So, what does PR do?

The title may sound so basic and rudimentary – but as an agency who predominantly handle a host of mid-sized clients across the spectrum of the industry, this is so important in our sales pitch.

Many prospects ignore our mails or introduction letters, just because they can’t fathom where exactly PR falls in the grand scheme of the marketing function. So much so that in the midst of many pitches we get confronted by an innocuous – but, we have so many business inquiries from our advertisements already, so, we may not need you.

So, we decided to come out with a cheat sheet to illustrate what exactly is the role of the various agencies that come to pitch in the marketing function.

Here is what we made – feel free to make use of it with any value add in content.

So, what do you guys in PR do?

Off-late, when we feel that there could be ambiguity in the prospects mind as to what our role is, we send out a mail with this cheat-sheet.

In the process, we educate the customer, and also if not we, some other agency can see the benefit of this exercise.

PS – in case the image is not clear, and you would like to have a copy of the sheet, happy to help – please contact me at murali@prhq.in

PR disasters? Put your foot down, how hard?

Put your foot down? walk out?

While most clients do agree with the broad strategy and plan to execute a public relations plan, there are some instances when the going gets tough for a PR agency. These are specific instances where the client side representative givens in to the top leadership of the company (mostly the Managing Director or CEO), and commits to something completely unworkable in terms of results.

Picture this – we as an agency had worked on a public relations plan for a  mid-sized group, that was primarily into consumer goods (FMCG in Indian parlance), with a bit of foot print in some other businesses.

While the going was good in terms of coverage in the target media, the management of the client came up with the idea of conducting a press conference, to coincide with an event – inauguration of a spa, which was another business the client was into.

Somehow, the idea of having a full scale press conference seemed unworkable – from a PR point of view – both the import of the event itself, and the media interest in so far as a presser was concerned.

This was clearly communicated to the client contact, and we had emphatically stated that getting the media to cover the event was fine, but the presser wasn’t a great idea, and was bound to flop.

The rejoinder to that was that the CEO had’nt had an interaction with the media for long, and so, he wished to address the media. When we had suggested that he could rather speak to select journalists, that again was shot down – we were told that the corp comm guy had confirmed to the CEO that they will have a press conference. It boiled down to the EGO of the CEO being managed, by the corp comm person.

The D day came, and as we had forewarned, the press conference was indeed a disaster.

Despite commendable work from our team, which resulted in copious coverage for the clients brands  and their corporate image, when the annual review happened, we were not offered a renewal.

We know well that the primary, rather singular reason was that the CEO’s ego took a beating as he did not see enough media at the press conference.

While handling a client, and managing their media visibility aspirations, how much can you put your foot down to something that will not work? Also, can we, in such a situation, chose to say that, we may not want to handle the client, if they do not heed to field advises? Can assertion border on a threat to walk out of the account, when demands from clients are a tad unreasonable?

Did we crucify Bell Pottinger too fast?

The venerable agency, Bell Pottinger, we all know now, has been consigned to the dustbins of history. Atleast for now it look like that, as the immediate future looks bleak – most clients have walked away. The agency will rest in peace in its present form, but may be there could be a resurrection, with a different name.

All of us in PR know by now, that the Gupta family campaign, conducted the Bell Pottinggers South Africa office, was seen as grossly racist, given the country has a history of racism related issues, which they have coped up with grace and moved on. So, what the PR agency was doing by their #whitemonopolycapital campaign was to open the wounds in a highly sensitive nation. No wonder that the country’s opposition part rushed to complain to the PRCA, UK, where Bell Pottinger is head-quartered.

But, was it right for the PRCA per se, and most of us in the PR business to crucify Bell Pottinger, on the basis of a hashtag campaign, which in the strictest sense, is a social media campaign, and not a primary PR campaign?

While the campaign was driven by the South African office of Bell Pottinger, how can the parent office in UK be held responsible? Sure they had a moral accountability in the way their country office was breaching ethical practices, but was that good enough to ban the company from its PR practice, in the UK?

How much can a global PR agency, most of them who have business across different countries, and different cultural milieu, be help responsible for the behavior of an office is a far corner of the globe?

Also, what of the companies, that are not even member of the PRCA, but have practice in the UK, and elsewhere in the globe?

There are so many questions; while the end of Bell Pottinger was something they invited upon them by such controversial behavior (in some cases in the past as well), the decision of the PRCA, does open a pandoras box.

Risk taking in PR? like Bell Pottinger??

Ready to take risks in PR?

Again, another post on the never ending saga of how messed up things have become for Bell Pottinger.

Most industry leaders now opine that the agency I now probably on that last cylinder of oxygen, waiting to be pulled of.

Contrary to what most us thought – that it’s a crisis yes for Bell Pottinger, but they as a company will see through it to see another day, it now looks like the agencies survival is out of question.

Yet another big lesson from this, is that the so called agencies across the globe, that have a notoriety to take risks in the kind of business/accounts they  chose to work with must be more careful. Its clear and evident that such risks survive as great business opportunities, only, only when there’s none to expose the deeds or misdeeds of the company.

Like, in the case of Bell Pottinger – but for the South African political opposition, the Democratic Party, which raised the issue with PRCA, it would have been business as usual for Bell Pottinger.

The company, and its founder, Lord Bell, have a reputation in the PR industry for taking risks.

Some of the high risk clients they chose to handle –

• South African Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorious  after murder charges were slapped on him.
• Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko
• Syria’s first lady Asma al-Assad, wife of the Syrian premiere Assad
• Former Chilean dictator, General Pinochet (who was arrested in London, on a warrant from Spain on murder charges)
• And now, the infamous work for  Oakbay Capital, a South African company owned by the wealthy Gupta family, was accused of inciting racial hatred.

Clearly, one big reason for the great performance of Bell Pottinger has been their propensity to work with such high risk accounts – places where PR angels would fear to tread!

(now, the PR world is delighted that with Bell Pottinger gone, they get a chunk of the business; well, what of the opportunity cost and risk taking involved?

This, has been hugely supported by the fact that the numerous layers of management in Bell Pottinger have been privy to this track record, and in fact have this as a style of operation.

Such handling shady and controversial accounts has been an avowed strategy, in the grand scheme of things within the agency. Many in the PR industry say  the willingness to represent controversial individual reflected the views of Lord Bell himself.

All this has worked well, due to the lack of internal resistance or in fact, the semblance of any ethics, whatsoever.

Even this fall has been due to an aggressive external whistle-blower, in the form of the main opposition party in S Africa, the Democratic alliance.

The PRCA launched an investigation into Bell Pottinger following a complaint from South Africa’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA). The DA blamed the PR company of working to “divide and conquer the South African public by exploiting racial tensions in a bid to keep Jacob Zuma and the ANC in power”.

But for this huge act by the S A opposition, it would have all been well yet for Bell Pottinger.

The lesson in all this is – lack of ethics is always a ticking bomb. And such business will never ever be a high risk and always successful business model.

When the end comes, it comes brutally and decimates your agency.

Just remember that if you are in reputation management.

Bell Pottinger, and the PR ethics dilemma.

Better reputation, better results…. What about ethics?

The caption for the image above, may be in part from the PR agency Bell Pottinger’s tagline, and in part, the dilemma that the PR business across the globe faces today. Well, with what has happened, clients and governments will now ask for “Better reputation, yes, but with ethics and accountability’!

In swift and sudden developments in the global PR landscape, renowned European PR giant Bell Pottinger, is almost finished as an organisation, thanks to a purportedly racist campaign it had carried on behalf of a client (the Gupta family) in South Africa.

Acting on a complaint from the S African opposition, Democratic alliance to the PRCA (the UK trade association of PR firms), the body has suspended Bell Pottinger for a period of 5 years, from practising the trade. Bell Pottinger could for a name sake appeal to remove the ban, and ask for a reinstatement, but it looks like the winds would be against the embattled PR firm.

In some more revelations, Bell Pottinger also had been accused of being the PR face of the Rajapakse regime in Sri Lanka – a regime that was responsible for the purge of an entire Tamil population, in the north of the country.

The series of incidents that now look like will almost see the end of the road for Bell Pottinger, raise many interesting questions.

1. Like the PRCA, how many PR related trade associations across the globe (including India) have the resolve and teeth to raise their voice and act decisively against unethical and unwarranted actions of member agencies? Looking around, it will be tough or next to impossible to find associations with such teeth.
2. In many countries, including in Asia, PR trade associations are sheer memberships to the elite club, and its not even mandatory for agencies to possess membership. In such cases, where does the question of any ethics governance, and how are the agencies going to be asked to comply themselves to unwritten rules?
3. PR and reputation management have become inevitable business sectors. Any country and those in the socio-political environment need such services, as much as they need accounting or any other service. That being the case, is’nt it high time that the government steps in a bit, and see how the business can be regulated, atleast from the ethics transgression POV. That indeed is the need of the hour.
4. Given the size and scale of some of the global PR giants, and the diverse corporations they handle across continents, unless someone raises a finger to point out misdeeds, if any, how will be it possible to monitor such ethics violations which could be anywhere in their geography of operations. Unless there are whistle-blowers from outside, or agency appointed ethics ombudsmen,  it would be next to impossible to crack the ethics nut.
5. Revenues are a key driver when it comes to how the agency conducts itself. While it’s all nice to have a loud statement adore the walls and the website of PR agencies, what they do on the ground is much different. Many large transnational PR corporations have global accounts that sort of are key revenue drivers. The revenues are so significant that some country operations become possible only with such global patronage. Won’t agencies buckle under pressure from such giant clients, and be willing to compromise their stated positions vis a vis ethics?

Offcourse, the aftermath of the Bell Pottinger saga throws up a whole array of issues, as to how PR agencies conduct themselves in their business of reputation  management for their clients.

Regulation is a tough to manage thing, given that there is’nt even a comprehensive list of players in every country, who are active in the business.

Unless PR agencies have a commitment to work on the basis of an signed charter of ethics, Bell Pottinger could be well just the beginning of a purge.

New age PR….

News PR is all about co-creation!

This is an age of news-breaks round the clock… and news agencies around the world are in a frenzy to get what they perceive as ‘breaking news’ to their consumers — more fragmented than ever before, thanks to a plethora of choices. This is also the age where media houses are under intense scrutiny by their consumers, and also critics who are more informed and equipped by the social media to counter any misrepresentation or mistake in facts that come out along with the breaking news and views.

So, in this age of call it PR or social 3.0, where news and views are shaped by the minute, how does one serve as a better PR professional?

The PR pro serves his set of clients, equipping them with the right news to be communicated at the right time in the targeted media — conventional, and social. His expertise in the communication business is meant to serve the needs of the client who acts a consumer.

On the other end of the spectrum, the PR pro also serves the needs of the journalists. The well-equipped and informed PR pro is someone who can facilitate the journalist with the right bits of information and right facts, illustrate what will be trends in any industry in product, service or innovation, and beef up the journalistic armour of his consumers at the other end.

From being just release pushers or press conference specialists, the PR profession has completely morphed into a new avatar — that in which each PR professional or PR agency is co-creating and collaborating with their consumers — can be clients who want to manage their image or the media fraternity!

For well-meaning journalists and media houses, who want to be a credible source of breaking and shaping news and views, the need of the hour is people who can collaborate and co-create.

And the onus to take this place is on PR professionals who want to make a difference to their clients. The one question which a PR pro or agency must ask them-self every day is — ARE WE COLLABORATING AND CO-CREATING?

Co creation is the only recipe that can serve a winning media dish, now on

PR musing – do press conferences work yet?

Press conferences – a PR tool yet?

Press releases, despite all the noise around if they are yet effective or not, continue to rule the roost… It’s one tool, that hasn’t faded in utility value – when the objective is to make an announcement on behalf of a client – could be on a milestone, product, service, feature upgrade… anything that’s perceived as worthy communication.

All said and done, Press releases are here to stay.

But, as a PR professional, would you say the same of press conferences?

Just to give a background, we had a few such press conferences on behalf our well known clients in the last year. The reasons were as varied as product launches, to feature announcements, to matter of fact tete a tete that the top leadership of clients wanted.

Confession – a chunk of these conferences hardly saw any attendance, but for the representatives of media, which our agency had relationships to leverage. A couple of these pressers where held against our express intent to the client, that having a press meet for the reason is ill-advised. Yet, the client insisted that they do need to have such events as the CEO ‘felt like’ he must meet the media.

The question that arose in all our internal confabulations was this – are press conferences any more relevant weapons in the public relations armor of a PR agency?

If you for a moment leave aside the financial result announcements pressers by most public traded companies, most other press conferences are seeing a waning importance, thanks to the advent of technology, and consequent utility of a host of other tools that will serve the same purpose.

Companies & PR agencies have the option of setting up video calls, or video conferences, where a set of invitee media can get logged in from remote locations, saving so much time and efforts, and also resources in hiring a venue, transportation and logistics.

The usage of appropriate technology serves the purpose of conducting elaborate press conferences; moreover, even from a PR ROI perspective, the return on press conferences from a perspective of media coverage is certainly much lesser.

The risk in conducting the same communication exercise using other remote technology conferencing tools is low, with a commensurate high ROI for the time and efforts on the part of the management of the company.

Considering such facts, must agencies and corporate phase out press conferences, from their PR armory? Or is there any way we can re-invent the manner and style in which such events are conducted?

What do you opine as a PR professional?

A bit of ‘how’ of media relations…

the how of media relations…

There has been a transformation of sorts, in recent times in the media landscape across the globe. Shrinking newsrooms, fewer journalists doing more beats and filing more stories is the new world media order.

That means less and less time for journalists for their in-depth research on stories that they chose to work or have been assigned and even lesser time for fact check. In many cases, when there are newsbreaks, all journalists get is just a couple of hours to file and detailed story, with all data, and industry reaction, expert comments etc.

It is here, that both clients and PR agencies handling these clients can step in, and be facilitators in the story telling efforts of the media.

It is in this backdrop, that all our media relations efforts assume more import and significance, and will continue to rule the roost, as long we PR can maintain information integrity, when helping media with story inputs.

Here are some fine points, which help in being better and more effective at media relations-

Once you send a mail (mostly a press note or release), never keep calling or texting again and again to check if your release has been seen. The usual story we give is to tell the journalist – “I just wanted to be sure, as there were server issues at our end”. You are the 5^th person saying this, and the journalist well knows, and could be irritated. Besides that, what agency, if your server ill-behaves for every release sent out?

Never send a follow up email saying “Did you receive the email I sent you?”

If it’s a product related release, communicate loud and clear, what the product is all about, what it does, who it’s targeted to and how much it costs. That almost covers most of the information needed by the media, meaning, in case they need more, they would be in touch.

Always include images of your product.

Make sure when the journalist tries to reach you, you respond on the call or mail immediately. If you say you will revert in a certain time, do that come what may. Journalists, most times work on tight deadlines – if you don’t care for a revert, its in all probability, a missed story opportunity for you. Media doesn’t have the luxury of time to call you again and again.

If you say you’re attaching a document, please do it without fail; and don’t test the journalist’s patience by keeping a password protection for the document. Make sure you disable that, when you send out the mail .

Always include images of your product.

Know what you’re talking about. If you pitch a product, have some basic knowledge and be able to converse about it off the top of your head. Noone expects us to speak technology, and what goes into building the product, but one expects the PR person to know of all the product features and launch timelines.

Never ever send an out-of-office message after you’ve sent a pitch or a press note. That completely defeats the purpose,  and will put off journalists forever.

What else can you think of, as a PR pro?

Briefing the media? Here are some tips.

Briefing ready?

Communication professionals in any organization constantly have to face the media, on a litany of ongoing issues. They could be at any level – be it the Corp Comm executive, right upto the CEO. Media briefings are regular pressers are just a couple of communication tools that have yet retained the charm, despite the arrival of a barrage of social media tools, which are at the disposal of any right thinking public relations professional.

If one looks around, its it such media briefings and pressers that communication professional are at the risk of exposing themselves and in turn make their organizations image vulnerable – not by mistakes in facts, but by failing to address questions in the right manner.

More so, in times when crisis hits at the heart of an organizations PR armor. Under pressure, its very natural that the communications professional however well equipped, reacts to the situation, as the media event goes astray by the volley questions lobbed in by the media. Faced with this barrage, even the best communicators wilt under pressure, reacting with their emotion laden language – all leading to a perfect recipe for an ‘image disaster’.

Yet, such situations can be better handled, more deftly, and to the complete ‘image advantage’ of their organization.

• Lay down ground rules – At the beginning of the presser, make sure you lay the ground rules – state it  in clear terms that the intent of the briefing is to address such and such specific issue, and any question shall be around that issue only. Any query that does not pertain to the issue on hand would be taken to be answered later.

• Better, begin with a written statement – The simple step of circulating a well written media note, detailing the views and facts on the topic would serve well as a pre-cursor in setting the agenda for the right kind of questions. Make sure the facts that need to be taken to the media are mentioned with utmost clarity, and mention that questions can be around the statement. By making such a statement, you also possibly tend to take the steam away for any digressions that are planned by some members of the media fraternity.

• Plan for complementary statements – You have in hand a written statement; but if there are some questions that can be responded to with more facts, it would be a great idea to respond verbally, and also tell the media that these responses will be typed and circulated at the end of the presser. This can be easily done with the help of the communications team; and not just that, a complementary press note at the end of the press conference is a great way to re-iterate fact, highlight your responses, and way to ensure there are no map – territory distortions at the end of the day.

• Maintain a friendly and cool demeanor – this may sound way too basic, yet a whole lot of media face offs go astray only for this precise reason. One provocative question, and the communicator loses his cool, making a completely unintended gesture or remark – and however the presser be well armed with facts, this one spar hijacks the image of the organization. The best way to handle any unfriendly question is just a broad smile, or stating can we take it later, or I would come to back to you as soon as I can provide this information. And if the media persists with the same uncomfortable question, the communicator must persist with the positive demeanor, a simple smile, and the planned response – one of the three above. With this, in a matter of few minutes, the questions will move on.

• Avoid a “we know all” trap – Its often suggested that communication professional while addressing the media, must know all – yes, you must  be armed with a whole lot of facts on a situation. However, that is so different from displaying or exhibiting a know all demeanor in front of the media. That demeanor, mostly leads to a tinge of arrogance, and arrogance is the last thing you need in your PR weaponry. And it is such arrogance that tends to color the most accurate facts with the yellow of distortion. So, it is in your interest and organisation’s interest that you always maintain “I don’t have all the answers, but will endeavor to get them soon” demeanor right through. In fact make it a SOP for your media interactions, and the benefits are immense.

These 5 simple practices will serve to better your image management in a big way. They may sound simple, yet it is these that most of us as communicators or PR professionals fail to inculcate in our PR armor, and also educate our spokesperson.

Are media databases worth their price?

Making your own media-lists?

Many in our fraternity of Public Relations practitioners keep lobbing one question constantly —  are paid databases like Cision, Meltwater et al worth the investment you make in them? Which is the media database good enough for us? (more in the Indian context, nevertheless applies to the global PR scene too!)

The simple and straight forward answer to this question is — most or rather all of such databases serve only as a reference point to build one’s own media list, by verifying the accuracy of the information. Note that building a workable and dynamic, useful media database is a lot of hard work — one needs to check if the journalists continue to track the same sector, write on the same industry, or have they moved on/changed.

Whilst the paid media databases might endeavor/claim to be largely accurate, it is not the case mostly. Thanks to the dynamics of the media landscape, people movement between publications — more than ever, and shrinking news rooms, the information in databases is only partly correct. In most cases, the contacts given is a common mail id than a personal mail id, the board phone number than the direct/mobile number etc.

So, if you are going to depend on such a paid database for your media relations activities (mailing, cold calling and relationship building), the success rate is going to be abysmally low. Yes, abysmal is the operative word here.

Databases come with the option of sending out the press releases from the mail application within them. Never ever do this — this is by and large an exercise that is bound to fail. Also, even these databases do state that in the case of a bulk of mails sent, a read rate of 10% is too good!? Means, the chances of a release sent out being read itself is hopelessly minuscule.

With all this, the best approach would be to build your own media list, may be using the databases as a base line. Once you start building your own list, the task is to spend time regularly to make sure that the updations happen. In all probability, once the process is initiated, we get into the groove of checking the veracity of the list even as we undertake the rountine media relations exercises. This becomes an ongoing process.

For all practical purposes, if you are a small PR agency, or an independent PR practitioner, the best go would be not to invest at all in such media relations databases — they are prohibitively expensive, and do not proffer the kind of value for money, or ROI. Big agencies and MNCs pass on the costs to their large clients, in most cases.

Irrespective of the scale and size at which you operate, making your own media list is the best and most productive thing to do.

Last, the most important thing – most of the paid media databases, and press release listing services, are good enough only if you are looking at online coverage as a output. These distribution services hardly result in any coverage in the offline world – be it newspapers or magazines…  In some cases, when the content of the press release is highly newsworthy, they do result in a few journalists picking up the same story and adding their inputs.  This happens may be in 5 % of the cases, where newsworthiness is the singular factor.

So, even if means sustained efforts, making your own media lists, and using them for your ongoing PR efforts!