The great Indian PR divide

On the first day of joining as an intern in a PR agency at New Delhi, I was aghast. The Associate Consultant there told me to scan five newspapers, and if I see mentions of certain companies, those clips had to be cut out and glued into the company letterheads. That would be my job first thing in the office every morning, followed by writing the headlines of those clips alongwith the names of the newspapers, dates, and place of publication into Word files and writing summaries out of each story. After having done a mass communications degree, I thought that was bit odd. I was wondering what my job profile will be like, but at least not that. We used to do precis writing in class IX.

I wondered if mine was an odd case, and I got a bad boss. But after being in the PR industry for months now, I see that in every agency, whether it is someone coming from IIMC, Symbiosis, or any other Mass Communication universities, thats the route everyone followed.

Some weeks after this clip cutting business, there will be an additional job profile that is - call up the journalist. One has to call up journalists for everything including press conferences, events, press releases, interviews, etc. Then you do what are called media rounds in which you go to media houses to meet up journalists. It’s another story that you will be given 5 seconds by each journalist to talk to them (oh ya I have seen the best of media relations experts).

CEOs in this type of PR agencies judge how well a client account is doing by gauging the newspaper coverage the agency is getting for the client. If there is a silence in an account for two weeks, it’s crisis time. Then you are sent off to some newspaper offices to cajole the journalists to do the interviews with your client. So as long as media stories keep coming in, every account is being serviced. The messaging, planning, word docuemnts, excels, and powerpoints submitted to clients can be mouled and handled afterwards. This is the long and short way of PR, and one way to look at it. There are agencies and PR professionals stuck with this ‘PR means media coverage’ concept. They will tell you that you are as good as the number of journalists who can recall your name.

Well, that was very pessimistic of me. We also have agencies that don’t take shit from clients or the media. When there are new clients, they try to understand their clients’ businesses inside out. They have industry experts in the agency who can advise the clients on their images. They represent their clients to their customers, business partners, government, and the communities and the clients feel at ease if they are with their PR people whenever they go out to meet some tricky people.

These agencies let know the client how they should plan their media relations campaign and what is possible and what is not. They don’t just do the ‘fix an interview’ ordeal, but make the clients realise that if there is no coverage, it’s not such a big deal. There is next time. They don’t let their clients judge the agency basis the number of clips obtained.

They are the writing experts and the clients depend on them for their internal and external newsletters, messages,case studies, environment assessment papers, etc. etc..

The PR agency is not the media coordination agency but the information management office of the clients. For that the agency makes its employees knowledgeable so that when they go out, they present themselves as consultants, who can debate on industry developments and give their sugegstions on issues.

Well, is that too much asking? No, there are agencies going on these routes. Kudos to them.