PR Week - Expect the unexpected

As a teenager, I spent a month in Bangladesh. It was one of my first solo journeys and it left a lasting impression. It was an immensely enriching cultural experience, which has resonated in my professional life.

Any seasoned traveler is unfazed by the discomforts and mishaps of a new place – pollution, massive traffic jams, a roundabout taxi journey, pick pocketing, just to name a few. As I immersed myself in my new environment, my local friends introduced me to the term “hota hai”, Hindi for “it happens”. Every adventure, mishap, or surprise was laughed over, and tossed out of the window with a hota hai. “Expect the unexpected,” they educated me.

In my four years working in Central Asia’s public relations and media industry, leading communications at the University of Central Asia, I’ve certainly learnt a thing or two about the unexpected.

Press Release versus News Stories

Any PR professional will tell you, a good news release must have the 5Ws and 1H (what, who, why, when, where and how). There should be factual information, written from the organisational perspective with key corporate messages. Very quickly, I realised that while the basics are universal, in Central Asia, English online media lean towards a news wire function. They publish press releases (either in full or edited), mostly staying true to the original language. By my second PR, I put on my journalist hat and started churning out releases, news style. Why not? If it is going to be published, I thought, I might as well switch gears and try to impact the reporting culture. The upside: I now notice that journalists who regularly write about us have evolved in their writing style.

Cultivating Relationships

In most post-Soviet states, while each country has its national language, Russian remains the connecting lingua franca. Despite living in the region for several years, I am embarrassed to admit, I can still only string together a few street phrases. Colleagues often console me, saying Russian is one of the hardest languages to learn. With a trusty interpreter, this hasn’t stopped me from participating in countless meetings with press secretaries, government officials, stakeholders, partners, media and community members. Listening, observing and asking questions, I can understand a conversation or two. When all is said and done, there’s a basic human impetus at work – striking a chord and cultivating relationships. Within the first five minutes, I try to connect with my counterpart, understand them, and do what I can to move our common agenda forward. Sometimes it takes longer, but we always get there.

Lost and Found in Translation

What continuously baffled me in face-to-face meetings was how it would take me perhaps a minute or two to make a pertinent point, but it would take the translator less than half that time. It turns out that while English has evolved over time, incorporating components of other languages, Russian has not. The English vocabulary has about one million words, but Russian only 150,000. Despite this, the point is often understood. It’s quite a different story (literally!) when it comes to the written word. More often than not, the English to Russian word count increases by 30-50 percent. The reason is also logical; the Russian language necessitates describing a context to clarify information. Hence, we frequently battle for space. What would fit in an English two page spread, takes a fraction more. When absolutely constrained, this forces us to write judiciously. Seasoned wordsmiths all know, that is not always a bad thing.

Remuneration

When I first arrived, I was also surprised to encounter a regular expectation for remuneration by the media, mostly from international organisations and corporations to feature our stories. Being international, we were perceived as corporate. However, as a non-profit higher education institution, this was against our philosophy. Over time, I realised many in the field are not well-compensated and in some instances, it is a survival culture. I understood the motivation.

The remedy was two-fold; first to educate the media on our ambitions (to provide high quality education focused on improving the quality of life of mountain societies) and second, to engage them in that process. I realised there are few opportunities for exposure to international experts, professional development and even travel through their home country and the region. Whenever possible, I offered educational opportunities; interviews with visiting professors, visits to witness the impact of our remote projects, access to our libraries and constantly sharing our best practices, latest educational materials and research.

Through the World Bank/Global Partnership Facility Information Matters: Transparency and Accountability in the Kyrgyz Republic (IMTAK) project, the University’s School of Professional and Continuing Education implemented an 18-month Journalists and Media Training for 125 journalists to enhance their capacity to report effectively on public finance. The University also developed the Russian-Kyrgyz-English Glossary of Terms and Concepts in Public Finance and Budget Process, with definitions of over 500 terms and concepts, meeting a critical need for Central Asian journalists to access and use standardised public finance terminology.

Through initiatives like these, we turned things around. The University of Central Asia now averages 250 media mentions in Central Asian press, annually (without remuneration, of course!). A recent high profile event resulted in almost 100 media mentions over just three days (again, without remuneration).

Small places, big impact

The young people I have mentored in the field of media and communications usually have fantastic dreams of making an impact, often far away from home. Since my arrival in Central Asia, I have seen how energy like that can have a huge impact in small communities, such as the remote towns of Khorog (Tajikistan), Naryn (Kyrgyz Republic) and Tekeli (Kazakhstan), where the University is constructing its campuses.

Whenever I visit these close knit mountain communities (populations ranging from 30,000 to 50,000), I feel connected to the people. It is not just that the communities are small and rural, but that they are remote and resilient. You can barely cover a kilometre before running into someone you know or meeting an individual who is making a difference. For journalists in these locations, the rewards can be manifold. Working in large media outlets, I had to make an extra effort to connect with my audience. In these locales, I have come to know, not just the journalists, but community members, and it is easier to have my finger on the pulse of the community. The stories we cover are therefore authentic in their origins and powerful in their impact. In communities like this, hota hai has a different tone - things don’t just happen; as a media professional, you can make them happen.

My colleague and IMTAK graduate Klara Esenalieva writes for the Naryn-based Tenir Too paper. Notably, she won first place in the Development Policy Institute’s Movement for Budget Transparency national journalism competition, for a news story she wrote about the University’s construction progress for her community newspaper. The article presented a balanced perspective, peppered with insightful facts, statistics and financial information which was well-received by the Naryn public. It made a difference.

Central Asian locations and idiosyncracies aside, these lessons can be applied globally. Upon reflection, I realised the hota hai lesson never left me, and has become an intrinsic part of my life. If one turns it into a mantra, there are always creative solutions found to any curveball that life tosses you.

Go ahead, try it, you never know what you’ll discover.

This article was first published on PRWeek (20 Nov 2014) at: https://bit.ly/mediaCA

Abridged versions of this essay were published in local, regional, academic and international media: Tenir Too (Naryn, Kyrgyz Republic), AKIpress (Central Asia), Centre of Investigative Journalism (New Delhi) and PR Weekly (UK) Asian edition.

Singaporean Nisar Keshvani founded the University of Central Asia’s (UCA) Communications Department in 2010. In 2015, his portfolio expanded to include University marketing. He brings 20 years of experience across five continents in academia, corporate communications and multimedia journalism to Central Asia. Keshvani has a unique combination of practical experience in journalism, marketing and public relations with strategic intellectual engagement in academia and public service. Most of his career has involved implementing entrepreneurial initiatives, including start-up communications divisions, innovative media projects and new academic programmes and curricula. The opinion expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect the view of the University of Central Asia.

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