Thursday, September 20, 2007

Connecting dots, minds and hearts

One good “connection” a day. This I believe should be the mantra for living as a PR professional. Much like the Boy scouts, who live by “one good deed a day ” philosophy. While we may come in contact with hundreds of people in a year, not many make an impact on us; and the same holds the other way round. But doing just one small act – consistently on a daily basis can build a huge reservoir of goodwill, network and ultimately healthy community network for us professionals.

On an average day, I make at least 30 phone calls and when there is a lot of work, it could go upto 100 calls a day. And most of these calls are related to work. They are about connecting people, sharing information, informing someone about something they did not know. A PR practitioner’s job is also as much about connecting with and connecting people to people as it is about persuasive marketing communications.

In an increasingly selfish world, where more than 95 % of the time we are concerned about ourselves, a people’s profession such as PR can help us look beyond ourselves and reach out to understand, know and ultimately appreciate other people with a genuine motive. This understanding can ultimately reduce conflict and help create a stable and peaceful world.


Learning to give….
Ours is an inter-dependent world. One man or woman cannot live in isolation, and in an increasingly complex world; even nations are realizing that it is only by sharing that they can survive and thrive.

Just a few days back, we got a request from a client – Apollo hospitals, a major Healthcare provider in Asia. This was an appeal for help from a patient admitted there, who needed funds for treatment and even with his insurance, he is finding it difficult to cover the expenditure. It is a matter of life and death.

What one can do in such times is reaching out to people, connecting the right sources with the right people and ultimately helping a human being. While this may sound quite mundane, how many of us consciously stop and think about such articles written in the media and how many of us actually write a cheque? The concept of sharing information can be a starting point for us to start sharing more tangible things – which may not mean much to us – but could be a matter of life and death for others. All it could take for us to help this case is putting him in touch with an NGO or a Philanthropist.







Christmas breakfast and Ramadhan Iftar parties
Last Christmas I was invited to attend a Christmas breakfast just a few days before Christmas. It was a well organized event for all Non-christians, to get to know more about the Christian faith. And as a participant, I got to know a lot about the religion, the social mores and practices in two hours – than I could have reading ten books about Christian theology. It was a great PR exercise done in good faith. Similarly, Ramadhan Iftar parties ( when one breaks the day long fast) are held in several places each year in India during Ramadhan. They do serve a purpose of familiarizing people who are not from the community to get to know more, to question, to share and ultimately understand each other.


Sharing, understanding can reduce conflict
From a marketing communication perspective, our job is to communicate to sell. Sell stories to the media, sell our client to the Industry body which may help them or sell them to their prospective employees. This ultimately leads to conflict of sorts. So does just living our normal lives. Living with someone under the same roof itself can cause conflict, no matter how much we love a person. There are always differences, differing points of view or differing goals. The only way that one can reach a common ground and start living in harmony is by understanding the other person or group of people and through this understanding will come greater acceptance and hence conflict reduction.

While this may sound simplistic, this is true in both a social context as well as inter-personal context as well as from a marketing context. Brands which share information with their users, which inform the user and which really care about the customers well-being are often trusted more than those who are just out to make money. Concepts such as Corporate social responsibility ( CSR) and Ethical practices are testimony to how even commercial enterprises have started realizing that undermining social, environmental concerns can do harm to them; while taking them into consideration will only do them a lot of good – even to their bottom-line.


What is in it for me ?
So what is in it for me ? You may ask. All this talk of giving, sharing and not hoarding onto information and contacts. Well for starters, the more you give, quite literally the more you receive. How many of us appreciate people who hoard onto money or information and do not like to part with it ? On the contrary, all of us like and appreciate people who give, share – what they have, be it their money, other resources, advise or what ever that will help us.

Why you cannot fail as a PR professional

One can never fail in Public Relations. This is something that occurred to me when I actually looked at the various campaigns I have handled in the last 3 1/2 years as a professional. Some campaigns may be very successful, some may be moderately successful and some may be not so successful. But I haven’t come across one that can be called a “failure”. Failure is a misnomer. I think this is simply because PR is about human beings. And one cannot say that dealing with other human beings, trying to understand them and persuading them will ever be a total failure/ waste of resources. There are always some takeaways, some learnings, few insights which are unique and at the end of the day, justify all the efforts that go into planning and executing a campaign.


A total failure turned out to be the biggest lesson
The first PR campaign that I ever handled in my life was for a well known Hyderabadi restaurant which was launching its Bangalore branch. Armed with very little knowledge of PR, and few contacts I took this assignment (much before my Ogilvy days) with the confidence that was totally misplaced. On the D Day, as I was waiting for the journalists to turn up for the press meet; I started to get cold feet when no one turned up for the press meet. The client was a gracious gentleman, who just asked me to “follow up” and keep him in the loop. I was humbled, and analysed the whole affair thoroughly. It occurred to me that everything that I had planned – right from the day, to the venue, the journalists I had invited, the press release were all wrong. This was one of the biggest “failures” that I encountered in my professional life; but one that taught me so much about the business of dealing with people, a big lesson in humility, a bigger lesson about building good contacts, and the mother of all lessons – planning a campaign. In many ways, this “failure” paved way for so many successes later on.


PR is about human beings
No matter what theories we come up with, and what ever grand strategies we invent; PR is all about understanding human beings and learning how to communicate with them and also to persuade them to think and behave in a certain way. This calls for observing people, dealing with them on a regular basis, forming models of behaviour in one’s mind, understanding what motivates people, what kind of incentives work with what kind of people. PR is applied social psychology at its best. Not only is a PR professional required to understand groups of people who matter to us, but we are also required to influence them in ways which are benefical to us.




Learnings while planning and executing campaigns
Some learnings that come from the fact that we are dealing with human beings and not machines. Thank god we are in PR and not sitting and writing unintelligible codes behind computers all day long !

- Long term orientation : Thinking about how communicating and engaging with the “publics” with a long-term relationship building perspective is the only way out. There are no short-cut ways to persuade or people. That would amount to conning people and that is not good PR anyway !
- Selflessness : Helping our clients, and their customers with advise, information and contacts
- Honesty : Without honest communication, no individual or company can build a strong reputation and a healthy brand.
- Courtesy and Customer Service : Dealing with clients (some reasonable and some not so reasonable) instills in one the values of courtesy and customer service. Observe the best PR person in your surrounding, and I can bet that he/she is also the most courteous and well-mannered person around.
- Concern and respect : Without concern and respect for others, one cannot persuade them. Though most of the time, we are persuading people towards making commercial decisions for our clients benefit; but the bottom line is a total regard for their wellbeing and also respect for their individuality.


What this means for you….

PR is ultimately about connecting with people; human beings, who are a bunch of emotions, values and assumptions. Our effectiveness and success depends largely on how we decipher the often complex behaviour of other fellow humans.

If one is sensitive to others needs, their desires, ambitions and how they operate, one would be a super-star PR professional. But even if one is not too good at this game, one can learn each day. And this I believe is the reason a lot of us are doing what we are doing. For the thrill of understanding others and sharing our understanding with others. And in this, one can never be a failure…it is a lifetime of learning and applying what one has learnt.