I always wish to hear these kind of statements from journalists….but alas, The Pursuit of Happiness continues. Friends, how many times has this statement ruined your day, your week or perhaps your month? Allow me to share a heartbreaking tale about a young aspirant who always had something to look forward to.

“There was a young man who went by the name of Jack. Everyday he attended his daily chores like going to media rounds, doing extensive media mapping, effectively sending out extremely simple reports in the approved rocket science formats, etc. One fine day, he thought that Client Goddess has finally seen all his sincerity and hard work and she herself called him up and told him exactly what he expected.

With his trembling hands, he held on to the phone. His heart filled with delight and glee on listening to the beautiful sound in which Goddess said…Wow!!! Now that’s a front page story. She explained how she expected more out of him but still ready to relieve the pressure so that he wouldn’t have to work like an ass to gain her blessings. She gave him a story idea which would work like magic with his journalist comrades (soon to be enemies). He would be able to get front page stories and play with toys and would be pioneer, a statesman in his contemporary DNA age.”

Unfortunately for our new to the club Jack, he was unable to use this magic formula for the betterment of his environment and save his world using the marvelous story idea. Jack still had to work like an ass for this story idea to please this Client Goddess.

On numerous occasions I’ve witnessed my bosses shivering on thinking of a suitable reply to be given to the client which is always eventually based on truth…”Boss, this is not a good story idea or event, I don’t see any coverage coming out of it”. But they have unfortunately inherited a phobia or to never say ‘no’ as soon as they got into the industry. The differences is that they think they have become a Ghandivadi of the PR industry by following this practice. There are so many things that we work day in and day out without even realising the amount of time and energy positioned on something which will help us derive very very special and worthy snippets. We can do something really substantial with all our time spent on these mindless, meaningless pitching and give some real PR value to our clients.

Smash!!! I love what I wrote in the above line. It’s really good, but if only we are allowed to. Anyways, being a PR professional, I am trained to carry & boast alternatives. Let me now site some typical examples which we are regularly tangled:

1. Corporate Social Responsibility: Corporates, I am aware how important it is to practice CSR. You develop good relations with all intended target audiences. It helps you to gain a good hand with the government. Investor relations are kept in good spirit as you are contributing to the society. Consumers understand that you, out of many, think about the common man and they are happy. Yes all good but doing a CSR activity every month….I mean let somebody else be the saint. The catastrophic phenomenon has been around since 4/5 years now. Let’s see some perspective with this aspect.

In a meeting the client shares with me and my boss.

Client: “…..(name not published on request)……, we are coming up with this new thing and its very environment friendly, it would aim to teach students as well. Yes I do admit that other corporate have also moved in this stride but we’ve observed they have involved less no. of students and we are involving many more. I understand the idea is not new but we plan to invest in this for five years. So we want good coverage around this”.

Observe the responses to the info shared by the client. My thoughts on the responses and comments in bracket:

“Oh that sounds of wonderful. (Without realizing it my boss has given a new meaning to the word wonderful). I don’t think we should have a problem in implementing a strategized plan on this. Although this is not a new idea (no stone is left unturned in terms of CSR ideas), we’ll still be able to derive some coverage out of it. Why isn’t it, Saurabh?”

And that’s it,,,, my world just collapses on this last statement.

Friends please excuse the sarcasm. The point I am trying to make is about always trying to explain to your clients how important it is to practice high-scale impactful CSR otherwise it’s of no use. Ideas like teaching a couple of underprivileged kids, growing a couple of trees are always good for an individualistic value appreciation but not at all meaningful from a corporate perspective. Still I do understand the unaided situation that many of us land in with persistent clients. For those kind of clients give a suggestion to club around 2-3 CSR initiatives and turn that around into a profiling opportunity. Some columns that should be able to suffice your clients and help you are:

a. The Economic Times, Career and Business life page
b. Business Standard, Social Enterprise Page.
c. The Financial Express, Corporate Voice

2. Appointments: Another one of those highly demanded properties that our respectful clients vouch for to be an easy placement. Unless it’s a CEO or a president of a big corporate, movements and appointments are hard to be placed even with amazing media relations. It would not be surprising that one of our clients asks us to get coverage on a change in its security setup.

Trying to offer and combine the appointment news with financial numbers and investment to increase the news value might surely help derive more out of the simple appointment news.

3. Product announcements: No, I don’t mean the launch of a bike, a car, a big pharma drug. I am talking about going through the horror of launching a completely advanced GSM paper. A breakthrough in the contemporary unfortunately not covered by any paper. Sometimes this also happens. The best thing to do in these situations is target the trade media. The trick might be to convince your clients for concentrating on special relationship building meetings and not seeing it though a coverage point of view. Convince him from the more futuristic view. These meetings always help in creating a pipeline for stories.

4. Advertising and marketing campaigns: Not too long ago I was asked to give a PR plan on my client’s small sponsorship in a big rock festival. Ya, I know you are thinking, this is just impossible. No client can be this unreasonable. Well, I was among you all who think in this fashion. Now I am a PR professional. Get it. What do you do in these situations? Well nothing, you can do some industry story participation on the subject but apart from that nothing.

We should all thank the afaqs, exchange4media, indiantelevision, and indiainfoline of the world who can come for our rescue in situations like these.

5. International News: Well, at least most of our clients are sensible enough not too expect anything out of these sorts. But for some select who suffer from this phobia as well I’ll try to give an alternative. It should be relatively easy to acquire a fair amount of coverage in case of a big international collaboration or a big international corporate setting up in India, but for the rest of them, work out a regular dispatch of information to the media without pushing for coverage on it. Suggest your client to be in regular touch with the media with an informative newsletter, which would also help you to monitor and be abreast of your client’s industry.

My apologies to all who religious expect this blog’s horizon to be very serious and always giving gyaans. This post is about an opinion and how we should ideally tackle all the tricky mud holes our clients create for us. I would expect some valuable additions to it as well.

Client meet: the two words which mean life or death for PR professionals

Don’t take the above statement as an exaggeration of sorts. It is a fact. There are times when we reach for a client meeting well before time and the contrary when we dread going to them. I’ve seen my boss pray for not having to attend a client meet after a flop show (Of course he tried to do it in private but I saw his folded hands unfortunately). The anxiety of explaining the outcomes of an event or a release can be similar to facing God and explaining your wrong actions (the latter is still better, believe me). However listed below are a few tips, in no particular order, that PR Professionals should try to remember in case of client meets.

1. Decide the objectives for the Meeting: Set objectives before the meeting!

One should always be focused on setting the meeting objectives. If you don’t find any reasons to do this, your meeting can shift focus and you’ll end up discussing a completely different affair & reach to a ….well no conclusion. While setting the meeting objectives one should keep in mind all things he/she wants to achieve out of the meeting.

One benefit of setting objectives for the meeting is to help you plan the meeting. The more concrete your meeting objectives, the more focused your agenda will be. A second important benefit of having specific objectives for each meeting is that you have a concrete measure against which you can evaluate that meeting. Were you successful in meeting the objectives? Why or why not? Is another meeting required? Setting meeting objectives allows you to continuously improve your effective meeting process.

2. Be well informed

Yes, anther one of those cliché gyans that you come across regularly. However this is one of those rare points that is not strictly checked on irrespective of its significance. We should always be bang on with our client’s progress in the recent times. The one thing that surely impresses the client is your knowledge/ comprehension about his business along with knowledge of the industry on a whole.

3. Be Organized

A very significant etiquette in this context is to be organized when going to a client meeting. One should be equipped with a point agenda to be discussed at a client meet. It is advisable to carry recent coverage dockets and referable handouts for the meeting. This helps us PR professional in various aspects.

The most important aspect of being a perfect PR professional is our presentation qualities. This skill sets us apart not only on an individualistic but this is a certain differential which gives PR its uniqueness. The way one presents himself/herself at a meeting sets the tone or the balance of the meeting.

4. Agenda

Provide all participants with an agenda before the meeting starts. The agenda would include a brief description of the meeting objectives & a list of the topics to be covered. When you send the agenda, you should include the time, date and location of the meeting and any background information participants will need to know to hold an informed discussion on the meeting topic. What’s the most important thing you should do with your agenda? Follow it closely!

5. Be sensible, be safe

In my school days, I still remember my teacher repetitively advising me to ask as many questions as possible (although my teacher’s wish went unfulfilled, as my comprehension of her subject failed to support me), this rule however does not apply to our industry. Internally one has the complete liberty to be as naive as per our wish. However incase of a client meeting one should not speak until & unless it’s a noteworthy comment or suggestion. We set an impression on people by our comments. I am not advising anyone to go in a shell and not participate at all but just that when one does choose to participate he/she should be equipped with all the facts before addressing any topic.

6. Anticipate questions as if you anticipate crisis

The first lesson of crisis management is anticipation. There are times when client meets have to be visualized as crisis and have to be dealt with accordingly. Anticipate all possible queries and issues to be addressed in meeting. Do this exercise while going for the meeting. Yes follow this routine while on the way to the client’s office.

One should never give importance to specific meetings which only includes high officials from client side. Every meeting is equally important and one should always be prepared for them. So, we should follow this exercise for every meeting.

7. POA: Don’t conclude any meeting without deciding on the plan of action

Don’t finish any discussion in the meeting without deciding the action on it

Before leaving the meetings make sure that the client is satisfied with the discussion. Also make sure that the points or plan of action discussed is properly understood with both the parties. There should be no ambiguity with any point discussed in the meeting.

‘Time is Money’ the golden rule which I find to be coherent for our industry. We should be able to take action on the points discussed as quickly as possible. No matter how easy going or non demanding the client is documents in form of MOMs (Minutes of the meetings) should always reach to the client after every meeting.

These were the few pointers for client meetings, although debatable and certainly extendable.

Recently I was having a conversation with some industry colleagues. Among them was a new intern who majored from IIMC and who was not so satisfied with her first experiences with practical PR in an agency. She said she often feels like a telecaller who gives unsolicited phone calls, selling stuffs to uninterested and rude customers. Her products were stories of her clients and her customers were the journalists whom she was calling.

She continued that her professors at IIMC had warned everyone that theoretical PR and practical PR would be a bit different from each other. But what they failed to warn was these two run in parallel - never to meet.

That was bad. I thought. If the PR industry compels freshers to go out of steam in the first few months, how many bright minds are we going to lose to other industries in the coming years and how many are we actually going to groom well? I tried explaining her a few bits why she should not think of her job in that way, which I am trying to recollect here, and I am sure many can help me out here.

Let’s do a bit of analysis. PR students in the course of their studies read about Edward Bernays, Ivy Lee, and their theories, build teams and construct PR campaigns in their project work, read case studies of the best and worst of PR, and listened to all the lectures of seasoned professors. By the time they majored, they have developed high expectations and are all geared up. But what do they get?

When these students become the young PR professionals in an agency, they are suddenly the junior most of the team. They get to work on activities like making media monitoring reports, weekly reports, follow-up with journalists who often are not so supportive. Many of these activities just appear so mundane and truly things that can be done by any class 12 student. Their dreams come crashing and they think- I have to change the line.

Is this what has been happening?

But for the time being, let’s suppose indeed this is what happens typically. But then young professionals need to understand that everybody has gone through the grind and everybody needs to in order to become mature professionals.The same logic of many great marketing professionals starting out as sales people might apply here.

Often in these so called ‘mundane’ jobs, we learn the finer nuances of the art of PR and discover little secrets for ourselves that we can use for the rest of our career. For instance, if someone is making media monitoring reports for the automobile industry, by the end of six months or so, he/she would have automatically figure out a lot of information and up-to-date knowledge about what’s happening in that particular sector. Imagine doing this for other sectors. By a year or two, how many sectors can one keep abreast of? Documentation skills are also very important in the PR profession. All the monitoring and weekly reports are geared to help one with that. Following up on journalists for months will teach one how to speak in 10 seconds that can grab attention.

Then there is the complaint of theoretical and practical PR differences. Though in early years it sounds like there is a mismatch between what one has learn and what one is doing in an agency. But later on, having a sound theoretical knowledge will always prove to be advantageous. We have to take the theories as a good foundation. And when the foundation is strong, we can create anything we want and the possibilities are not limiting. So for example, when one starts doing a brainstorming and explanation of PR to clients, you know what you are talking about and is not limited to just what you have experienced in an agency.

Earlier I wrote a piece on 10 things a young PR professional should learn before finishing an internship. I think PR interns should focus on these activities and try to get the most of their internships. If they are just made to do one particular activity, they can always ask for variety.

Now that I have said all that I want to say, it looks like I have put everything on the young intern. Sounds like a crafty agency person! Let me also write this that agencies hiring interns have as much responsibility in grooming young professionals and in bringing out fine professionals for the industry. There should be some genuine intent towards this cause rather than equating interns as cost effective short-term solutions. If all agencies start doing their bit, we wouldn’t have so much attrition problem as we are having now.

I was in at the Bangalore’s Forum Mall when I got the first call about the bomb blasts behind it in Madiwala. Having grown up during the time when Punjab insurgency was at its height and traveling through Delhi was a hurdle race through checkposts, the Bangaloreans (is there such an entity?) response to the Friday happenings was interesting. There was not even a controlled aggression visible on the faces of the security staff of the Mall. I actually walked back into the Mall a second time to put up a ticket I left in the PVR vending machine and voila this time I dint even pass through the metal detector because the Security Staff was checking with the public on where the next blast had been reported by ?? (TV or radio). The next blast was somewhere near Adugodi, a close by area.

By telling you all this my intention is not to eulogize how I proverbially escaped etc etc or lament the internal security situation in India (homeland security as the Americans call it), Im building up to a point which for all of us in Communications is a gold mine to debate - Does India have a Crisis Communications Policy? Isnt it time we did?

Worldwide and in India, the Industry has by far been quick to grasp that while management of a crisis is critical, the advance alerts or post crisis response has communication at its core making it one of the key factor of “to what extent” the crisis impacts the stakeholders. When we speak of National or state level crisis, these stakeholders are us – the common wo/man.

I spent years in newspapers and amongst other beats buried my nose into the power sector to understand why all the MW produced did not reach the consumers and YET s/he paid for the entire power production and WHY therefore the power company was answerable to the people for its process management. Part of this process was T& D losses and some of this was attributable to those next to the consumers house who hooked onto power lines to steal it without paying! This consumer when told so could be galvanised to protect and report power theft!

This experience has come really handy in understanding the skill of mass communications and I now believe that the credibility of the source of Communication is a subject worth a study - be it a corporate or a country. Even after hours of whatever was happening over the past weekend whether you were in Ahmedabad, Bangalore or Surat, the main source of information was the media / journalists and some tidbits here and there on Crisis Management by local authorities. What and where was the citizens credible / believable / actionable source of information? Till today some TV channels in Karnataka continue to insist that the blasts left 2 dead and most others put the number at 1.

A few months back, the Computer Society of India, was doing an issue on ICTs and asked me to author one of the articles. In writing that my attempt was to extrapolate learnings in the Industry and investigate if the corporate processes can be juxtaposed to how a country and its management communicates with its stakeholders, specifically during a crisis. In this article I alluded to a model that can be implemented by the top management of the Business House (India) and its Strategic Business Units (States). I just got to know that the magazine was published and therefore feel at liberty to discuss that idea in this forum as well.

At the heart of such a model are the same few questions that chief communication officers in companies ask their managements when penning crisis communication manuals.

Scenario build up - Kinds of Crisis experienced in the past and feared for the future (both for India & SBUs)
Designated Spokespersons and Chief spokesperson who are credible and their call to action is heeded to by stakeholders

Types of stakeholders in each crisis

Channels of communication to reach the stakeholders

Human Networks to use when ICTs (Information Communication technologies) fail as they almost always do in a natural disaster

Understand the holding statement concept

Who prepares and who contributes to the holding statement

Practice runs at frequent intervals of the crisis scenarios …

A potential draft of such a policy lies in the answers to the above questions and in the article I answered each head assuming that the Corporate in question is India, the Strategic Business Units were the States and the chief communication officer was myself. All answers were based on the assumption that Ive not been debriefed yet by the nation’s CEO or the SBU units but I’m building answers to the questions through intelligent hypothesis.

I can’t reproduce the article here but I hope I’m able to convey that such a model can be built for India – more efficiently if bigger brains than yours or mine go to work on it. In fact quite possible that this is being done somewhere but as a citizen if I look at what communication reached me over the weekend, its obviously not yet in place. Take for example the city of my current domicile, Bangalore, I as a citizen don’t know who to believe when reasons are enlisted on what happened to my mobiles on Friday at 3 PM - when the somebody tells me that mobile phone operators jammed the signals post the blasts so that people couldn’t spread rumors, I believe it. When others say the cell phone were jammed because Police wanted to stop miscreants from triggering live bombs using mobiles as possible detonators, I nod and almost believe it. The easy answer we all know as citizens is that the cell network was jammed because panicky citizens were trying to check on each others safety but then that’s “so obvious” an answer that you would say nahhhh! Quite possible its the Crisis Management Standard Operating Procedure given out to service providers but do I know this ? No. Maybe its top secret confidential modus operandi that a citizen needn’t know about but do I know that or have heard about it? No.

Take another example of credible spokesperson . Lets assume that the Chief Minister of Karnataka is the chief spokesperson whom the citizens of the SBU believe in as its head of management (please don’t drag us into the mindless debate that state chief secretary should be the chief spokesperson since bureaucracy are the real managers!) . What information was coming out from the CMs office at the time – the anchor sitting in Mumbai was asking the Bangalore correspondent about updates and all he had was this - a meeting at 5pm had been convened to take stock of the situation. That’s it. Any advisory for the citizens ? Hmmm..Oh yeah I did hear somebody say that the CM said, “Nothing to worry”. Of course the next day a live bomb was found outside a mall in a flower pot, left by a man in red T shit, which was defused by a bomb squad. Later the media wrote that a cobblers wife clipped the wires which hung by its sides the day before which could possibly have been the reason for it going dead.! I’d love to explain this in detail but its as funny as its sad..all this in India’s IT capital no less

So to cut a long story short, we really need a Crisis Communication Policy in India as we are surely and quickly becoming the eye of the storm..and a crisis hits only once and effects directly or indirectly – after that there is pin drop silence or a deafening noise made by those alive to take stock of what could have been done instead. If the lines between crisis management and crisis communications seem to blur, then they should as the latter is the core of the former and its time we gave it some thought.

I was chatting up with a colleague, who is a part of our four member media team in our office, on blogging and the new PR.

The media team, as we know, plays a big role in large PR agencies where events and crisis happen on multiple clients almost every day. While the client servicing teams need to concentrate on a whole lot of things in servicing an account, the media team can just focus on building relationships with key journalists across the country. So in times of crisis and big events, they can leverage on their networks to value add to the client servicing team.

Now the part that we were discussing was that the media team should now look at PR 2.0 seriously and gear up to equip themselves with knowledge of the blogosphere and start building relationships with key bloggers across the country across verticals and subjects. And why not. Media teams have been building relationships with journalists in the print media, tv, online media, and now social media should be a natural extension. Talk about digitally enhanced media teams.

So are you a media relations expert? If yes, my next questions could be ‘how many bloggers do you know well?’ Knowing and engagibng with bloggers is no longer the perogative of the client servicing person alone.

My question is can the media teams of today adapt themselves to the new challenge (or opportunity), or will  there be a new class of blogger relations teams in agencies? For now, there is just the socal media team that do everything.

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.

It was 1:45 PM and waiting in the school hall was making me very antsy. I watched with steadily rising blood pressure as couples leisurely trooped in for a school session and cursed dad for my on-time fetish and son for his ban on skipping the session option. The session eventually started an hour late and the headmaster thanked the busy parents of high school for attending. Some time later the counselor introduced the concept of the fish philosophy. I had read the book and was all ears but a co-parent nudged my shoulder..”hi! you are working right? must be so busy how come you came for a mid-day meeting?” My “no not really” smile in fact encouraged her to continue “my husband’s sooooo busy,I didn’t even insist he come.”

This time I let out a hmmm so she deflected to the parent on the other side saying, “really how can the school call meetings at 1 PM, it’s the time I’m so busy to which the other lady agreed vigorously adding “Such a problem”. The counselor meanwhile was saying, ” I know you are busy and held up Outlook current issue on do you connect with your child and said “I know we have busy lives but you all must read this article”. By now I was fuming….my friends know me to never use the word and find that I meticulously wean the habitual “busy” people out of my life…but then you would say that’s my problem. It sure is but the purpose of writing this piece is that we all should unravel this Business of being Busy .

In his book Semantic Antics , How and Why words change meaning , Sel Steinmetz says “business” used to refer to being busy, but it gradually broadened to encompass many kinds of occupations. Now it’s fair to ask why don’t take the word at face value. Busy means just that..busy …occupied , not available right now…It’s because of what the word has become…Some use it as a polite brush off, some as a shield as a not available to you to and others just to pay back in the same coin. The most intelligent, creative and busy (dictionary sense) people I know are never ever busy ! They always take calls, they always return calls they can’t take, they always revert on time and almost always have a really good reason to being “busy”, a reason you can empathize with and thus begin to respect their time next time you approach them.

The fish philosophy session was meanwhile on the 3rd value “Play” and the counselor asked “So when did you all have fun last? I whispered to myself 2.20 PM ! ..the parent sitting next to me checked her watch (it was 2:22 PM) and looked at me enquiringly…I just shrugged. Later in the one on one sessions the counselor said, ” I heard what you said.. Did you really have fun ten minutes back?..Yes of course, you were speaking of one of good books I had read..my sms showed a friend trying to frantically reach me and sending vague smileys..the ladies sitting close to me were discussing how busy they were and I found it fun to be ‘free” enough to adsorb all that was happening around despite knowing all the jobs that waited for me back on my desk. ! The counselor gave me such a warm smile I skipped on my way out..

The business of being “BUSY” has occupied my mind forever. On the company Intranet I recently started a discussion string “Volunteering needs free time or a free mind ?” and the sum total was that Busy is a mindset not a state of being..or a mental state a job (or even personal life) keeps you in. For a very long time and even now sometimes I wonder what happens to us that we managers begin throwing “busy” around. Its more important in the context of Communications and Organizational Culture that the word become an anathema. Like Mark Twain said… Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover…And those people who do this i.e explore, dream, discover don’t do so on annual holidays. they do it everyday! Inspiration is all around us , in people ..with whom we are just too busy to interact with.

In the business of public relations, the media often tells us that when they have a query they need answers, we are busy but when we have a plug then we are free to pursue this single point agenda with them for days on end. There is more evidence of the misuse of the word in middle level managers. Last year I was on a compaign to get it off as many people’s daily verbal list as possible and it reflected in one of the articles on HOD skill sets where I then foolish enough to say bluntly. ” Busy is a four letter word! It keeps you away from experiencing people and events which have the capacity to make a positive impact on your professional and personal life. So don’t use it to defend your bad time management. Don’t replace “busy” with “I don’t have the bandwidth”, “I’m snowed under”. Tough job you have so stop whining - you are paid more, so you have more pressure to handle and thus more accountability too.” (you can read full article here)  That was last year. This year I’m more diplomatic primarily because habitually “busy” have very methodically been downgraded from Friends to Acquaintances to a Do I know you at all list. I have all the time in the world to do all the things I want to do…with all those who want to do it with me..

Now the epitabh (sic English) my previous blog entry received too much TRP I would say for a first one in fact led me to think maybe I should have written on a more non controversial topic instead. All that goes in the name of “breaking news” , especially nowadays when the end of life becomes the country’s soap opera, “journalism” generates some very strong emotions which showed up in the feedback.

But that apart most of the feedback tackled different portions of the blog and was generally in agreement, some comments were truly kickstarters to a thought process and Im going to tackle them in some later blogs. One colleague actually equated me in my journalist avatar to a much much senior colleague who truly was …for want of a better term …aweful kind of egoist. It is therefore correct what he said later “what hurts is to see that most of them (journos) make the generic mistake of clubbing all corporate communication professionals in one mould. Like you said there are different types of journos, similarly there are variants in CC professionals too.” Another colleague however says the exact opposite because her mentor used to say the same thing about working with journalists. A very astute colleague is pretty much agreeable with Line function bit and says she is currently heading an experimental pilot communications position which is bogged down by none of the previous process driven parts of the function anymore. Our friend Palin on the other hand is also saying the same thing but not exactly that. The point which I think is worth talking about is the scope of Corporate Communications? What pricesly are the Key Result Areas. What pricesly is the mindset..Lets talk about this in the coming days based on how many people post their curiosity on it

In PR agency workings, client servicing experts would talk about going out for lunches with clients and many other hi-funda things when asked about the best ways to get pally with your client. I won’t go into such advanced details, but focus on two simple day-to-day client contact mediums for an executive or a manager - the phone and the email. What’s the big deal, you’d asked.

Perhaps there’s no big deal. But given that most of the smaller agencies in India (and even some of the big ones) do not have a standardised system of client servicing manual, it’s important for the young PR professionals to know the advantages and disadvantages of both these contact mediums.

Phone -

1. Works well if the client contact is manageable and is the friendly type. You can explain issues and things in proper and in length over the phone than on email.

2. One disadvantage is that you don’t have any written record if things go wrong or the client suddenly turns around.

Email -

1. Many of us in our earlier years tend to think getting into a mobile phone chit-chat everyday with the client will break the ice and help get into a smooth client-agency relationship. Not true for some kinds of clients. If the client contact is the hard-to-please type with unreasonable expectations, make sure your correspondence is more on the mail, copied to his/her boss and yours. On every mail. Why so? Because on the phone, you are more likely to get gobbled up with no very less room for negotiations. For example, if the client contact calls in the morning and asks you to draft a case study and provide it to him/her by the end of the day, demand that she/he send you an email on that. I think most of the unreasonable client demands are done on the phone, hardly on the email. Well, I don’t have any stats to prove it though.

2. Disadvantage is that email is time consuming (writing, sending, receiving, reading), and many clients in particular sectors are not that comfortable with the emailing business.

What do you say? Any more tips. Please share on the comments.

We have just created an India Business Feed on FeedBurner Network in order to aggregate the best business blogs in India and post their updates in a single feed. Blogs chosen are selected basis the influential capability of the individual blogger, quality and frequency of posts, page rank of the blog, number of subscribers, and page views. Over time, we expect to feature more business bloggers on the network.

The objective is to a) provide the readers the best of business bloggers in India in one master feed, and b) help encourage and support business blogging in India. Readers can subscribe to the feed or subscribe to the latest updates on email (check the Daily Network Digest on sidebar of the Network page). On this note, we would appreciate if the member bloggers can use the network badge or BuzzBoost to help highlight posts of fellow bloggers on their blogs.

Membership is through invitation only, though you can email editor@indiaprblog.com with your blog details for consideration.

What is a FeedBurner Network?, Subscribe to India Business Feed,

View Larger Map


This is a group project - A Google map highlighting the PR agencies in Delhi and NCR region. We are also coming up with PR maps of Mumbai and other cities soon.

If you wish to have a certain agency added in the list, please contact any of the India PR Blog authors.