@dvocable

At a recent communication seminar where I was speaking on social media, a beautiful lady participant asked me about how one could go about writing a blog. She believed that she is not a good writer and if I could give her few tips on writing…

I told her that I would write about it in my post this Thursday and here I am. In fact, I changed my subject for her. I desperately wanted to write about the need of having a body like BCCI for PR Industry. BCCI knows how to play some amazing games off the field. They do everything in style, be it announcing the high-profile IPL team ‘owners’ or arm twisting CA and ICC to nail the monkey and chain the wild dogs and let our very own DSP of Punjab Police, Bhajji continue his Balle Balle with ball and balla.

Last night I saw Mr. Sharad Pawar in my dream. He was busy finding a way to merge his just ‘Pawar-full’ NCP into a powerful BCCI to realise his long cherished dream of becoming a PM. My dream is to have a BCCI for PR. Both seem to be farfetched!

Anyway, a gentleman shouldn’t keep a lady wait any longer than required. There are some amazing writers on our blog and honestly I am not one of them. It reflects in the vivid subjects being chosen by each one of them and the insights they share with us through their writings (look at last three posts). I read lot on the net, in books, on blogs and on websites. I do have my favorites and I also have my own specially designed ‘block -that-stupid-writer’ tab as well. I interact with many of them and learn quite a few things.

I consider myself a good reader and that allows me the authority to judge the quality of writing. Does it involve any philosophy? Well, yes.

Many of us must have read ‘All Marketers are Liars‘ by Seth Godin. The basic premise of the book is the art of telling stories. According to the author – Marketing is all about telling stories. Story, that inspires you to buy a particular soap or a toilet cleaner. Story, which creates a ‘chemical locha’ in your brain and inspire you to take a walk to your neighborhood shop to pick up a chocolate bar or drive down forty miles to have a dinner in the most expensive restaurant in town. If we go by this logic, tell me who is better than public relations expert to tell compelling and believable stories about your organization?

I strongly believe that PR has the most important role to play in an organization – even more significant than that of marketing. ‘In fact, your honor – mere paas saboot hain!‘ my heart jumps with joy from within. ‘We will talk about it in our next post’ I promise to my heart and it decides to keep quiet for the time being.

But, this post is going all over. Where’s the guide we were talking about? Oh yes, let me come back to that topic. If you search on the web you will find many guides on the subject. So, what’s my story?

My story is pretty & simple. If you want to be a good writer, just write it. Just write it as you would speak with your friend. Make a point, be real and write with passion. Ignite a thought. You do not need to be the most intelligent person on the earth, you do not need to be the most respected person in your profession, you do not need to be the authority on the subject – you just need to be passionate, you need to be honest, you need to be emotional and above all, you need to remember just one thing, write with your heart. Write something which you would love to read today, tomorrow and day after.

Now, do you need any other tips to be an effective writer, speaker, listener, manager, leader or any other adjectives we see on the covers of many bestselling books? Just try changing ‘write’ with ‘speak’ and so on…

A strong correlation has been observed between a company’s corporate communications and the company’s ranking on Fortune magazine’s ‘World’s Most Admired Companies’ list. The professional background, communications priorities, and inter-organizational relationships of the corporate communications head are also indicators of the ability of a corporate communications department to make a positive impact on a company’s reputation. These are some of the results of a survey ‘The Rising CCO (Chief Communications Officer)’ of 141 corporate communications executives from Fortune 500 companies in the US and Europe, conducted by global PR firm Weber Shandwick, executive search firm Spencer Stuart, and KRC Research.

The research also found that communications executives in the world’s most highly regarded companies have more prominent organizational status and longer tenures than their counterparts in contender companies. Additionally, approximately one-third of CCOs from the most admired companies cite corporate reputation as their number one priority for 2008, compared to fewer than one-quarter of CCOs from contender companies (34 vs. 21 percent, respectively). Contender company communications executives said they were spending more time working on product-related issues and crisis communications, while most admired CCOs said they spent more time on corporate social responsibility and building corporate reputation.

Based on Fortune’s 2006 Most Admired Survey (March 19, 2007). In general, Most Admired Companies are the most highly ranked companies in an industry on overall reputation. Contender Companies are ranked in the industry’s bottom half.

Other key findings are:

1. CCOs’ responsibilities will increasingly shift from tactical to strategic. While CCOs are carving out their role as strategic partners at the highest levels of business, they view work today as predominately tactical (58 percent tactical, 42 percent strategic). This imbalance, as reported by those surveyed, is sure to change as focus shifts from financial communications, media relations and internal communications to the broader strategic issues of environmental/social responsibility and corporate reputation. The tools used to perform their jobs will expand as well, with blogging/social media and corporate Web sites becoming increasingly important.

2. CCOs hold prominent positions at the world’s largest companies. Nearly one-half surveyed report directly to the chief executive officer (48 percent) and are visible to their boards (had a median seven interactions with their board during the past year).

3. CCOs and CMOs are friends and rivals. CCOs’ dynamic relationship with chief marketing officers (CMOs)–often a main rival and ally–reflects the growing influence of communications in today’s marketing mix.

4. Measurement of CCO effectiveness is predominately qualitative. The vast majority of those surveyed report being measured on qualitative measures such as “positive” media coverage (75 percent) and CEOs’ “gut” feel (73 percent). They are least likely to be measured by quantitative metrics such as the number of media mentions (35 percent) and ability to control costs (32 percent).

We as Public Relations professionals need to do beyond story pitching and disseminating press releases…garnering respect from peer group or rather the industry would not be so difficult then…albeit respect is not the topic today.

We are to be blamed I think sometimes for the way people perceive us, to some extent for sure. We limit ourselves to executing and thinking only about press releases, pitching stories, media meetings et al. But I am sure there is a bigger picture that we are missing out on and PR professionals could do some learning and adoption of it.

What are PR professionals? They are the ones who are (to some extent) designing people’s perceptions. Now how about giving our Client’s mandates a bigger facade and a larger reason to be spoken about?

I will give you an example; let’s say there is an organization in India that is the world’s leader in micro irrigation and the only manufacturers of complete drip irrigation systems in the world. Now as a PR professional I could either just go about speaking to the media (my key influencers and first primary target audience) about the products, the company, the properties et al; or we could do something beyond this since we are so capable of doing it too. Understand first of all how in today’s day and age does micro irrigation help? Micro irrigation helps in High water distribution efficiency, Minimized soil erosion, Lower labor cost and early maturity and a bountiful harvest (season after season, year after year). Now set an Agenda (Agenda Setting is an important theory in Mass Communications) for the organization to achieve and communicate it to the public. The organization’s bigger agenda is to conserve water, increase land fertility, lower the cost of labor and improve the quality standards of the crops. At a time when the world is going all public demonstrating it’s Go Green and Save the world Naara, you would be doing an efficient job of yourself by conveying the innate qualities and benefits of the Client’s business to the masses. Impress upon the Client to talk beyond himself and his company and talk about the bigger picture at hand…this way you will not just stop being a delivery guy (doing only what is asked of you to do like disseminating releases and following up for coverage) but doing what is actually expected of the likes of someone like yourself. Strategic thinking and thinking beyond the parameters set for you.

Impress upon the Clients and media that there are larger issues that they can talk about, which can be related to their business and yet could be a channel for doing an overall good to the society.

Agenda setting describes a very powerful influence of the media – the ability to tell us what issues are important.

Bernard Cohen (1963) stated: “The press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.”

Conceptual Model

Agenda Setting Theory

As a PR professional you would have to expand your focus, think laterally and think how you can get more out of your assignment. Read up, get informed, do some research on your own about the Client’s business, think big and influence others (Clients, Media, Peer Group alike) to think big. Issues will come to the fore, discussions will emerge, opinions and feedback will find a place amongst the masses and you will be able to play a small part in the larger scheme of things, of initiating change!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mesmerising! I did some crystal ball gazing myself for the Indian News Television and couldn’t find any other better word to describe the future of the great Indian News Soap Opera. It’s so much of fun to watch news on any of our news channels. It has all the twists and turns, which gets delivered on your TV screen in form of ‘Breaking News’, which even creative directors at Balaji can’t dream of! Right from Dada dropping a catch to Dada being dropped – everything is a breaking news!

My crystal ball has revealed to me that, the day is not far away when you will have a privilege to see a live and exclusive ‘breaking news’ of Ash sneezing in her kitchen while preparing herbal tea, and the great Pa-in-law running and handing over a white soft hankie with ‘R’ printed on it. With a circle being bestowed upon ‘R’ and the presenter shouting from top of his voice about whether the ‘R’ denotes Pa-in-law’s past love interest or something else; He will also be able to poke his nose out of the TV screen and ask you to guess the correct answer to win a gold coin for every 2553^rd text message being sent by you on their money making SMS machine (conditions apply*).

‘The Big Fight’ and some ‘Hard Talk’ will have few ‘Frankly Speaking’ experts making you ‘Khabardaar’ with their Google Gyaan and finally saying ‘Gustakhi Maauf’!!!! (And I threw the crystal ball on my TV set shouting “Nahee!” {Repeat it three times, please!})

Btw, what that ‘R’ could be? Any guesses? A person coming close to the correct answer will get a special gift from me.

Okay, its time to move on in life. Last week I shared the PRedictions for PR industry and last six zodiac signs. Now it’s time for us to peep into the future of those friends who belong to the remaining six zodiac signs. My disclaimer does not have an expiry date and it is still valid.

Virgo: You are going to make the most of this year, as you are blessed with creativity and knows how to express yourself. This year will make you happier and wealthy but be careful about health. You need to develop a fine balance between client’s deadlines and your family’s birthday celebrations. You will go places. I mean, may be change a cubical or change a job.

Leo: Laurels coming in from all quarters. Bosses would be happy. Clients would remain happy and bonuses are in the offing. Especially owners of the agencies who belong to this zodiac will laugh all the way to bank. Please share some with your employees as well. You will become powerful and gain respect in the industry. For professionals it’s a time for promotions and special recognitions.

Cancer: This year is going to be a milestone for you. You will achieve what you set out for. One after another, your success will make you popular with colleagues and clients. However, be careful and do not get carried away. It is important that you respect others and their feelings. Overall a fantastic year for growth! Make most of it.

Gemini: It is a sign which believes in personal self esteem. You will make good stride in the professional world and grow. Hard work will be suitably rewarded and you will not feel left out by anybody. Your charming personality and confidence will help you win new businesses and new friends. A good year for people who are in mid 30s.

Taurus: You may get an international project and travel abroad. Friendship with powerful people will get you much needed benefits and your clients will be very happy with you. If you are public affairs professional, this year is going to be the golden year of your career. Do not get emotionally involved with any client.

Aries: Overall a good year with couple of incidents of loses of hope or faith. Be careful about entering into any agreement with client or supplier involving more than 30 lakhs. Read all terms and conditions carefully before signing on dotted line. Your international partner will bring you good fortune. For professionals, a wolf of an offer in the clothes of sheep is waiting.

This brings us to the end of PRedictions for all signs for the year 2008. We will meet again in 2009 with PRedictions. Till then good luck and live well. I will be back again on the coming Thursday with some insightful and meaningful content. Meanwhile, I am expecting a call from Ekta. I saw ‘breaking news’ on my TV screen that she was going to hire me as her next Creative Director! It’s high time that Nivedita Basu moved on. :)

CSR – The New Age Mantra

With the Standard Chartered Greatest Race just over, it won’t be a bad idea to delve into CSR and PR…Say wot? Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR is the most discussed topic in the alleys and crossroads of communication these days…and why not? Most organizations one knows is indulging in some CSR activity of some scale. Be it for customers, employees, shareholders, communities and environment for that matter. CSR is becoming a way of life with many Corporates across the globe and it is not just for the sake of earning brownies. While I would like to leave behind the debate of whether it is ethical or whether it is just another ways of manipulating the audience, I would like to believe that most people are doing it with a sense of larger responsibility and contribution towards the society. And even if it weren’t, just the act is good enough since it does affect the beneficiary positively.

As PR professionals we work on integrated communication strategies and it is almost imperative these days to add an element of CSR in strategies and how we could maximize media visibility for the same. I do not see any erring in that intention. The good thing of propagating CSR could help in influencing many more Corporates who haven’t yet joined the bandwagon and do some more good for the society. Some CSR initiatives like the Standard Chartered Marathon or Infosys Library for every school achieve enormous scale and that is great news for society.

How does PR help? PR helps in not just to publicize the initiative but actually helps in leveraging someone else’s initiatives to mobilize the masses to join hands for similar causes. I love the way PR acts behind the scenes to drive Corporates towards the humanitarian goals. I know of PR professionals and Agencies that have consulted their Clients and convinced them to take up larger issues of concern and set aside budget for a cause and work relentlessly towards the betterment of a larger mass-scape.

I have worked with a couple of Clients who have been working silently towards causes not necessarily very large ones, but they have been consistently working towards uplifting the situations of senior citizens and children, or towards literacy or even for recognizing good talent. And in all these Clients’ initiatives PR helped in garnering support from the common masses to join in and get encouragement for taking up the initiative in a larger way. When we are devising a human chain for some cause, it delights me when people have read about the cause to have known about it and come and volunteered to be a part of the cause.

The only thing that we could do more with is the support from media on CSR issues. Media sometimes does restrict causes to specific days like AIDS Day, Women’s Day, Children’ Day and would not want to spend ink and space in writing for the cause at other times. I say, let’s all get together, forget about days and dates and advocate for the cause. Advocate for the cause in the larger interest and not take things too seriously in terms of whether the organization is manipulating et al.

Be it Standard Chartered Marathon, Hindustan Lever’s Shakti, or the various other CSR programmes, they are all well conceptualized and structured way of reaching out to the public at large. No community work is created to get PR mileage. PR or no PR, people will continue to do good work and CSR will continue to be the new age mantra…and I couldn’t be happier!

CheersMadhavi.

I am writing this fresh from my trip to the Auto Expo 2008 in New Delhi, and what a trip it turned out to be! New Delhi in all its winter glory, the excitement in the air made it easy to ignore the traffic nightmare and the smog.

The parties, the awards, the models and the car models all made for a very heady trip.

Tempted as I am to offer my opinion about the Nano, all I can proffer is that while it might be great PR for a prototype to get such turgid hype, I’d much rather reserve my comment when hype translates into sales as and when the rubber hits the road, one lakh or not.

What I am not going to do is plug for the automobile manufacturers and their new models as that has been done to death but instead talk about the hype surrounding the automobile industry and the mechanics of its construct.

The key orchestrators of this construct are the usual suspects, yes, the marketing types who practice every well honed trick in the book for eyeballs with their bevy of deep pockets that fund the PR Firms, Advertising Agencies, Event Managers and Celebrities, Models and what have you. They all play their roles in producing the apparition that makes people buy things they don’t really need.

The role of PR Firms in influencing the emotional decision that is the trigger for writing that fat cheque by a consumer seems a bit suspect to me, yes even now!

The PR firm toolkit has remained stuck in time with the usual boring repository of junkets, sordid and dry press releases, press conferences where the sole purpose of the PR Firm is to corrall the hapless media. Where they don’t get to sit in is at the board table where such nuanced finery as positioning and strategy gets perfected and agreed to.

This also then directly affects the apportioning of the windfall of budgets that the Automobile marketing is suddenly turning into a gravy train making several vendors really rich. The lions share has gone to advertising and event management agencies, round one to advertising, will PR ever get there? To be fair the show saw some pretty global standards in production values, professionalism and exhibition design. The show gets bigger every year and the participant list includes most global Automobile manufacturers which till recently ignored the Delhi Auto Show.

The Auto journalist who was up until now a largely ignored breed of animal suddenly finds a rush of demand for their tribe with the ferocious proliferation of automobile programming and content in print, online as well as television. This in turn has raised egos, not to mention salaries and designations all around. After being on the pasture so long, who can grudge them their riches? Their open contempt for all people in PR firms sometimes mimics that of page 3 and celebrity hacks but the mutual greed facilitates an uneasy truce given to sporadic bouts of grief and blind rage on both sides. Marriages made in hell but marriages all right.

Having said that, the Automobile media have played to the gallery too, and one rarely sees an inconvenient story. This crony game is bad for the consumer at the end of the day as it allows for the machinations of the marketeer to succeed regardless of the quality of their product and the veracity of their claims. There are no rules for accepting largesse or junkets and the results are all around us to see in print, TV and online.

From a time when the Autocarindia magazine constituted automobile journalism and a couple of other old fogey aristocratic pretenders, the names of whom I dare not take, today’s Automobile journalism space somewhat resembles the Telecom spectrum rush!

There is a rush of magazines some with foreign labels, from a couple of television shows the canvas has exploded with every channel now offering mandatory Auto programming. This has gone one step further with the hype of live Auto Industry Awards: CNBC AutoCar, NDTV Car& Bike, Overdive, Business Standard Motoring, everyone and their mum now has an award. While the awards have been there for sometime but their use to buttress claims in full page advertisements are something new to this game. The dawn of the age of automobile consumerism has finally hit India.

So back to my point on what PR Firms are not doing to get their place on the gravy train. Garbage in; garbage out is a favourite saying and someone, somewhere needs to make an effort to learn more about the Automobile domain, schlep with the domain experts and make that investment of time, money and effort so that they can make sense of what is going on around them. Taking the time to research a brief is what the advertising boys have done right and now they are tasting that sweet billing. If you do your math right, a quick comparison between a full page advertisement or a 30 second commercial on prime time TV to what a PR Firm will average as a retainer billing for a month, the writing is on the wall. Right now domain expertise in PR Firms is confined to reeling off relationships with key Automobile media!

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india

Last week was very busy for me. I attended the ABCI Awards ceremony, cheered for friends, met people of all sizes and shapes, made new friends and created couple of enemies too in the process! I am getting more and more fascinated by the news in 2008. My love for news has increased it seems. The ‘Nano’ effect grabbed many headlines and gave many opportunities to new age Narads (Narayan! Narayan!) – In fact, it gave me an opportunity to coin a new celebrated word: ‘auto expo’sure. Oh darling! Sunita, it seems that you are not worried about our health. First, you do not want cola companies to kill germs in our bellies and now you are hell-bent on not allowing ‘Nano’ smoke to kill the deadly mosquitoes as well! Shame on you! Sunita. I empathize with your self centric syndrome but, please allow others to use some airtime on TV News channels too. There are many of my clients waiting in a queue. I think somebody is showering all her ‘Mamta’ on you.

Well, promise is a promise! I am not referring to anybody else but reminding myself about my promise to you for annual PR horoscope for 2008, I finally persuaded my dear friend (she refuses to reveal her identity even when I promised to her that she’ll become famous!) to give her readings for all of us.

This week I will write about the industry’s prediction and last six signs. Why Aries should have all the fun every time? Let’s Pisces feel happy this time around. So, we will go in reverse chronology. I am not sure whether these predictions are going to be true or not, but what’s the harm in sharing with you.

Indian PR Business: Indian PR business will grow leaps and bounds in 2008. It will see some drastic changes happening in the month of July, October and November. New international players will enter India independently or through M&As. There will be a birth of few more specialized agencies in technology, financial and pharma/healthcare sector. Many small agencies or independent operations will go out of business or will be forced to join hands with larger players by August. Money will pour in from all directions but agencies will suffer from image crisis and this year we will lose couple of our leaders from PR industry.

Pisces: You will make more friends in media and gain respect from clients. The promotion is due and it will be very rewarding. Your boss will have to keep you in good humor as there are chances that you will get a better offer than your Hari Sadu. Saturn will influence most to Pisceans and though this year is full of good things, watch out for hidden enemies and stay clear of any legal cases involving you, your client or your organization.

Aquarius: The message is be careful. There are many hurdles to face as you move into 2008. Clients’ complaints, Bosses’ cribs, payment collection and all such thing will make you think twice about the career in PR. But, there will be good moments too. Appreciation letters, recognition and rewards are also on cards. Be a firm believer in God and he will take care of you. It is a mixed bag.

Capricorn: Promotions, foreign trips and happy clients. This year is very happy year for you my dear Capri friend! You will be loved by all. You will get money, fame and happiness from all quarters. Do some charities. Donate some money to PR associations or buy some PR books and give it to your subordinates – that will give you some good karma. It’s your year Capricorn – grow fast but keep your feet on ground.

Sagittarius: Promotions and big money is on the cards. The owners of the PR agencies will be laughing all the way to banks. But, be careful – the fall can be as big. Loss of reputation and loss of clients are on cards too. Take care of your employees and do some good for the industry. For professionals, it is a good year but trade cautiously. Don’t get carried away by big promises – apply your own brain.

Scorpio: This year is full of surprises. You will make many friends. A perfect scorpion PR person would be on a roll. Some many even become the top leader during the year. A chance of getting international assignment is clearly visible in the crystal ball for few scorpion PR friends. You will be respected by clients and industry. Some of you may get a much awaited career call you have been waiting for.

Libra: A balanced year this time. At home you will get lots of love and affection and at your office – lots of junk mails and junk calls from clients. Many opportunities those may look lucrative but be careful of deception. Saturn is not favoring you as it should but don’t you worry, your Libran charm will make life little easier for you and as I said a perfect balance will help you to sail out 2008 without much of worries.

We will meet after a very short break! Don’t go away and come back, next Thursday, same blog, same time. Take care, God bless and somebody, hey you! please switch off this unwanted tune on my unreliable phone.

Image credit: Active Rain: Person in picture is not our fortune teller.

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india

Are you looking for a brand ambassador for your client? Or thinking of inviting a celebrity to your event? Or compiling a list of celebrities? Till now, it’s mostly done on the basis of how many names you and your colleagues can come up with.

Rest assure. Web 2.0 is on the rescue with Tinfinger. This is a search engine for famous people. You can check out its directory as well to view over 650 categories of famous people. Tinfinger also lists down the recent news that any particular famous personality has been getting in the media. You can submit profiles of famous people to its directory as well.

This is one good resource for PR professionals. The Indian celebrities category lists at the moment around 35 people, which means nothing. But considering that this service has just started, it’s worth a wait and watch. Maybe when the number comes to around 500, then it will be a gem.

Now what about Indian resources? Are there any sites?

Celebrities in India is one find where you can find lists of Bollywood actors. Not very useful but at least you can see a profile picture of each actor complete with personal biography, filmography, likes and hobbies, etc.

I couldn’t find any lists of socialites. Maybe creating one can be a good PR idea for the likes of Delhi Times and HT City. Or maybe India PR Blog should start a directory.

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india tinfinger

The next level of measuring PR effectiveness is whether the target audience groups received the messages directed to them. Have they they retained and understood the message that was intended too. Walter Lindenmann labels this level as Outgrowths.

This level of success of public relations campaign will depend on immediate reaction that you will receive or you desired to receive from target audience. The best example is getting our event listed in the events and listings section. A press conference would not be a ideal event to be listed in this section. Listing would be recommended for a children’s workshop in a book store. The outgrowth would be the number of participants for the workshop. Event participation would be the measurement tool.

The other forms of Outgrowths are:

Dip stick study: A dip stick study in the form of the recall of the particular brand, corporate or spokesperson vis-a-vis the competition. Which is the top of mind brand recall for the media in a particular industry? It should be the brand that you are working on, if it isn’t then you need to work harder.

Call ins: If there is a particular interview that is being broadcasted on the radio and the floor is open for call-in interviews with the celebrity. The number of callers would be the measured as a success rate.

Contest Entries: If we are promoting a particular contest, the number of contest entries. A corollary to this would be the number of SMS received as votes for the winning contestant – Indian Idol, Nach Baliye.

Focus Groups: A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their attitude towards a product, service, concept or advertisement, immediately after they have been exposed to the messages of the particular element.

The other would be candidates appearing for walk-in interviews after reading the classified section in the newspaper. The number of visitors to the company website increasing after the company has made a new announcement. Case in Point would be the launch of the Tata Nano and the number of visitors to the website that were increased due to the announcement. Another observation was Tata Nano, Tata Motors, $2500 car being the top 25 searched keywords on Google as on January 10, 2008.

My next article will highlight success based on the other measurement techniques under Outcomes!!

(This is the second in the three part series on measuring the success of a Public Relations Campaign)

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india