The other day I had a casual tea-time chat with one of my senior colleagues on the nature of PR industry in India. "Public Relations in India is traditional, purely judged on the success of media relations. A consultancy is hired based on - how many media contacts do you have? how much coverage can you get me?," he stated. The tea cups were emptied, the snacks plate munched clean. But the analysis of my senior colleague about the nature of Indian PR consultancy industry prompted me to look back into my experiences of last 40 days. I did. What I found was imprints of media relations in almost all activities.
From the very first day of my internship I have noticed that most of my senior colleagues are preoccupied in preparing media coverage reports, media calls, media rounds, media lists and task goes on...I was overcome with many questions. Why was a reputed firm like Perfect Relations focusing so excessively on media relations? Is the entire PR industry in India media relations oriented? I undertook a minor research of the websites of prominent PR firms in India and prepared a competitor analysis (click here) document.
Interesingly, all firms including international firms like Burson-Marsteller, Edleman had a separate section for media relations and many other local Indian firms too provided extensive information including case studies on their successful media relations campaigns for clients. From this I understood that excessive reliance on media relations was not an isolated phenomenon but a industry practice in India.
Almost every client that I work for during my internship was interested in the amount of media placement we could get for them. Hence, we had lots of what Harrison(2007, 106) calls "gimmicks" to attract media such as decorating a Christmas tree at one of the client's office premises and distributing chocolate bars to employees. My colleague and me had picked the media to cover the event with a promise of 'grand celebrations' and 'employee announcement'. But needless to say nothing of such sort happened and understandably members of the media were disappointed. One member of the media went on and on about 'how PR in India is often fooling media to secure pointless coverage'. I somehow found that statement true. It reflected badly on Perfect Relations Hyderabad. However, I was told by my colleague its a common practice and if we wont do it somebody else will and we risk losing the client to one of our competitors.
This brings to point most factor in PR leaning heavily on media relations - the clients. The legacy issues of not recognizing PR as a strategic management function has shaped much of PR activity in India. The ideas of press agentry and publicity are still dominant in smaller business sector. However, I think,the advent of multinational corporations corresponding to economic deregulation of India in the 1990s has slowly started to alter the perceptions of PR and its functions among the corporate sector. There is increased awareness about PR strategic role in managing an organization but the levels of acceptance is still not encouraging. That is why the prerogative I believe falls on PR firms like Perfect Relations to undertake initiatives to convince clients about the need for PR as strategic function and not just a media relations function.
This is my personal views. If anyone has any opinions or differs from what I think, please feel free to comment. Looking forward to your comments.
Suhas Tadas
Perfect Relations
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