@dvocable

I wrote about ‘The Power of Invisible Force’ and followed up with few heartfelt stories. My Friend Palin even suggested that I am heading towards Himalayas and may be on my path to attain nirvana or sainthood. But my dear friends, I am not. Today, I am going to share a never ending love story of my life. I told my wife that it all started in our past life and still continuing…

Well, what a love story has got to do with PR blog? To be very honest, I am yet to figure that out as I have just started writing this post and may be by the time we finish our dialogue, we will discover that. Somehow I feel that there’s a strong connection. Okay, let’s try and see how a love story develops…

You like someone, starts missing her whenever she is not around (people please change your gender accordingly!)

I have experienced it. I am sure many of you have. You start wondering why the hell I didn’t feel this way before for anybody else. But hey my friend, realise that the person whom you miss is not just anybody else – she is special. You start praying.

In PR, we need to offer something that our clients need the most – clear advice and clear understanding. It is not about the formatting the release and changing fonts but giving a whole new meaning to the communication process, bring out a point which they never thought existed in news or suggest that you throw the release in a bin. In short, they should like you. They should miss you, if you are not around. You are so special. They start praying.

To say it or not – to be or not to be…

I have experienced many butterflies flying all around in my stomach. I am sure many of you have. Whether to make that first move or not? Can I express myself openly or send subtle hints. Can I just say as it is, or weave in the discussion? What if I get rejected? Thousands of questions cross your mind…

In PR, we face similar situations in slightly different context. Can I tell the client that the news release you are going to issue is going to be in trash bin and don’t waste paper? Can I say to the CEO of the company that when it comes to human touch and interaction with people, my dhobi is much better than you? Somewhere, somehow one has to start saying the truth to client, if you want to be true to yourself and your profession; you have to move away from the fear of rejection. If the truth is with you, there will never be rejection. True love conquers all obstacles.

Commit – I do…

It’s that time to say ‘I Do’… Those 2 words express so much of my feeling, it expresses what I want to tell my wife; that I am there with her always, in good and bad, in happiness and sad, in success and failure, in life and death. It says; I do stand in front of you in adversities, I do stand behind you in your success, I do stand with you in your hour of need.

In PR, we always have to remind the client that we are there. We need to express it. We need to prepare ourselves, understand client’s requirements, guide them through the maze, be with them during tough times, be friend and you have a client for life. Sounds like marriage made in heaven isn’t it?

Together – we grow.

My love for you is growing, it’s growing with time and age; it’s getting intense and deep with time, it’s getting matured and complete with age. We grow together, build dream together and let’s achieve it together, because there cannot be a life without you…

In PR, we grow together. We start understanding each other and share same passion to build brands, sell products or market services. We build team together, we build dream together and achieve it together, and we live in complete peace and harmony, we have to be together for life as no one understands you better than I do.

Love sets you free!

There are always you, me and then hum! You know it. You need space. You need your personal moments. You need to be you, so does your partner. If your love is true, your love never going to go away from you.

In PR, we always have to remember that we are also like that. We also need to have our own space. Clients also need their own moments. Your creativity to grow and think independently will obviously help you decide what is best for the team. If you are true and honest in your approach, the client is never going to go away from you.

Love will find a way…

I am sure about this. I know for sure that love will find a way…

In PR, you never say goodbye. All roads lead to Rome.

Take care friends. Never stop loving your work. God bless!

PS: This post wouldn’t have been complete without my wife being there for me, always. She is my biggest inspiration and my invisible force.

Esha News has started this initiative where each client for each PR agency can have their own webspace and can access provide access to the team and the client. The monitoring agency has started to understand and value of real time delivery clips, specially during a crisis situation, when you need coverage, even before it happens. (Pun Intended).

As a execution person or the Associate, when you have ordered a cd to view the television coverage as to where all they have appeared. You are all excited to showcase your work to your seniors, you know you have done a good job, you want leverage this initiative as a team in front of the client. And what happens, the courier walla has misplaced the CD some where, and you do not know what to do next… sounds familiar. :-)

Esha News has clearly understood the pain points that the PR agency goes through, where the CD does not reach on the designated time or there is late delivery of clips. To see the advantage in better light of this service or as PR professionals how we leverage on this

• With this especially with the instant uploading of clips on a daily basis , we can access it, once the coverage has appeared on television. Don’t know exactly what is the time gap between coverage being on air and the coverage being uploaded and being able to viewed by all.
  
• As multi-city teams, we will be able to access the clips across the cities with no geographical restrictions. Accessing these clips and reports will also not have any time barrier, specially with respect to international assignments. So you share email and let them have a look at the coverage, while you are sleeping.
  
• The client servicing team can download these reports on to their desktop. Download facility adds the icing on the cake, the videos can get attached to the presentation, and have the wow effect. Situation: The review starts with how we achieved, what we achieved, graphs and then videos once they get attached to the presentation, you have the audio-visual presentation, you surely have won the client.
  

• The client servicing team can view clips almost instantly and share it with their clients. Specially at a time of crisis, where information becomes the key and the holder of this information is the king. You exactly know how the media has reacted to the situation. and now you can take the neccessary and pre-defined action.
  

• The team need not worry about the making multiple copies of the clips, since the clips are stored on the server for over 30 days with each PR agency having its own individual webpage and webspace with unique logins for each client.

Let me know, if you find any more advantages of this service. These advantages have been penned down only because "i was there" and faced these issues.

Do you know Linkedin is the smartest website in the world, followed by Facebook and Simple Spark? This is the ranking calculated from the cumulative IQ scores of their users. MySpace ranks 5th, Twitter is on 8th, and Google is on 9th.

Might be fun to calculate the IQ of your site as well. Head to IQ League where you can calculate your and your website’s IQ. You can take a simple 60 second test to determine your IQ level.

For you website, it is a little elaborate as your website readers are the real IQ of your site. You need place a link on your site and ask your readers to take their IQ tests. For each visitor, IQ League will remember were he/she came from and automatically add that visitor into your site’s data. Once you have 5 people taking the test from your site, IQ League will calculate IQ of your website. You can view the stats at http://www.iqleague.com/group/mysite-com

Is it a surprise that India is the smartest country in the world, followed by Netherlands and Serbia.

Last week, we announced a contest to our readers and now we are ready to announce the first winner. The contest is simple. Every week, all those who leave a comment on this blog on any of the posts will have their names thrown into a hat, and two winners will get a copy of Ajay Jain’s (my) new book, Let’s Connect: Using LinkedIn to get ahead at work. (Read about it here)

So this week’s winner is clap clap, Himanshu Kapadia. Congrats Himanshu. Please email your address to editor at indiaprblog.com and we will make sure the book reaches you real fast.

Actually this week, it was a tie between Himanshu and Shashank Jaitely, but since Shashank has received a copy already, we thought he won’t mind giving away his share of the prize as well to Himanshu.

So keep the comments coming. Let’s see who is the next winner.

My team and I develop PR pitches for our prospective clients. This is one of my KRAs. Planning requires, besides understanding the client’s business and requirements, a lot of research on the industry, the competition, and the current image that the client has in the market. This involves primary researches like speaking to journalists and domain experts. But before that we need to conduct a host of initial secondary research that involves scanning through a lot of print and online media. I am sure this is the same with every team in any PR agency.  So what are the various sites we visit on the internet to gather our initial understanding of a subject or vertical? The requirements and solutions depend from client to client but on an average, these are some of the top sites that you can start off with.

1. Search engines – Google is the obvious answer, and there’s no contesting that.  Additionally, we have Google News Search, if you want to scan through news reports; and Google Blog Search, if you want to scan through blog posts. These are pretty useful search engines that you can use in case you don’t find much headway on a normal Google web search. I also use an addon like Customise Google on my Firefox in times of absolute desperate situations when I need to run a query on other search engines like Yahoo or Live, as sometimes they throw up different results.

Sometime, when these search engines are not sufficient, there are specialized search engines like Truveo and Blinkx for video and audio search, Pipl for people search, and Twing for search within Internet forums.

You can compare Google and Yahoo search engines with SearchBoth. See screenshot below:

2. Wikipedia – We all know Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia contributed by everyone. Now the credibility of Wikipedia has been debated by many before, but I still think that it can be a good resource for reading up on a new technology, place, person, or a subject e.g. public relations. I understood more clearly about PR from Wikipedia than any text book I read in school.  You can also use Wikipedia to get media profiles.

3. IBEF -The Indian Brand Equity Foundation site is a credible site to get information on various industries in India. Take a look at the links on the left side of the page. You can read up the summary and latest news reports of various verticals including automobiles, auto components, aviation, banking, biotechnology, cement, financial services, food industry, gems and jewelery, healthcare, information, technology, insurance, IT enabled services, media & entertainment, oil & gas, pharmaceuticals, real estate, retail, semiconductors, steel, textiles, telecommunications, and tourism & hospitality.

4. India in Business – This is an Indian government site created to help foreign investors in India but you can take advantage of it as well. There are essays on the Indian economy, different industries in India, and alot on foreign investment regulations.  There are sections on the Union Budget and Economic Survey of India.

5. Indobase – This is a good site to get the names of major events in India categorized according to industry and cities.

6.  Industry association sites – Industry association site like CII, FICCI, NASSCOM, and ASSOCHAM are good places as they keep on publishing free reports that you can quickly download and read. There are good content on the sites themselves. Besides these four, we can go to sector specific association sites. For example, for anything on online and internet data in India, we can go to IAMAI. There are associations for each sector.

Do you  know of any good research resource? Share it in the comment.

As communication gets more complicated and cluttered, confusing and converged into one, I wonder how it is impacting the cultural fabric of our country. Is it impacting in the desired manner? Are we reaching out to the desired target audiences? Are we confusing mass culture with niche metro culture? Are we getting too carried away by the homogenized look of the masses and forgetting that we are a multi cultural, highly heterogeneous, hugely diverse and an enthusiastic populace that is devouring messages by the minute?

How informed are we as sources of communications about our own cultural intricacies ?

Too many questions actually… and they don’t necessarily bother me, but keep me asking for more, wondering how we could customize communication for every bit of that audience.

When you talk of digital communications, it is more or less assumed, (correct me if I am wrong) that it is a homogenized mass of audience. So you could be sitting anywhere in the world, of any religion, region, caste or community, the moment you are on Digital platform, the way you react to messages and information is pretty much predictable. But that is not so in the case of traditional media. There was a time when it was compulsory to understand folk cultures and integrate that in communication plans to reach out to target audiences. I am not sure about how many today are even aware of the various forms of communication, which trust me even tooday are not redundant and are very dynamic and effective forms of communication.

Traditionally we are still very rudimentary in the way we absorb information. We are driven culturally in how we absorb information; there is lot of semiotics at play and communication is multi layered as you tread deeper into the country. The sensitivities are different, issues and priorities are different, geographies are disputed and history is questioned. And yet in all of this resides the consumer we are targeting and the stakeholder of our Clients’ companies. How do we reach out to them?

I don’t know how many of us in the PR or rather communication’s business understands the intricacies of our own cultures? Of how diverse we are, what we read, what we like, what we watch and what we need to know… Knowing the regional media list is one thing…tapping audiences on social networking sites is another thing, but reaching out to the diaspora in their own setting and convincing them of our Client’s profiles and needs is a different ball game altogether.

I would like to leave this discussion open ended. I am not an expert to conclude it in any way. For many of you digital media could be bridging the gap between the heterogeneous mass of audiences… for many of you, traditional media and folk media may still be doing the trick of reaching out to the last man standing…the choice is ours, the call is ours to take…but I would be sad to know that we are homogenizing India to believe that we all have access to internet, we all can read and write and all those who don’t have either of the above i.e. have an internet connection and are literate are not the ones using the goods we sell and services we offer.

Customizing our messages is just the first step…finding alternate forms of media (am not talking of new age media) could just be step two.

Web18 seems set to become the destination for your social bookmarking needs, video and music sharing, online travel portal, start up page, feed aggregation, and emails. Their latest venture, In.com, so apparently, is a huge effort in this direction. If the name, targeting all those who yearn for small email addresses, doesn’t strike you, then check out the features. These guys must have figuring out hard all this while on what kind of online sites tick well with the masses. And when they did, they assembled all of them together in one. So now you have your Digg, YouTube, Gmail, MakeMyTrip, Netscape, Zapak, and JukeboxAlive under one domain. That’s the story.

Do I like it? Definitely. In fact, I dare say this is finally a web 2.0 site from India after a long time that I honestly like. The design and look are neat. The music and video streaming is fast even on my dialup. The email service is with a whopping 10 GB space and I particularly find it quite thoughtful that they have introduced folders, made compose editor or for that matter every mail that you read open in a new tab. The inbox page is clean and they don’t insert any ad on the footers of emails that I send to my acquatntances, like our so big Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail do. Plus, In.com is a 2-letter good name (it has supposedly costed Web18 2 crores) to have an email with and being new, you can have all the mayank, sita, teena, and what not @in.com, instead of going for the tenna20008 type usernames.

In.com doesn’t have to worry about the news. They aggregate it from other sites. Maybe many people would prefer that instead of having one publication house to read the news from.

What the site lacks is the functionality in some areas. Site navigation can still be a pain. if you venture somewhere as when you are adding your feed or reading a feed, you cant find the go-back buttons so easily. You cannot move back to any part of the site from your inbox.

Would I prefer In.com over gmail? Unlikely , but it can definitely become my second best and I can close down my Rediffmail, Yahoomail, AOL, and Hotmail.

I hope they keep the site clean and don’t insert ads like there’s no tomorrow, something so characteristic of web18 sites.

Final words: This site is here to stay and so watch out, Indiatimes and Rediff. I cannot yet start comparing it feature by feature with the biggies like Gmail and YouTube, that won’t be fair, but I think web18 has got it right.

For users like us, all I can say is grab your ID before anybody else does (provide your mobile phone number not email for instant invite code on the site) and the ad campaign starts.

“Agencies seldom get sacked for blunders; it’s the small irritants that ruin you,” said my boss. We were on our way back from a client’s office and the ‘small irritant’ was ‘our’ habit of being late for meetings. This was a few years back when I worked as a trainee on a 9 to 9 shift, and was not allowed the privilege of a retort, especially not a witty one. While I was regularly showered with the above-mentioned pearls of wisdom, I also got slammed for not doing my homework. This mostly meant that before heading for a pitch meeting I had forgotten to take correct and accurate directions to the venue. Such was the cruelty in those days…

I am sure, dear reader, you have faced, or are facing, similar trauma in your work life. If yes, I will share with you something that will forever change the way your boss sees you. She might even recommend you for a triple and out-of-turn promotion. It’s called “the idiot-proof guide to taking directions to important meetings with your boss.” It’s childishly simple and after I share it with you, you would probably want to slap my back and say, “Bro, why didn’t I think of that before!” Excited? Come a little closer to the monitor and let me whisper it in your ear…

The trick is to use t.e.c.h.n.o.l.o.g.y. This means becoming very familiar with one of the many map sites – Google Maps, Yahoo India Maps, MapmyIndia, Wikimapia and so on. Before heading for any meeting in unknown territories do search for the building or the locality. Believe me it will save you a lot of acquired headache. So far so good and very simple (and you are probably thinking, ‘I do this all the time’). But tell me, dear reader, are we making the very best use of tools like Google Earth and online maps to give your career a boost (if you know what I mean)? Think, think.

Ok, let me cut to the chase and tell you something interesting. The next time you give directions to the rendezvous point to a journalist for that important one-on-one, be brief. Let’s assume your client is in Nicholas Piramal Tower, Lower Parel, Mumbai. Chances are the journalist already knows the place. In case she has no clue, don’t confuse her by saying, “it’s near Wellspring Hospital” or “near Senapati Bapat Marg”. Simply say, “Type 18.9997, 72.8248 on Yahoo India maps or Google Maps. You will know exactly where I will be waiting to receive you!” Help her by further by adding, “Please use the satellite option to choose your own landmarks.” And don’t forget to reply to her thank you by saying: “Happy to help!”

The point is that instead of giving and receiving complicated directions we can ruthlessly kill ambiguity by just spelling out our lat/long coordinates. Precise and crisp. But where do we find them? If you use Google Earth and zoom to your office building, they will be displayed on the bottom left of your screen. If these same coordinates are actually put down on your business card, life would be a bed of roses. In fact in the near future it might become common for you to add your lat/long on all business communication, along with your address, phone number, email ID etc. Hard to believe? Let me tell you the story of how some of us never believed that sissy email would one day poison our good ol’ snail mail…

And now for the icing on the cake – If you have a GPS enabled mobile phone your chances of becoming your boss’s favourite jump-up manifold. Just key-in the coordinates of that building hidden in some cranny of some bylane in the most congested part of any city, and you will be admired for being punctual. It so happens that armed with the humble lat/long you can actually guide your boss, or anyone else for that matter, to anywhere in India or in any country. You just need to be a little creative and present her this idea. Because as she might have told you during your appraisal, “It’s not the big things you do that take you far; it’s always the small contributions you make every day.”

I assume you know why I am late in posting this post today.

I assume you know by now what I am going to write today.

I assume that you must have got decent increment this time and your CV is not floating in the market.

I assume that you have been reading and will keep on reading whatever I write in my post.

We all assume. We all assume lot of things. Imagine a world without assumptions. Would you be able to live in this kind of world, where everything is non-politically correct and being expressed as it is? Yes, one such world exists but it may be too personal to involve anybody else than me and my wife! :) But, please don’t assume anything yet. She is the one who taught me the power of expression and she’s my biggest inspiration to continue expressing whatever I feel like with you guys without really bothering to think about whether it is politically correct, whether is this the right platform to talk about everything I have been speaking to you or whether I should just stick to whatever I learnt in my B-school or on the job. She knows quite a few things but doesn’t want to assume those and wants me to express it again and again in many ways. This is getting really interesting and I can write endlessly about my wife and what I learn from her but I have to do a justice to the platform and do not talk too much about my personal assumptions and expressions. So, shhh!!

I had a review meeting with some clients. As usual, they assumed that agency did not do any work as per their wish and command. They expressed their unhappiness to my colleagues as well. They assumed that journalists know everything about them. They spoke to journalists on the false assumption they know the business and the company they are speaking to and made lots of mistakes in the process. They assumed agency will take it easy and say ‘yes’ to whenever they will express their unhappiness.

Unfortunately, they had to deal with me and only thing they might have not assumed is my agency’s ability to express in a manner, which probably not many from service industry are capable of doing it.

To cut the long story short, I walked out on the CEO of the organization and demonstrated extreme displeasure to him about the way they are not listening to the team and agency. After a while, I went back to the CEO and obliged him by talking to them about why they don’t know how to express and living in the world full of assumptions. Told him about his inability to live the brand, informed him about how he’s losing money to us without really utilising the brain my agency has and in the process enlightened him on the power of communication.

In the end, he expressed his pleasure in one line – saying that for the first time in his long career as a CEO someone has really walked out on him to prove a point and he’s convinced that expressing it is always better than assuming it.

Anyways, the objective of the post is to let you know my friends that if you are convinced about what you are doing is right. Just go ahead and do it. Don’t assume anything, express everything and express it effectively.

So, my dear wife, when you want me to express my feelings, I know what you are talking about… I am learning and I am happy to express and admit in front of my readers that I am learning it all from you and only you.

Express yourself! Phir pata nahi kal ho na ho…

We wish to thank all our readers who participate on the this blog. Here is a small way how we wish to thank, in a fun way, all those who comment on the various posts on this blog and add to the discussion:

Every week, all those who leave a comment on this blog will have their names thrown into a hat, and two winners will get a copy of Ajay Jain’s (my) new book, Let’s Connect: Using LinkedIn to get ahead at work. (Read about it here)

And here’s more: the more comments you leave, the higher your chances of winning. In other words if you write 5 valid comments, your name will be put in the hat 5 times increasing the probability of winning.

And the first one to comment on this post itself get a free book too!! We will contact you on your email.

UPDATE: We will announce the winner next Wednesday, May 21.  Keep the comments flowing in.