I wouldn’t be surprised, if tomorrow Mr. Musharaff would be projected as our Prime Minister! Yahan par sab Maya hain, mere bhai! But actually, when I come to think of it, it is actually not a bad idea to have Mush as our Prime Minister. His initials are PM. Almost everyone of the pseudo-secularist brigade would be very happy and yes the most important part is that N-deal or No-deal they would be able to solve many critical issues of national interests – 1) they will help us get rid of the government which has just few months to serve (oops! Sorry rule) the country before we have our general elections. 2) We may not get much needed power due to some power hungry or powerful politicians. 3) We will lose faith in democracy and turn many youngsters away from voting. Are you listening Mr. Karat? Mr. Bardhan? Mr. Ajit Singh? You may win, but we all are going to lose and you are going to be responsible for it.

Well, what’s the connection between all these madness and PR?

The insiders know it very well, that how well-oiled PR machinery is working overtime to make or break the government. The media contacts are being used to the maximum. The buying & selling is taking place. The stories are being planned and planted. Dinners are being hosted and lunches are being thrown upon. It’s a time now when everyone worth their salt in political journalism is high on ecstasy and enjoying every moment of their lives. Many business houses are playing their cards and using all their power to stabilize or destabilize the government according to their comfort levels.

PR is playing its role and whether you like it or not it is affecting your life for better or worst. Everything is fair in business and politics. My grandpa always said that if you have to be happy in life you have to stay away from four Ps: Press, Police, Politicians and Prostitutes. Well, the old man died before I came into PR, otherwise he would have added it also to this list.

Grandpa, I have a confession to make. I dealt with everyone on the list. Hang on guys – before you jump the gun, the last community in the list was part of an NGO I serviced as a client. And yes, I have one more confession to make – I found some humans in each of these communities! In PR as well, we still have few humans left.

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The PR student award category was first announced in 2006 in conjunction with Weber Shandwick. The winner of the award gets USD 6,000 in prize money, a paid for trip to Hong Kong on Nov 20, 2008 for the awards ceremony, and a paid internship at a Weber Shandwick office nearest to the student.

Any student enrolled as an undergraduate student at an institute or university in the Asia Pacific region, irrespective of whether he/she is majoring media or maths, communications or chemistry, can enter the contest. To participate, students needs to write a PR campaign for MasterCard and showcase his/her creative and real life PR skills in drafting the same. The entry kit can be downloaded from here. The detailed brief for developing the campaign is provided in the entry kit, but in a nutshell, it is like this.

In the lead up to the holiday season (December – February), when consumer spending is at its highest, MasterCard is keen to launch a financial management awareness campaign that specifically targets women in Asia Pacific. Based on the strategies outlined in the existing website, MasterCard wants to launch a holistic program that helps women manage their finances.

The entry should be on these lines:

Your proposal should be no more than four typed pages, 10pt font, and should include the following six components:
1. Objectives – Outline clear, measurable objectives to ensure success of your campaign
2. Audience – Specifically identify the people or groups you want to target
3. Strategy – Describe the overall strategy to achieve your objectives
4. Research and planning – Explain how and what type of research would be relevant
to shaping the planning process
5. Execution and tactics – Explain your program in detail. Break it down into major
components
6. Evaluation/Measurement of success – How will you evaluate the success of your
campaign?

Standard campaign elements that you must produce (in addition to the proposal) include: one written press release; a sample pitch letter to a particular media outlet; and a list of targeted media contacts. No budgets have been allocated as yet, but budgets will be commensurate with the program put forth. You must demonstrate strategic thinking, creativity and flawless execution in your proposal.

The entry deadline is September 12, 2008.

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We started the Linkedin Group: Network of PR Professionals in March 2008 and in the last four months or so, the group has grown to more than 1,000 members. I did a quick search and these are some findings:

Number of members from specific countries: US: 500plus; India: 335; UK: 33; and a few members from other countries too.

Number of CEOs: 34; VPs: 75; Director: 174; Managers: 196; Executives: 131; Heads (Group Heads, Practice Heads, Corporate Communications Heads): 38, and so on.

Thanks to all the members. Hoping that we all can connect and benefit from this common platform.

Click here to join the network now.

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Let’s see, what we have seen in the past and what we are witnessing now. If we have look at ads in the past, they were full of product attributes and tangible benefits (some of them are even today following the same beaten path) – about size, shape, price, and shouted sabse sasta, yeh to jhaag wala hain and so on…

Come to 21st century and we are bombarded with extremely talented mothers, super kids, rich dads and a grand pa who go for jogging every day! All of them trying to sell some or the other service or product to you with emotions. Kyonki kabhi pyaar ke beech duriya na aaye…

Welcome to the ‘emotional economy’. This is nothing new and many of the management experts have spoken about it so many times. Many books have been written on the subject. The benefit of developing and demonstrating a personality of a brand has become a key element of strategy in every marketer’s workbook. Many of the successful brands have created a personality with which consumers are connecting themselves emotionally.

Now the billion dollar question is not whether Singh will remain king with support from another Singh who claims to be King as of now, but whether we as PR professionals have been able to embrace the same shift in our strategy or not.

Does PR as we know it and practice is today allow us to establish the emotional connect with the consumers the way advertising does. Do we have the same creative liberty to express ourselves? The answer is both, No & Yes!

No, because in traditional media relations model of PR where you are dependent upon the journalist (well some people would disagree to this statement, but it’s a politically correct perception) to share your story, he or she may speak the way he or she wants. There is no message control. There may be several other ‘NO’ as well, which I want my readers to suggest as part of their comments.

Yes, because the PR offers many more avenues than traditional media relations model. You have the opportunity to directly reach out to your consumers (prosumers, participants, partners, co-creators – many such jargons for people like you and me who spend hard earned money to buy many unwanted things throughout our lives). Social Technologies are really social in nature, which allows us to reach out to the real people in the virtual world and connect with them emotionally. I am sure there would be many more ‘YES’ to this which would come from you.

Until we meet next Thursday, take care and God Bless!

Image Courtesy: AMA Japan (http://www.amajapan.co.jp/e/)

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Now that Hancock is out in all big theaters across India , PR folks must be getting a sweet surprise to see that even a super hero sometimes needs good PR. We have Jason Bateman, a PR guy who after being saved by Hancock deciding to use his PR skills to change the poor image that the drunk super hero has. So what happens next? Hancock surrenders himself to the police and lands up in jail, shaves, dons a clean super hero suit, say nice things to cops, and learns to save people without causing collateral damage.

I quite liked the Hancock’s PR campaign, if you’d call it that. There was no excessive media scouting. The focus was on Hancock and what he needs to do to change his image. There was no ‘this is what I do’ and we have to spin it to make it to look good in front of the public. (are our clients listening? ) No TV and newspaper interviews. You focus on doing something good and the media ultimately follows you. Of course with some good creativity like the PR shock factor in the movie when Hancock surrenders himself to the law, standing apart as a classic PR stunt.

Ultimately, the movie has done some good PR for PR. Cheers to that.

Photo credit: IMDb

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The politics of the nation are in the gutter and the uncertainty that clouds all decision making both in the public and private enterprise will continue well into the next year, if and when another government comes into being. A government that is cross subsidising the oil bill and some other future government will reap the whirlwind and some whirlwind it will be for sure, and I quote Rahul Bhasin of Barings in the DNA, where he said, “We are frittering away our gains made in the last 15 years”.

Against the background of this carnage in corporate India, the bean counters are finally seeing resurgence, like desert plants, they have waiting out the decade of exuberance. Today they are rising like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes, and promise to be the bane of many brands, marketing campaigns and other assorted still born initiatives. Austerity is back like the rude shock of a cold water bath in the freezing winter!

When the accountant’s chop does come down on big-ticket advertising, out-of-home and television commercials, these being the pet peeves of the accountant  PR promises to stay untouched. Having said that budgets for travel, off sites, media training, and all those nice fuzzy things are bound to dry up real quick, if not disappear all together. In all this skirmishing, fortunately for PR, most corporates have come to understand that it is not an on-and-off thing and if anything, some might even find it the last refuge of the marketing to reach their target publics in times of budgetary paucity.

The job market for PR professional and Communicators promises to retain traction and the moaning for talent will stay the wail it is, so here is one area that I again see no effect of the slow down, if anything it could lead to many more corporates hiring for the reasons above.

Challenges bring opportunities and usually constitute the need, the same need that spurs innovation and fosters new paradigms and discoveries. These are the times to service your customer better and to vow to be closer to the business and not lose accounts on reasons of tardiness, inefficiency or downright stupidity! I see many avenues that were shoveled into the “not important or urgent” quadrants due the presence of other ‘lazy cheque’ populars suddenly becoming fashionable. The medium I am talking about and maybe one who’s time has finally come in India, is the online medium.

This is the time to knock again and dust off those online plans, whether it is a programme to engage key bloggers in your space, or kick off that e-mail campaign or spend your remaining rupees in the pursuit of a web-only viral marketing or buzz marketing campaign!

I wish you well in these nasty times, so get dug in and wait it out, this too shall pass, maybe not soon enough but you can always take the time to do something you always wanted to attempt, something forbidden, constructive, intellectual, delicious and inspiring! I look forward to comments here!

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I was chatting up with a colleague, who is a part of our four member media team in our office, on blogging and the new PR.

The media team, as we know, plays a big role in large PR agencies where events and crisis happen on multiple clients almost every day. While the client servicing teams need to concentrate on a whole lot of things in servicing an account, the media team can just focus on building relationships with key journalists across the country. So in times of crisis and big events, they can leverage on their networks to value add to the client servicing team.

Now the part that we were discussing was that the media team should now look at PR 2.0 seriously and gear up to equip themselves with knowledge of the blogosphere and start building relationships with key bloggers across the country across verticals and subjects. And why not. Media teams have been building relationships with journalists in the print media, tv, online media, and now social media should be a natural extension. Talk about digitally enhanced media teams.

So are you a media relations expert? If yes, my next questions could be ‘how many bloggers do you know well?’ Knowing and engagibng with bloggers is no longer the perogative of the client servicing person alone.

My question is can the media teams of today adapt themselves to the new challenge (or opportunity), or will  there be a new class of blogger relations teams in agencies? For now, there is just the socal media team that do everything.

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My friends who read my column regularly must be remembering my ‘Thursdays with Tushar’ of May 2 9, 2008 wherein I wrote about ‘How to win votes and influence people’. Last morning I received a copy of June issue of ‘(Name deleted on request)’ – a house journal of PR Body (Name deleted on request) . I was reading it and I discovered one article by a known PR person (Name deleted on request) with a headline ‘Political public relations making emphatic inroads into India’. The objective was to know more about how people are looking at political PR but within first few lines I got a real shock!

The article I was reading in ‘(Name removed on request)’ by distinguished (Name deleted on request) was totally inspired (Sorry Anu Mallik & Pritam for using your copyrighted language, but can’t help it – mentioning that it is lifted is so uninspiring!) from my article. I am uploading a scanned copy of the article for your reading pleasure. If you feel that you have read it before – don’t blame me, you can write directly to (text removed on request) and thank him for such wonderful originality and inspiration. This is an absolute insult to my readers.

(Please note: We have removed the scanned image of the article from the post but IPRB has kept it in its archieves for internal use & refernece purposes. It is not for public viewing any more - sorry for inconvenience)

I have nothing personal against (Name removed on request) and I don’t care about him. What hurts me the most is that faking has not remained limited to porn movies but it has reached our profession as well! I am sorry (Name removed on request) , I wouldn’t have written this post today and might have given you an opportunity to lift someone else’s article from my blog and print it as yours in some other magazine but I had to do this as, you didn’t even bother to respond to my private mail sent to you. Now, do you want me to print that mail here as well?

Friends, let me sum it up today’s post with just two jewels of wisdom from me. It is for you (Name removed on request)

“If you don’t have it, you don’t have it. Stop being a pirate”

“Being original is difficult, copying and not being caught is even more difficult”

God Bless and Take care!

Hope to meet all of you my friends {(Name removed on request) not included} in my journey of life and searching its meaning.

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An interesting part of our work-in-progress ‘PR agencies and PR freelancers directory’ project might be the community ratings of PR agencies. Any reader of India PR Blog can do a rating out of 5 stars on an agency or a freelancer listed on the directory. We can use the comments section to share our constructive views on any agency. That will be nice.

Have look at some of our pages (in progress):

Index of the PR agencies and PR freelancers directory

Delhi PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

Maharashtra PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

Tamil Nadu PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

Chandigarh PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

Update:
Orissa PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

We are adding more. Keep your information on your agencies and services coming. Details on submission are here.

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This time I let out a hmmm so she deflected to the parent on the other side saying, “really how can the school call meetings at 1 PM, it’s the time I’m so busy to which the other lady agreed vigorously adding “Such a problem”. The counselor meanwhile was saying, ” I know you are busy and held up Outlook current issue on do you connect with your child and said “I know we have busy lives but you all must read this article”. By now I was fuming….my friends know me to never use the word and find that I meticulously wean the habitual “busy” people out of my life…but then you would say that’s my problem. It sure is but the purpose of writing this piece is that we all should unravel this Business of being Busy .

In his book Semantic Antics , How and Why words change meaning , Sel Steinmetz says “business” used to refer to being busy, but it gradually broadened to encompass many kinds of occupations. Now it’s fair to ask why don’t take the word at face value. Busy means just that..busy …occupied , not available right now…It’s because of what the word has become…Some use it as a polite brush off, some as a shield as a not available to you to and others just to pay back in the same coin. The most intelligent, creative and busy (dictionary sense) people I know are never ever busy ! They always take calls, they always return calls they can’t take, they always revert on time and almost always have a really good reason to being “busy”, a reason you can empathize with and thus begin to respect their time next time you approach them.

The fish philosophy session was meanwhile on the 3rd value “Play” and the counselor asked “So when did you all have fun last? I whispered to myself 2.20 PM ! ..the parent sitting next to me checked her watch (it was 2:22 PM) and looked at me enquiringly…I just shrugged. Later in the one on one sessions the counselor said, ” I heard what you said.. Did you really have fun ten minutes back?..Yes of course, you were speaking of one of good books I had read..my sms showed a friend trying to frantically reach me and sending vague smileys..the ladies sitting close to me were discussing how busy they were and I found it fun to be ‘free” enough to adsorb all that was happening around despite knowing all the jobs that waited for me back on my desk. ! The counselor gave me such a warm smile I skipped on my way out..

The business of being “BUSY” has occupied my mind forever. On the company Intranet I recently started a discussion string “Volunteering needs free time or a free mind ?” and the sum total was that Busy is a mindset not a state of being..or a mental state a job (or even personal life) keeps you in. For a very long time and even now sometimes I wonder what happens to us that we managers begin throwing “busy” around. Its more important in the context of Communications and Organizational Culture that the word become an anathema. Like Mark Twain said… Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover…And those people who do this i.e explore, dream, discover don’t do so on annual holidays. they do it everyday! Inspiration is all around us , in people ..with whom we are just too busy to interact with.

In the business of public relations, the media often tells us that when they have a query they need answers, we are busy but when we have a plug then we are free to pursue this single point agenda with them for days on end. There is more evidence of the misuse of the word in middle level managers. Last year I was on a compaign to get it off as many people’s daily verbal list as possible and it reflected in one of the articles on HOD skill sets where I then foolish enough to say bluntly. ” Busy is a four letter word! It keeps you away from experiencing people and events which have the capacity to make a positive impact on your professional and personal life. So don’t use it to defend your bad time management. Don’t replace “busy” with “I don’t have the bandwidth”, “I’m snowed under”. Tough job you have so stop whining - you are paid more, so you have more pressure to handle and thus more accountability too.” (you can read full article here)  That was last year. This year I’m more diplomatic primarily because habitually “busy” have very methodically been downgraded from Friends to Acquaintances to a Do I know you at all list. I have all the time in the world to do all the things I want to do…with all those who want to do it with me..

Now the epitabh (sic English) my previous blog entry received too much TRP I would say for a first one in fact led me to think maybe I should have written on a more non controversial topic instead. All that goes in the name of “breaking news” , especially nowadays when the end of life becomes the country’s soap opera, “journalism” generates some very strong emotions which showed up in the feedback.

But that apart most of the feedback tackled different portions of the blog and was generally in agreement, some comments were truly kickstarters to a thought process and Im going to tackle them in some later blogs. One colleague actually equated me in my journalist avatar to a much much senior colleague who truly was …for want of a better term …aweful kind of egoist. It is therefore correct what he said later “what hurts is to see that most of them (journos) make the generic mistake of clubbing all corporate communication professionals in one mould. Like you said there are different types of journos, similarly there are variants in CC professionals too.” Another colleague however says the exact opposite because her mentor used to say the same thing about working with journalists. A very astute colleague is pretty much agreeable with Line function bit and says she is currently heading an experimental pilot communications position which is bogged down by none of the previous process driven parts of the function anymore. Our friend Palin on the other hand is also saying the same thing but not exactly that. The point which I think is worth talking about is the scope of Corporate Communications? What pricesly are the Key Result Areas. What pricesly is the mindset..Lets talk about this in the coming days based on how many people post their curiosity on it

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