A guide to Public Relations: What do we do and why don’t we do the PR of PR?
As a management graduate with ample number of beautiful opportunities in my hand pertaining to business development and marketing, it had been a difficult 2 year process to make people around me understand what Public Relations is all about and why I’d wanna pursue it over more esteemed jobs and profiles; especially when this profession anyway comes in handy with the stigma of everything manipulative and sly.
After an exact one month experience hands on in the field and working for giant corporate bellies like Panasonic, Suzuki and Mercedes Benz, I compiled my lessons to come down to a basic understanding of this industry and what “we” do.
- Your $200 billion MNC is doing exceptionally well globally and a crisis happens. All your self-acclaimed advertisements and campaigns being consumer friendly and socially contributing suddenly becomes the centre of attention for people to just mock at. Which doctor do you go to fix the mess that time and situation has created? Who tells you what to do to come out clean and also deliver the message of calm and honesty? Which department or firm makes your company listed in the crisis management case studies in the Harvard records? Yes, we.
- Your favourite brand is launching a breath taking product in your amaze category. How exactly to create a buzz about it with minimum or no expenditure? How to reach out to people who are actually going to use these products, hence streamlining the target markets and journalists and everything else; practically making a business plan within a business plan? Yes, we.
- Your startup wants to tell people how its doing something valuable and unique. Instead of going (now) the traditional way of putting it on social media and giving huge amounts in hoardings and boarding, you go to a PR firm, asking for the eminent placement and positioning of your startup proposition in the right target newspaper, magazines and newsletters. Who devises this mix of 7Ps? Yes, we.
- Your organisation is acknowledged and appreciated today. But you know the world is not constant. Its dynamic af. And if Kevin Spacey’s House of Cards can get shut for a sin he committed years ago, your little blocks of misery might also be just steps away to ruin the buildings of success in your lane. Sensing the vuca world in power, you pledge to keep the image of your company consistent and smooth in the minds of the world. Who takes care of that minute, indirect reputation building and enhancement of your name in various places, everyday enough to let the people take a stand for you when time may come? Yes, we.
Unlike the commonly believed myth, PR isn’t just anybody’s job. From creating content for people standing as a key note speaker in a conference held for the most educated in the country to devising the exact words that millions read each day for any company (being the journalist’s right hand in a mellowed language by the way), you will see a PR person doing it all.
Events may come and events may go; but our tasks of making sure we have served the media right and enough with appropriate blend of cutting the distance between the client and the consumer, meeting everyone’s expectations in the process is our must. Everyone’s.
Interestingly enough, we cannot advertise what we do ’cause half our job is being the voice of a fancy CEO and constructing the foundation of any corporate or individual or product or service.
But I always see this one campaign from the Mimi Foundation and realise our least talked about but utmost important goal: Creating awareness in the most impact filled manner.
And as my professor states, “If only I could do 10% of such a campaign in India, I will do justice to this profession and my life”.
