Through the Crystal Ball: Future ofPR post-COVID Crisis

The optimist in me never really fades away. Amid all the stories on gloom and doom, here are my two rupees (or cents or pennies) on why you can rest assured there is a big boom coming your way in the PR industry.

“We used to be the tail on the dog,”… (But now, PR is)… “The organising principle behind many business decisions”
— Richard Edelman

We have all been put on a pause mode. A factory reset is on its way and guess what, every day I open the newspaper ( yes, I still have my good old print medium supporting my thoughts and bolstering my opinions) I can’t help but bemoan the passing of reading anything close to the old normal. Pauses are painful. And forced stops, like this one, they are even more so.

“The app may misbehave if you force stop” A common refrain that I see when I dabble too much with my phones yet-to-be-explored completely features. But as I have faith in my abilities to reset, I go ahead, sometimes even reinstall the apps in the process.

After we were forced to hit the pause button, we all have “misbehaved” in some or the other way in the past 30 days since lockdown became a reality. First, it was disbelief, followed by denial, even depression for some while desperation for others.

My “D” amidst all the “Doomsday” prophecies was “Determination”. I have seen how my team rallied up around me, bringing out their A-games without even flinching once. You put a PR manager in hot water, and only more creative solutions come out.

Our resilience to beat the odds at any cost is going to prove a huge asset when we all go back to our good old routines. Now, apart from the boardroom war stories we also have our success stories from the rooms of our homes.

Yes, in the middle of all that is happening around us, I am predicting a massive surge in demand, production, and consumption and of course with a better awareness towards our surroundings- thanks to incessant social media used by all strata of the society in the lockdown period- whether to kill boredom or to survive.

As I look into the crystal ball, the future looks bright and promising to me, particularly for brands, and subsequently for Public Relations. The PR industry, currently going through a tough phase due to the slowing down of businesses and the economy, is only going to emerge out stronger. The need to
disseminate quality information to the right audience is as pertinent despite lockdown and it will remain so as it makes a grand comeback in the times to come. I have facts and reasons to feel optimistic, even more, upbeat about the future.

The humans have beaten several odds stacked against their survival in the past. Economic stability has been threatened by two world wars while Spanish flu almost wiped out 50% of the world population before we all fell into the great depression in the 1930s. India, in particular, has seen more challenges- on economic and socio-political fronts that lead to many reforms like liberalization, change in FDI norms, followed anti-reform situations like bank nationalization, wars with neighboring nations, an arms race, growing corruption, and communal disharmony threatened to set us back in time. Globally, the world didn’t fare any better either. From the Gulf wars, Afghanistan, the 9/11 attack to the subprime crisis of 2008, the financial markets and world economy has had its share of tremors that shook any delusions of the superiority of the West.

The present crisis is just another episode in a long list of life-threatening pandemics, AIDS, SARS, and now, COVID 2019 has again proved our vulnerability to unseen, unmanageable forces and exposed our unpreparedness towards global challenges as probably the only known living beings in the universe.

Whatever may be the reason that has triggered recession- when the recession hits, companies do tend to trim the seeming inessentials, go lean and hunker down till the storm passes over. But their history has shown us how, PR support, which is important when things go as planned, becomes vital for survival when the companies face bad times. And I have two grounds to stake a claim that PR is recession-proof, even in these times-

1. the advent and mass penetration of social media, which has set the ground for Digital PR, a leaner, cost-effective way of mass communication at a fraction of advertising budgets; and

2. The value-added proposition over marketing and advertising — since PR is more cost-effective in leaner periods. Remember the adage- “A news article is worth more than a full-page ad”?

You got the drift!

According to data from Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS), a private-equity firm, spending on public relations in America grew by more than 4% in 2008 and nearly 3% in 2009 to $3.7 billion. That is remarkable when compared with other forms of marketing. Spending on advertising contracted by nearly 3% in 2008 and by 8% in the past year. PR’s position looks even rosier when word-of-mouth marketing, which includes services that PR firms often manage, such as outreach to bloggers, is included. Spending on such things increased by more than 10% in 2009….PR has done well in part because it is often cheaper than mass advertising campaigns. Its impact, in the form of favourable coverage in the media or online, can also be more easily
measured.
— The Economist: Public Relations in recession: Good News: Other firms suffering has bolstered the public-relations business, July 14th, 2010 https://www.economist.com/business/2010/01/14/good-news

In another life, we had just put the banking crisis behind us, where a surge in NPAs and other operational issues led to bailouts and takeovers by stronger, steadier counterparts. The economy absorbed the setbacks, thanks to the efficiency of a handful of organizations that had got their act together, and the so-called rotten apples didn’t outweigh the good ones in the long run.

Closer home, I have many reasons to establish why the PR industry is bound to witness an unprecedented boom in their business.

Healthcare becomes a prime priority- Healthcare industry is all set to welcome new entrants in the form of hospitals, healthcare startups with innovative apps for healthcare management, as well as a likely boom in the workforce as more and more people wish to join the healthcare sector has given the new-found respect and perceptive improvement. More jobs in the healthcare sector also mean stress on specialised healthcare education. With more than 60,000 Government Hospitals with approx, 0.55 beds per 1000 population are nowhere close to any benchmark for a robust healthcare system. I foresee a lot of strategic alliances and am hopeful for PPP in the healthcare sector to ensure better healthcare facilities available at the grassroots level.

Education takes a new avatar- After healthcare, Educational institutes were the first-line responders to the Covid-19 crisis, where they were able to block the movement of students, parents, and additional support systems within hours of COVID- being declared an emergency. Not resorting to giving up, most educational institutes switched to the online medium of learning and by now they have established long-term systems and processes to continue with the learning, Edutech start-ups are doing a brisk business, some even quadrupling their growth rates and earnings forecasts. Even internet service providers, software and hardware companies engaged in creating everything from tablets to computers, printers to safe online classrooms at home.

Real estate focus shifts back on residential community living- the demand for planned real estate that adheres to social distancing norms and provides a hygienic, healthy and safe environment as well as the fact that community living helped people to tide over the crises smoothly in many parts of the country opens up a whole new vista for real estate developers. With work from home becoming the new norm, several commercial projects focusing on office space may shift their focus back to residential housing. The sector is going to see a recovery in residential housing within this year itself.

IT/ ITeS- The sector that is still looking promising. The earnings forecasts may have been revised but industry leaders like Capgemini which has announced no pay-cuts, and has gone ahead with its bonus plans show us a lot of hope for other companies too. The work-from-home routine for these companies is now settling in and in the foreseeable future; one can see a huge surge in demand for technical support services across industry verticals

BFSI — A crisis that is acting as a catalyst for financial inclusion- Digital Economy is the new world order. Fintech, bigTech, and other players can leverage this tech-led approach to build financial solutions designed for a broader customer base.

Bringing the same analogy to Public Relations, strong fundamentals, a disciplined approach, and a client-oriented mindset will help the PR industry emerge out as a winner from the present situation.

Although, we might see a bit of consolidation happening where larger firms join hands with smaller, boutique firms having a tangible advantage of being closer to the local market.

Think of it as a pause button, a reset that we all needed. The market was getting saturated with all the news, brands were all rushing to imitate each other with their media and communication mix, looking frighteningly identical on whiteboards. It was not just getting monotonous for the target
audience; it was becoming dull and dreary for brands too!

Not anymore!

Expect a “Nike Swoosh” recovery for banking and financial sector
-Abheek Barua, Chief Economist & EVP, HDFC Bank

We all have had enough time in our hands to work singlehandedly on our media re-launch strategies for our clients. We all can revel in the pleasure of communication plans that have been discussed at length, with A/B testing scenarios played on a loop in our headspaces. Meanwhile, the world has not
been moving forward, it is waiting for us to deliver the punch when the time arrives! Sci-fi is indeed real in so many ways, and Matrix is what comes to my mind!

Never again in your life will you get this opportunity to sharpen your axes while the time has stopped. And with bated breath, we are just as excited as we can be for the good times that await us all at the other end of the year 2020 when the PR industry will seriously look forward to a resounding future. The road ahead may not be easy, but it throws new opportunities our way. The goal should be to adapt to the new world order and work on the new challenges presented to us with this factory reset button by nature.

About the agency:

K2 Communications Pvt Ltd — is India’s leading Public Relations agency headquartered at Bengaluru. Now in its 15th year of successful PR, K2 has registered its presence in more than 45 locations across the country as a public relations company rooted in India but with a global outlook. K2 has an enviable list of clients to its credit- Wipro Limited is the leader of our client brigade for more than a decade. The other names that we can boast of having a long-term association are Azim Premji University, BASE Education, Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting (FMCG), House of Hiranandani, Columbia Asia Hospitals, AO Smith and Trio World Academy, to name a few.

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