Public Relations and Corporate Communications by Nithin Mantri on 19.082013

"PR is knowledge"

Public Relations is management of perception. Public Relations is tailor made, what an NGO has to hear is different from what an investor has to hear. PR is not a precise science and thus can't be measured to an exact point per se. There are ways of measuring but it'll never be precise or perfect but far from it. PR is non or unpaid form of advertisement. 

Traditionally PR used to work with Media by and large. Media has changed over the years and like all things in life, change has taken place in the functioning of PR. 

Medianet is Times of India's paid news arm. This is a significant change from the newspapers of the past. 

"PR is common sense at it's best, like it's always best to have about 400 people talk negatively about you than the entirety talk negative about you" 

"PR is almost 70 - 80% sometimes, even 100% about media - relations. Digital medium fits better in PR, considering it's based out on being interactive. It does have to converge though for you need a 'creative' for an Facebook page and a technical know how to create an app, Online Reputation Management (ORM) is the new thing in PR"

*Trivia : "Apple's Corporate Communication team has been asked to answer all queries relating to apple since today."

"Happy employees are the best spokesperson for your company " 

With Indian Government having billed the CSR Bill, PR will only grow from here. There are 2 kinds of CSR;

• One is more self serving like for eg when a company builds a school for it's employees 

• Another is more philanthropic in nature, wherein everyone is benefited from it without any conditions

CSR is basically anything that benefits a community. 

Public Affair - Advocating a particular cause, a regulation, changing a current or making up of a new policy. There are two main divisions with respect to Public Affairs :

• Intelligence and Monitoring

• Advocating New Policy   

Intelligence and Monitoring

When a company addresses a few issues whilst consulting the community that is a stakeholder of the said company through an NGO and monitoring the said issue on the progress of the project that would be deemed as CSR is what generally makes up Intelligence and Monitoring. Eg: Scania Trucks in Bengaluru are working on Rain Water Harvesting in their new plant. 

Advocating Cause Policy 

When you take up a certain policy issues and try advocating a policy change in the said issues with the consensus of the respective industry bodies, like when ASSOCHAM, FICCI and such bodies. 

"Lobbying is a good thing"

Lobbying that happened within ethical means, a true case... 

GMAC  needed the approval of AICTE to be accepted as a standard of admission tests to MBA programs across India. GMAT was an accepted admission test everywhere else in the world and AICTE had managed to keep it out with CAT, XAT as the only admission test that is acceptable and considering the market it was important that GMAT be an accepted test of admission in various colleges for a MBA program. 

Like all things Government of India, it was a process that had typical babu response at each stage "we'll see, file chodhijiye dekhenge". Meetings were had and presentation were made to Chairman of AICTE, Board of Directors and the then Minister of HRD Ministry, Kapil Sibal. A conference at NY and 15 months later GMAT is now an accepted test of admission for MBA programs in India. 

                                                                                                                   - "You can make a difference"    

Political PR is different from regular PR by a way of targeting the audience. In political PR you need your target audience to be spot on. In political PR you need a definite leader upon which the PR will based upon. Corporate PR, sometimes, just sometimes, can get away with an incompetent CEO but that is not a luxury that political PR can afford. 

With young parliamentarians who'll be voted into power and those who're educated for certain (a welcome change at that) are starting to realise the importance of political PR and it is good news for those in PR. 

"Narendra Modi is one brand in India that's doing a wonderful job at PR"

NaMo is testing waters with three distinct attack points at his opposition;

• Corruption
• Development
• Hindu Nationalist

and his timing has been impeccable to say the least. 

You've two avenues when it comes to pursuing a career in PR, one being an 'agency' and another 'corporate'. Agency has invariably more buzz, it is high pressure, it is multidisciplinary, it pays less in the beginning when in comparison to a corporate which duly gets corrected after 2-3 years and provides more learning opportunities. 

A corporate is more streamlined. And everything an agency is not or milder.

"PR is something that needs to be embraced or you die"

Assignments: Follow the said company/campaign/ an issue of national interest for the whole of this semester;

• Narendra Modi

• NSEL 

• Ruppee Depreciation (RBI)

• M.A.R.D