PR is going through a renewal of sorts. The industry is bound to grow with a sense of optimism....

The Public Relations Consultants Association of India (PRCAI) over the years have taken many initiatives and positive steps to raise the standards of the PR industry. This association is India’s most credible and professional communications body, PRCAI has been set up with a singular vision for building an ethical and professional culture that leads to prosperity of the industry and its people.

The last year was the bounce back year for many in the PR industry. In one way it was reinventing and rebooting after the pandemic and bringing in a strong self-belief and optimism to the new year. The industry has been evolving and has transformed a lot in the last 10 years. The acceleration in digital has pushed the agencies to perform better and be more agile as the expectations of the clients have gone up. ?With data and analytics backed by technology today agencies are able to formulate focused strategies with strong and powerful messaging. While the industry is grappling to get the right talent, it is associations like PRCAI helping the industry to innovate with new ideas and find solutions.

I had the opportunity to have an exclusive and interesting interaction with Deeptie Sethi, CEO, PRCAI who has been a veteran in this industry for over two decades. Deeptie, shared some valuable information and insights on how PRCAI is helping the industry to address some of the pain points and challenges the PR industry is facing and how they have worked out a clear road map to find solutions for many of their challenges. She further added that PRCAI will stay committed to keep this industry united, to develop a culture of ethics, professionalism and prosperity in public relations

1.You took over as the CEO of PRCAI about a year back. What is your personal vision for PRCAI and how do you plan to make your vision work for the organization and the industry?

?I have been humbled to serve in this role and found incredible trust and support of so many people in the last one year. The first year in this role was a reaffirmation of the potential of our industry, the respect it deserves, understanding and acknowledgement of the challenges we face and how to navigate through several points of view, to reimagine the purpose in context of a changing industry.?What makes the role at the helm of an association ?different from a traditional PR leadership role is how we rally people together, leverage their phenomenal expertise, recognize issues and opportunities, and most importantly consolidate multi visions to converge at common areas of interest. Given the changing dynamics of the PR landscape and the growing demand of our skill, the association has to run the secretariat professionally and identify those convergence points for practitioners, corporate communicators, consultancies, so that as an industry we are ready not just for today, but for the next decade.

?India’s most credible and professional communications body, PRCAI has been set up with a singular vision for building an ethical and professional culture that leads to prosperity of the industry and its people. My strategic plan emerged around three-strategic pillars - driving inclusive growth, becoming a knowledge hub and be a think tank to raise the industry bar. When I joined, I started thinking, how we can we make PRCAI relevant to a wider group of professionals? What are the diverse viewpoints that impact growth of PR and Communications? How can we learn from direct and indirect influencers? How can we have effective dialogue between different stakeholders? In just over a year and direct conversations with more than 50 senior leaders, youngsters, CCOs our roadmap was marked out. We launched AIPR certification last February; started the Writing Pen training in May of 2022; introduced first-ever PRCAI thought leadership PRologue to bringing diverse new age conversations to the fore to influence PR progress in July last year. and we showcased Indian PR?at ICCO Global Summit and the first ever Global Exchange with Public Relations Society of America in Q4 of 2022; and throughout the year worked on growing our membership base, inviting new joinees to the PRCAI family from leading corporate communication teams, mid, small, large consultancies and a new academic institution like Manipal University.

2022 for me in the role was more about consolidation, disciplining our structure and defining our pace. 2023 will see us building this out and a greater focus around standardization of process, people and building a culture of PR.

2.With your vast experience in the PR and corporate communication field what are some of the challenges the industry is facing and how can that be tackled with the help of PRCAI?

PR has a strong role to play in shaping corporate and brand reputation. PR is going through a renewal of sorts.?The industry is bound to grow with a sense of optimism. We are seeing new agencies emerge, growth of most agencies at the back of a startup economy, private sector and increased awareness of PR amongst C Suite. One of typical challenges in our profession is about earning a seat at the table and getting more and more senior industry leaders to see the true value of PR. Today, the PR dimensions have evolved multifold with specializations of sectors, industries, disciplines such as social, digital, public policy, regulations, meta and technology communications, social advocacy as newer independent forms. We are moving from being generalists to becoming highly specialized. Keeping abreast with new age skills, finding the right talent and nurturing these skills will be a key opportunity. We need to find the science to integrate these skills within our workforce and to drive holistic solutions from our discipline.

3.The industry has been grappling with the?talent crisis for some time. As an industry body how can PRCAI bring in their expertise to address the crisis and provide a solution for the same?

We do recognize that the industry at large is seeing skill gaps and talent shortage - whether it is acquiring crucial skills, new skills or even reminding the younger professionals of the fundamentals of the core competencies required to perform well. In fact, that's how PRCAI’s training program, the Writing Pen and India’s first Accreditation Program in Indian Public Relations (AIPR) for working PR professionals were born and this year, we have certified, 40 PR professionals through AIPR,?ensuring a quality benchmark in our profession. The basic objective of the Writing Pen program –?is to get young PR professionals into the habit of writing. This is a 10 to 12-week program where we bring various experts from the media, to help?young professionals?visualize, research, look at different forms of writing, and learn from those who are experts in specialized ?areas. With this we can look at ?bridging the gap in learning. We have trained about 90 professionals through this initiative.. ?

With our strategic pillar of being a knowledge hub, apart from the above, we will continue to drive exposure to our member community by providing learning and exchange platforms through PRCAI Dialogue, PREngage series. We also motivate people in our profession by celebrating compelling work and share best practices from global counterparts. We are also starting to work closer with academic institutes to evangelize our profession, so aspirants should consider PR by choice and not by chance. The more academia and our industry will work together, we may find new hunting grounds and prep them better to enter our industry with confidence and adequate skills.

?4.There are a lot of learnings one can apply from global PR bodies and associations. How is PRCAI leveraging it and what are some of the steps that are being taken to collaborate with them?

?I feel there is so much India can offer to the global industry, as much we can learn from global practices. Our recent exchange with Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) was the first ever, where we had the International Chair of PRSA, Felicia Blow come to India. She interacted with aspiring students and went back highly impressed with the young minds. We discussed global trends with several PR groups and had specific areas of engagement on topics of diversity and inclusion, trust in investing in communities and sessions around renewing the commitment to fundamental truths & shared values in a time of existential change. The response was overwhelming, and we hope to build out such collaborations to develop global learning and exchange.

?5.The role of digital is increasingly becoming important. As a senior leader and professional from the industry, what are your views and how can PRCAI help the agencies and clients to hone their digital skills to manage online brand reputation seamlessly?

Undoubtedly, one of the key trends in Communications is digital first. This frankly, is now hygiene? and organizations have to be equipped to understand, the art of this integrated communications. Client have expectations, and we have to remove the silos of traditional vs digital/social PR. They need to co-exist, intersect, influence the larger campaign ideas and be measured effectively. There is knowledge transfer happening within global and local counterparts, within agencies, consolidations of skills. This space is moving so fast, that we need to constantly upgrade ourselves, our workforce needs constant training and we need to propagate a mindset to see communications as one single unit to deliver most effective outcomes.

?6?.Regional PR needs attention. What are some of the steps PRCAI is taking to bring in more quality in regional PR and think beyond press dissemination and embrace with digital?

?India is uniquely positioned with multiple states and languages, and regional PR is gaining significant traction. Specialist agencies, like Fuzion PR, Simulation and Total India are exactly focused on their niche strengths and are finding success in that model. It gives them definitive focus; they build teams that understand local nuances, speak the local languages and can make connections with local media centers. Even mainstream players, are today creating content that is regional first, be it brand campaign, videos, blogs, regional influencers and language specific content. We will see this trend even more in the coming years, as we do consumer centric PR with aid of technology and reach.

7. How is the outlook of 2023 looking and what are some of the trends the industry can notice and how PRCAI help in the overall growth of the industry?

There is a definite sense of optimism and the PR industry will continue to grow stronger, though the geo-political and economic developments may impact our industry, so we must tread cautiously. The good news though is that post Covid our industry found a new level of respect. For instance, the C-Suite did recognize how important PR is as a function and how it can help brands in difficult situations. Communication is now looked at as a problem solving tool. So, it is more solution-oriented.

We have to put the foot on the pedal/ accelerator?to shift from tactics to outcomes, from firefighting to strategic planners, from vanilla PR to integrated communications, from PR managers to business drivers, from storytellers to demonstrate story doing and defining real purpose for the brands we serve