In the recent executive report released by MSL Group India on the 2013 outlook for the country’s Public Relations (PR) industry, nearly 51% or the majority of respondents said the industry would grow more than 20% over the next 12 months. While 63% respondents said they believed clients’ PR budgets were intact, 33% were of the opinion that the budgets have increased. For 48% of the respondents, digital media was the hottest category for 2013, followed by lifestyle and technology.
Talent crunch was the top-of-the-mind concern for the PR and communications industry, even as the emerging trend is of knowledge-based PR and 41% respondents stressed upon the need for thought-leadership initiatives.
As a primary trend in PR and communications, successful brands are those that work closely with communities, governments, customers and organizations in identifying and devising solutions to problems in the environment. According to MSL Group’s ‘Public Relations in India: Inside the Industry’s Mind and the 2013 Outlook’, “Businesses will move from corporate social responsibility to collaborative social innovation in 2013.”
While India continues to be a developing PR market, it is not that the talent pool within is not up to the mark – it is just that they are still a pool of fairly young professionals in the midst of a fast-evolving industry. About 50,000-75,000 professionals work in this sector across PR agencies or in companies’ internal communications teams.
As the demand for PR professionals increases on a regular basis with the arrival of foreign companies and the feeling of a necessity among home-grown companies, India is being looked at as an important profit centre, thereby, the growth in the importance of reputation and positive brand communications. By this very fact, several international PR firms have either taken the merger or the acquisition route into the country, while more and more domestic PR firms are relying on expansion and growth.
International firms have realized the potential to make public relations more professional, systematic and pro-active in the country. They are trying to shake up – as Rohin Dharmakumar wrote in Forbes India way back in 2010 – a smug Indian industry used to treating PR as a minor cost centre focused on managing a few journalists; and help it prepare for a more assertive and connected consumer base. In the process, PR is becoming a more strategic but expensive affair for companies.
According to PR 2.0 guru Deirdre Breakenridge, “India will experience a great deal of growth in the area of PR and social media, as the Internet and technology continue to become more essential to businesses. We have already seen heavy usage of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. PR professionals in India will be required to expand their knowledge, skills and communications practices as consumers and businesses come to rely more on social media communities to deliver communications and to engage with the public.”
But there are gaps within the PR and communications ranks, in spite of the high notes being sung for them. For one, there is a grave mismatch between the client and PR service providers’ expectations. As a professional from a power and infrastructure firm says, “Times have been hard for companies globally. And professionals in our domain, since they don’t belong to any business and income generation vertical directly, are the most expendable. A company in dire straits may first ask its communication team to go when it mulls downsizing.” Though the demand for PR services in India is on the increase, like elsewhere in the world, the reputation of reputation management professionals are often tarnished. A PR professional most often hates to be called a “spin doctor” but that is exactly what they are often reduced to. A company may prefer a former bureaucrat who has been ‘there’ and knows how to ‘influence’ the ministers and babus, for its PR requirements, rather than a professional PR person.
There is also a lack of understanding of PR professionals, which has been further fuelled by the Niira Radia scandal. For one, the media does not respect PR pros and the feeling is mutual in most cases, though both are vital to each other. As Vikram Kharvi, a PR and Digital Strategist, writes in his blog, “Strategies do come out from the caps of top notch agency leads but die out before delivering any significant media visibility. Pro-active PR is an ugly looking animal who we don’t even want to touch and are happy doing the glorified postman’s job of conveying client initiatives to the media.”
There is a lack of permanent faculty for PR and communication courses across institutions. There is a paucity of knowledge being shared. There has not been one book of Indian case studies in PR; no books by Indian authors. If we know the problem, why is the industry not doing anything about it?
Senior PR professionals say that the deterrents with the industry are well known and acknowledged. They say that notwithstanding the slow GDP growth and global financial insecurity, the industry is banking on its potential to add strategic value and to make a notable impact on companies’ business objectives. At the same time, the professionals agree that much needs to be done in terms of introspection for the industry to become standalone and not be mistaken as just another arm of advertising.
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