications.

The most popular posting was that of CMCG India on Aug 30, 2007 that was viewed 175 times and had 18 candidates applying for the job. The second was of K2 Communications on July 25, 2007 that was viewed 123 times and had 11 candidates applying for that job. The third most popular job posting was from brand-comm on Oct 30, 2007. It was viewed 112 times and 12 candidates applied for that job.

Some of the other organisations that have used the job board so far are LINOpinion, 20:20 MEDIA, Dag Communications, Text 100, Aarohan Communications, RockeTalk, P’zahn Consultants, India News Communications Ltd., Finesse PR, Corporate Voice | Weber Shandwick, Imprimis Life, PRHub, and IPAN.

Not bad. But it could have been better.

When we launched this job board, we focus more on HR professionals from PR agencies and corporates to post jobs and mails were sent out to them. We missed out one important player community in the whole job recruitment mix in India - i.e. the HR consultants/ or the recruitment specialists in independent firms. Many of these HR consultants today handle accounts of PR agencies and they are the ones looking for PR candidates pro actively.

If we look at how a recruitment works in a typical PR agency, the HR guy would focus more on internal stuff and simply outsource most of the recruitment to a HR consultant and also rely a bit on employee referral. Of course in some agencies, many of the HR professionals do the recruitment lead generation themselves.

So this is the official call from India PR Blog to all HR consultants/recruitment specialists looking out for PR professionals, content writers, event management professionals, and the like. People, please feel free to post all PR and related jobs out here.

India PR Jobs Board is an experimental free job board started by the India PR Blog to list available public relations and related jobs in India (in agencies and corporate communication departments).

This job board highlights PR job vacancies as posted by the HR/contact persons of PR agencies and corporates or by those who need the services of a PR professional/freelancer for short-term projects. These posts are available at the job board’s independent url, or through the combined India PR Blog RSS feed, or when readers subscribed to this blog on their email, thus accessible to hundreds of PR professionals across the country reading this blog.

More than job recruitment or facilitation service, take this as a social community of recruiters and candidates in the PR industry.

How do you add a new job posting - Click the orange color ‘Post a Job’ button at the top right hand side of the job board’s page. On the web form opened up, fill up the details, follow the instructions, and you are done. Preview your job posting before finalising it. There is a preview button on the job form page.

You can check out the FAQs and tips on posting here.

Image credit: http://www.job.co.nz/

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india HR HR India PR Jobs

Finesse PR has an opening for one PR executive for its Delhi office. See the job details at the PR jobs board.

A brief on Finesse PR

“Set up in December 2000, Finesse PR is a full service communications consultancy headquartered at Delhi.
Finesse PR has its South office at Hyderabad and representations at Mumbai and Kolkata.

Finesse PR is managed by experienced Public Relations and Finance professionals and ably supported by a host of experienced professionals from fields as diverse as Media, Travel and Tourism, Architecture, Interiors, Marketing, Processed Food, IT & Telecom and Finance.

Finesse PR has senior Bureaucrats and Specialists from the taxation and food-processing fields as consultant on board. Critical level of contacts in the bureaucracy, industry and media ensures that relevant information inflow never stops.

The Consultancy advises clients on Public Relations, Brand, Image and Reputation Management. The provision of expert and objective analysis and advice and access to a pool of resources is a part of our PR offering. ”

Comment from India PR Blog

While Finesse PR is relatively newer PR agency, it still commands a name when we talk of PR agencies in Delhi and can be competitive in the media relations service space.

View Finesse PR’s website

Click here to go to Finesse PR’s job posting

Post a job on the India PR job board.

(This is the fifth and final of the ‘first 5′ PR agencies to post on the PR job board. From now on, please subscribe to the India PR Blog RSS feed or the email subscription (see right-hand sidebar) to get notified of the latest job postings on the board. Thanks to all the 5 agencies for supporting this initiative by taking the lead in using the board.)

Imprimis Life PR is looking for 2 Managers and 1 Executive for its Mumbai office. Visit the India PR Jobs board to view the job and contact details.

About Imprimis Life PR

Imprimis Life is one of India’s fastest growing public relations firm with an exclusive focus on Life sciences, social development and related sectors. The offerings, methodologies and expertise evolved by us in these sectors, over the better part of a decade, enable us to provide highly specialised services in our areas of operation.

Headquartered in New Delhi, Imprimis Life has a nation wide network of 12 fully owned offices, with associates in more than 20 cities. Its affiliation with Hill and Knowlton, one of the top five international public relations and public affairs firms in the world ensures international reach and benchmarking. It also has formed associations with industry giant Ruder Finn, effectively extending our reach further across the region and the globe.

Comment from India PR Blog

Imprimis Life PR is part of the Perfect Relations group and specialises in providing healthcare PR services. If you are passionate about healthcare, medicine, life sciences, biotechnology, and the kind; this can be a good brand to get associated with and to hone your knowledge skills in the healthcare domain.

Visit the Imprimis Life PR site.

Click here to go the Imprimis Life PR’s job posting.

Click here to post a new job to the India PR Blog job board.

PRHUB requires PR managers, executives, and entry-level professionals for its offices at Chennai, Bangalore, New Delhi, and Mumbai. Read the job details and contact information at the India PR Jobs.

A brief about PRHUB
“Founded in late 2000, PRHUB initially started as a media relations firm with a technology focus.

Towards early 2004 the firm reinvented itself as an Integrated Communications Consultancy and Services firm to be able to significantly engage clients and provide them with higher value. Simultaneously we expanded the focus sectors to education, healthcare, entertainment and professional services among others.

Mid-2004, we set upon ourselves a mission of geographic expansion, which has seen us setting up an office in Chennai. We also have an independent consultant based out of Delhi and are in the exploration stage for the third office, which should be up by late 2005.

Having attained a certain momentum and scale, we are now actively looking at scaling further and moving onto the next level.”

Comment from India PR Blog
PRHUB is a fast-growing PR agency, popular in south India, and spreading its wings to other parts of the country as well.

Visit PRHUB’s website.
Click here to go to PRHUB’s job profile page.
Click here to create a job post on the India PR job board.

This is the second entry at the India PR job board. There are openings at the Corporate Voice Weber Shandwick’s Bangalore office for PR professionals with 1-8 years of experience. See the full job description at the India PR Jobs.

A brief review of Corporate Voice Weber Shandwick

Corporate Voice|Weber Shandwick is a joint venture with Weber Shandwick, one of the world’s leading global public relations firms. In 2006, Weber Shandwick was named Large PR Firm of the Year (PR News U.S.), European Consultancy of the Year (The Holmes Report) and Network of the Year (Asia Pacific PR Awards). The firm also won the United Nations Grand Award for outstanding achievement in public relations.

Weber Shandwick was ranked number one in PRWeek’s 2007 Agency Excellence Survey on overall client satisfaction, likelihood to recommend the agency, likelihood to rehire the agency, and key performance ratings.

In India, Corporate Voice|Weber Shandwick offers varied PR services across verticals that include consumer, technology, travel and hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing, automotive and others. It is headquartered at Bangalore with branch offices at New Delhi and Mumbai.

Comment from India PR Blog

Good brand to work with and one of the leading PR agencies in the Indian PR industry. The Weber Shandwick client servicing and documentation protocols can be a good exposure to global PR practices for employees.

Read what Melissa Arulappan, Corporate Voice Weber Shandwick Bangalore, writes about the Indian PR industry at the PRWeek Global Account Blog.

Visit Corporate Voice|Weber Shandwick’s website.

Click here to go to Corporate Voice|Weber Shandwick’s job profile page.

Click here to create a job post on the India PR job board.

(Three more PR agencies will be reviewed at the India PR Blog’s main page after which all new job postings can be subscribed through this blog’s RSS feed or though email - please see box at top left corner of this page)

IPAN, one of the leading and oldest PR agencies in India, has posted the first job post on the new India PR job board.

You can view a summary of the job on the job board homepage. To see more contact details of IPAN and how to contact them for these job vacancies, you can click on the headline of the post there.

To make things more informative and easier for readers, I decided to add briefs on the first 5 companies that post on the board.

Below is a brief of IPAN for you to understand the agency more.

About IPAN

Founded in 1987, IPAN is the oldest consulting firm in the PR and public affairs business in India. It is fully owned by JWT and is a unit of WPP, the leading communications conglomerate. In its two decades of existence, IPAN has done cutting edge work for top corporations, both Indian and multinational. Headquartered in New Delhi, it has offices in Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Kochi. IPAN’s history is rich with long-term relationships—with employees, clients, business associates and the media. IPAN has India’s most comprehensive news monitoring infrastructure. It is also the exclusive Indian affiliate of Business Wire International.

Current Clients

IPAN’s current client list includes Citi, Unilever, Goldman Sachs, the Swatch Group, Continental Airlines, ITC, Castrol, Turner Broadcasting, Home Box Office, Berger Paints, GE Money, HP ProCurve, The Blackstone Group, Beam Global, Delphi, CRY, ESPN, USAID, Reebok, Kingfisher Airlines, Monsanto, Monster, Fidelity and the Murugappa Group, among others.

On Culture/ philosophy

“At IPAN, we encourage mutual respect as the defining principle of corporate conduct. We take an intelligent, culturally aware approach to public relations. We lay great emphasis on quality standards and deliverables. Our teams provide an attractive blend of youthful energy and mature perspectives. We share a healthy professional relationship with the media, something that is unparalleled in the industry. Overall, it is a fun place to work in.”

Comments from the India PR Blog

IPAN has been in news lately for signing up a number of new clients. IPAN enjoys a credible brand name in the market being one of the oldest and as an intelligent and sophisticated PR services provider.

Visit IPAN’s website.

Click here to go to IPAN’s job profile page.

Click here to create a job post on the India PR job board.

UPDATE JULY 13, 2007: IMPORTANT - New PR job board url - http://jobs.indiaprblog.com/

This is a new experiment called the ‘PR Jobs’.

What is it exactly?

PR Jobs is an experimental free job board started by the India PR Blog to list available public relations and related jobs in India (in agencies and corporate communication departments).

This job board highlights PR job vacancies as posted by the HR/contact persons of PR agencies and corporates or by those who need the services of a PR professional/freelancer for short-term projects. These posts are available at the job board’s independent url,or through the combined India PR Blog RSS feed, or when readers subscribed to this blog on their email (see subscription box on the blog’s upper left hand corner), thus accessible to hundreds of PR professionals across the country reading this blog.

More than job recruitment or facilitation service, take this as a social community of recruiters and candidates in the PR industry.

Some more FAQs.

How do you add a new job posting?
Click the orange color ‘Post a Job’ button at the top right hand side of the job board’s page. On the web form opened up, fill up the details, follow the instructions, and you are done. Preview your job posting before finalising it. There is a preview button on the job form page.

UPDATE: Tips on posting a job
Please remember that the job board’s mandate is to help spread your message to the maximum number of potential job candidates. Once that is accomplished, as in from the moment when a potential candidate reads your job posting, it is entirely up to what you write there that will determine whether the candidate decides to contact you or not.

Few tips for recruiters:
1. Please be specific on what and how many job posts you have. Do not waste your job post by writing something that looks like your company website’s Career page - something like ‘we welcome all candidates in all our offices across positions’.

2. Please remember there are other PR agencies posting on the same job board. Ask yourself why should a candidate contact you and not them. There are more PR posts available in the country than there are PR professionals.

3. Please specify last date of applying for a particular job if applicable, so that it is clearer to readers. We would appreciate if you could inform us by dropping an email in case a job position has been filled before the 30-day period. You can post another job after 30 days.

4. Please specify remuneration offered if you think you have the best to offer in your region. Often this is one key factor that will attract many candidates.

5. The more detail you are, the better you can convince someone to shoot you off a resume. Name the clients that you are handling, detail the work profile, work culture, how you work, what your employees say, are your employees happy most of the time or shivering with fear from the top management, is the crowd yuppy/profesional/helpful/cooperative. Does your organisation look like an old government office, late workings or nine to five, Saturdays off or working, what are the fun things that you do in your agency, future growth prospects available. What are the five things that you can offer to a job seeker that other agencies can’t offer - these are things that job seekers look for while searching for new shifts. Maybe you cannot mention all these, take these as a cue.

6. Please do not post if you don’t have a vacancy and just for the heck of posting. Remember, it will not go down well with professionals who are seriously looking for a position. It is like playing with other people’s career. (Please inform the India PR Blog of any abuse in the system)

There are already dozens of job portals already. Why is this different?

This will cater to a very niche audience – PR professionals in India (and maybe later abroad) - so that recruiters don’t get dozens of irrelevant resumes coming in to their mailboxes. Also nobody comes in between a recruiter and potential candidate and there is no fee. The job board does the work of a plain notice board through which employers are able to highlight their requirements to potential candidates.

Will it be worthwhile using this job board to recruiters and PR professionals?

…for recruiters

Over the last one year since it came into existence, this blog has developed a community of more than 700 (UPDATE : 776 as of today July 13, 2007) email subscribers, and more than a 150 RSS feed subscribers and increasing. These include PR professionals in India and across the globe, media professionals, marketers, and bloggers. The blog is read by PR professionals across all leading PR agencies in India. The blog also comes out among the top 3-5 search results on any PR and India related terms in online searches including in Google, Yahoo, and MSN. So leveraging on this community without incurring any cost to the company can be a good way to meet your employee requirements.

UPDATE: This new job board provides the option to post your job simultaneously on popular sites such as Google, Google Base, Simply hired, Indeed, SimplyHired, Oodle, Edgeio, Vast, OLX, Bixee, and HotJobs - thus giving you tons of exposure opportunities of your messages. You can see the details on the job post form. Any problem with the form? Drop us a one liner.

…for PR professionals

Eventually as this board becomes more and more popular and PR agencies and corporates begin to post their job requirements on this board, this board will become one central place where you can see and analyse all the job opportunities available in the PR industry.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog, or subscribe to the blog on your email see subscription box on the blog’s upper left hand corner)so that that you get an email notification of every new job posting on this board. This will ensure that you get updated on all new posts, new PR events listings, and new PR jobs listings. Of course you can subscribe to the job board’s individual feed if you want, but I’d recommend the combined feed as mentioned above. Current subscribers need not do anything.

UPDATE: You can send an email to the recruiter directly if there is an email mention in the job description box. Otherwise please click the ‘apply to this job’ button that will take you to a web form. Please note that India PR Blog does not get to see what you write in that web form. All the information go directly to the email that the recruiter has specified.

How far can this go?

It depends on the interest level shown by the industry. The job board can eventually grow into a good database of PR jobs across India, or just simply close down next month if it is not working.

Some rules?

All posts by recruiters will be moderated for quality. No, I’m not saying I’ll exclude less paying jobs. What this means is that all spam will be removed. Also, please do not post more any job repeatedly in the board. A post will remain on the job board for 30 days. It would be nice if somebody can drop me a mail if a right candidate has been found and a job posting is no longer valid. Also, please do not post any vacancy just for the sake of posting. Post only when there is a genuine opening.

Any disclaimer?

Yes. India PR blog does not take responsibility of any job posting on this board and all responsibilities are with the recruiters who post the particular job openings. The job board just provides a common platform and the blog does not take any part between the interactions of recruiters and candidates. Candidates should contact the recruiters mentioned on each job post directly. Please inform any abuse or write us any suggestion at hh@indiaprblog.com