“Urgent need to scale up on skilling and tapping the talent pool for the PR industry”

As part of our latest series on ‘PR Conversation’, we at Adgully are speaking to some of the industry leaders from both PR agencies and the corporate communications world about how PR as a business and communication tool has evolved and grown over the years. In the last 10 years, PR has taken a different dimension, especially after the entry of social media in a big way. While the PR business has grown, some of the challenges that the industry is facing have also multiplied as clients are becoming more demanding and are expecting their consultants to be on their toes to manage their brand reputation, as news today travels fast and clients are expecting quick response and action in case of a crisis situation.

In conversation with Adgully, Rishi Seth, CEO, Six Degrees BCW, elucidates on the evolution of the PR industry over the last two decades and stresses on the need for the public relations industry to be able to articulate its value proposition in today’s market ecosystem.

You have been in the PR world for over two decades. What are the new dimensions and trends that you have seen in PR in these years? What is the road ahead going to look for the PR industry for the next 5 years?

The PR industry has evolved a lot over the last two decades. When I started my PR career, the profession was almost entirely about organic media engagement. It gradually expanded to public affairs and internal communications also over the first decade of my career. The Internet and digital platforms, however, have completely disrupted the profession. The pandemic has accelerated the path for firms to offer integrated services. This ranges from doing research and analytics to producing video and creatives along with digital media paid and organic campaigns. The next five years will lead to even more expansion in the portfolio that public relations will offer and will include heavier use of technology both in understanding of the end customer as well as delivering campaigns to connect with them. Overall, the pie for this profession will expand as the professionals in this field have more context of the overall picture of a corporation, understand organic and authentic campaigns well and will build the capability to execute on creatives and paid media.

Digital has become a powerful communication tool for brands today. What is the role of digital in PR for a brand’s journey today? How is your company coping with the acceleration of digital and delivering value to your clients especially in the online reputation management?

It has become a digital-first world now. The pandemic has exponentially accelerated the reach and connect of digital. Therefore, it has already become a bigger part of every PR campaign. I think we would have crossed the threshold of digital being more than 50% of a PR professional’s role for consumer communication already and corporation reputation and B2B brands will also shift rapidly.

Thankfully, we were already offering digital solutions to our clients. However, given the pace of growth in this area, we have allocated more resources dedicated to digital, run aggressive training for people to ramp up on digital and are partnering with group companies and even independent experts, wherever required to deliver to the increased ask from our clients. I think the investment on digital will continue for the next year or two, in order to rapidly scale for growth.

Training and learning are very important in the PR business. How have you managed to impart knowledge and training during the pandemic? Most importantly, how did you engage with your employees to keep the morale high and kicking?

The pandemic has tested us both professionally and personally. The public relations industry for one, has worked through the lockdown and work from home. We did not have the break that employees from some sectors had due to the lockdowns. In fact, if anything, the industry has worked harder in the last six months than we used to when in office. Therefore, I am thankful to all our people and kudos to the industry in general to continue supporting their clients and working hard during this time. However, this has meant challenges of balancing home and work, remote work productivity and coping with change in type of services and output that the pandemic has defined.

Therefore, the importance of training and learning is more now than ever as the skill set requirement is rapidly changing due to the solutions being offered to clients. We had the ability to scale up on training by leveraging the BCW network and even the WPP group companies in order to develop people skills during the last six months. This has been a big asset for us given the WFH environment and organic only training would not have helped given the nature of skill upgradation.

On the employee engagement front, we connect regularly through virtual meet ups, training and development along with fun activities. I think the morale of the team is high and now that the end of the tunnel looks to be coming with the vaccination, people will be relieved to have more balance in a hybrid work model and meeting their team members and clients as required.

You have worked on several reputed brands and PR campaigns. Can you single out one or two campaigns in the PR and Communication field that was very effective and worked wonders for the brand?

It would not be fair to single out any campaign. When you work on assignments, you value the work which you put in. However, I think the most satisfying and effective campaigns are where the client works with you as a true partner and empower you completely to drive the campaign.

PR measurement and effectiveness of PR has always been a subject of debate. As a PR professional, what steps the PR industry should take to bring in uniformity so that everyone speaks one language when it comes to PR measurement?

PR measurement and effectiveness remains a matter of debate and discussion due to a number of factors. The first is obviously the discussion around output or outcomes. I think while more clients want to move to outcome, it takes more resources to measure outcomes versus output. The second question arises on aligning them to business goals or communication/ campaign goals. Here again, the alignment between all parties involved is required on setting of these goals.

While a number of best practices are prescribed globally, I still maintain what to measure, how to measure and when to measure are decisions which are specific to campaign’s goals, resources and sophistication. Therefore, the measurement for a product launch campaign might be different to a crisis management one. Therefore, while some broad parameters exist, I would prescribe a solution to measurement taking all the above mentioned factors for specific campaigns and client requirements. At the end of the day measurement has to be meaningful, objective, credible and importantly reasonable to the budget for the campaign.

What are the challenges faced by the Indian PR industry? What would be your valuable advice to the new crop of PR professionals who are entering the industry?

With the opportunities, come challenges. Therefore, while the budget pie with the client is increasing, skills and people are in short supply. There is an urgent need to scale up on skilling and tapping the talent pool for the PR industry. The second challenge is for the industry to be able to differentiate itself from other marketing services companies. Since the lines are blurring on who offers what within marketing consulting and services firms, it will become important for the public relations industry to be able to articulate its value proposition.

Setting expectations with clients is always a challenge in the PR business. What is your approach in setting expectations with clients and most importantly how do you measure the expectations and ensure that the desired value is delivered?

The customer or the client in our case, will always push to drive clarity on ROI and impact for the investments that they are making in public relations. Therefore, expectation setting is closely connected to goal setting. Different clients have different expectations, for instance:

• For clients that are engaging PR firms for the first time, it is about demonstrating the ability to generate output within a short span of time
• For clients who have been using public relations firms, it is about improving output and outcomes from where they are now
• For clients focused on business goals, it is aligning the PR program to be able to demonstrate value to the stakeholders

Therefore, one has to first understand what the key driver for the client is to engage with you for a PR program. Then create goals that speak to the needs of the client. Hopefully, make them as objective as possible, so that there is as little grey as possible on defining success. This would hopefully reduce the stress of expectation management.