"Think Deeper, Communicate Higher, Action Wider with Impact, and Quantify Around"

The above line is one of my favourite thoughts which I constantly thought about as a result of the forums I was invited to share my thoughts in 2021. We now come to the closure of a year that challenged us in many ways –interestingly, we are stepping into a new year that is likely to be an exciting milestone for the global PR industry as a whole as well as the local industry.

Several industries across the world have been continuously adopting.??Among the frequently mentioned are medical and pharma, financial, technology and communications, and e-commerce.?

There is another –and vastly underrated- ‘adopter, mover and shaker’ that is much less talked of: Public Relations and Communications (PRC).?

Global PRC is growing so much so that 2022 (a year in which COVID appears to continue its spread), will in fact, become a milestone for it. The dynamic industry will be growing annually at 7% and valued in 2021 at US$97 Billion, will surpass US$ 100 Billion in 2022!

Reputation issues which a many has faced has quietly lifted up the industry in par with many other resilient global sectors. Reputation of any person, corporate and anything is the new currency, “Trust” will be the new denominator with “Purpose and Actionable Impact” becoming the key indexes.

Proactive Approach?

As a PRC professional, I believe that we should not take the Pandemic based industry success for granted. My belief is, this, in fact, is a time that our engagement with the industry to become more intense, and dig deeper.

Indeed, a proactive approach is called for in a deepening PRC engagement. What the CEO of the world’s biggest PR firm Edelman, Richard Edelman declared in September 2020 therefore is of much significance here as well.?

“I now prefer the term ‘action communications’ to ‘marketing communications’ said Richard Edelman. His ‘action communications’ mantra is a new platform for building corporate trust, he elaborates. “I want us to get clients to change now, not to wait for a crisis to force it. I want us to be brave enough not to answer the client’s brief literally” he says. “In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis….trust in governments around the world had sunk to the point where business needs to take on even more responsibility; to actively drive change” he adds.

My PRC Mantra

When I say my own mantra - ‘deepening engagement’ - I advocate this across several key activities in PRC.?

First, let us start with the first activity, ‘Thinking Deeper’. For me this implies performing our background researches/studies at the ground levels (no less), and understanding the pulse of the publics first, before creating or devising any PRC campaign. The pre-campaign research conducted in-depth, paves way to clearly identify the (campaign) objectives and designing of the most viable campaign strategy. This research needs to identify not only the perceptions of audiences on the brand, but expectations as well.?

Second, I believe it is time to ‘Communicate Higher’ in PRC. Clearly, PRC is mostly about communicating anyway. My call is to reach deeper, a level higher in the messaging activities. It is time we reach the unreachable and go beyond the routine audience segmentations. All shades and types of target communities need to be reached or addressed. Though tailoring the message to each and every person is the best, it is not practical since the scope is vast. So vast that returns on investment may not justify it. I would suggest going below top layers of the community to at least sub groupings within such communities as the unit of communications / messaging target. For instance, if the “community” we talk of is urban professional males between ages 39-49, then some possible sub groupings within this community would be individuals who use Windows PCs (one sub group) Vs Apple PCs (another sub group) Vs Linux PCs (another sub group), OR such individuals who engage in online games Vs contact sports Vs practice a non-sports hobby Vs who practice a mindfulness practice instead of any of these OR (another sub community would be) individuals who are vegan Vs lacto-vegan Vs Ovo vegan Vs lacto-ovo vegan Vs non-vegan. The list goes on… The objective here is to effectively customize the messaging to target audiences so much that they should respond as if we converse with them one-to-one in a trusting environment that does not look to ‘sell’ them everything.

Third, I believe it is time to ‘action’ in a wider, in-depth manner. This demands more than the usual Facebook conversation with the target publics. For instance, taking one sub community group from the above-mentioned groups –say, the vegan Vs lacto-vegan Vs Ovo vegan Vs lacto-ovo vegan Vs non-vegan- we can see what would be their key calendar activities for them in time to come… There could be a major event of vegans’ get-together or an activity such as a radio program that vegans actively drive or launch of a local supermarket’s vegan product line where vegans gather-where possibilities of wider, in-depth engagements with vegans as a target segment opens up, taking us beyond a traditional press event or the standard generic messaging used on a sub community group. In return what the community act on is an important element for anyone setting foot for 2022.???

Fourth, it is time for in-depth measuring of the reach of our PR messaging and content. It is time to go beyond known metrics in earned media, SOV, click through rate etc to deeper levels of assessment. This means taking a risk to leave PRC’s top of the funnel placement and arriving at deeper levels of engagement and even going so far as conversions within the funnel! An approach of this nature would greatly matter to the client (than a routine PR measurement thrown at them).??In that, PRC measurements may not stop at efficacy of any ‘target audiences receiving the message’ but go further to uncover how they reacted and engaged with it in a way that impacted even sales numbers of the product-but all without adopting any marketing mantras but staying within a PRC effort.?

I believe that we are now placed in a more responsible position to drive purpose and being that respected strategic consultant. We will continue to safe guard and build reputation of your beliefs and what your consumers believe in this era of Social Revolution – adopt or cease. This is for me is the true meaning of Public Relations Consultancy.

Wish you a blessed 2022!