Anything impactful today, has to be digital: Shobha Vasudevan, Dell Technologies

In the last 10 years, PR has taken a different dimension, especially after the entry of social media and the rapid shift to digital, especially in the pandemic period. At the same time the industry has been facing stiff challenges, moreover client expectations have also increased, with more emphasis being given to digital and online reputation management. The industry has undergone a radical shift and the current times have pushed the industry to change gears.

In conversation with Adgully, Shobha Vasudevan, Head – Enterprise Communications and PR, Dell Technologies, speaks about the significant changes in the PR industry over the years, role of PR in brand building and salience, Measuring and tracking the progress of a PR campaign, and more.

You have spent a major part of your career in corporate communication. How has PR evolved ever since you entered this industry and what are some of the significant changes that you have noticed?

Public Relations has evolved drastically in the last two decades. As business models progressed from being sales driven to services driven, and later to being relationship driven, PR has enabled this transition by helping brands embrace their personality. What used to once operate in silos, within the confines of newspapers and magazines has now spread to innumerable mediums, owing to the rapid digitalization in the industry, especially with social media being a fundamental part of the ecosystem. Anything impactful today, has to be digital. This, according to me, is one of the most significant and inevitable changes in the industry. Since digital mediums are constantly evolving and changing, one has to constantly think on their feet and devise strategies that not only communicate the brand’s messaging, but are also intriguing, relatable, and snack-able, or easy to understand.

Technology PR has helped build many good brands world over. In your current role at Dell Enterprise what is your mandate for PR and how has PR helped you build your brand?

Currently, I lead PR and communications for the ISG portfolio at Dell Technologies. As part of the same, I extensively manage integrated enterprise marketing communications campaigns for the brand, while also devising communications strategies, elevating the leadership stance, and gaining significant mindshare of the relevant stakeholders in the industry to add value and create a better impact for Dell Technologies amongst the target audiences.

I believe public relations, as a tool, has a pivotal role to play in brand building and salience. As brands continually evolve, and use newer mediums to story-tell their vision, PR has the remarkable potential to help them stand out by seeding relationships with stakeholders, both internal and external. At Dell Technologies, we have used new-age communication mediums, fireside chats, podcasts, social media amplifications backed by a healthy mix of traditional mediums to help us in landing key messages and creating maximum awareness for the brand.

Today, artificial intelligence and data analytics are becoming very important in marketing and communication. How does this help in the overall communication strategy to cull out key insights and create strong and focused messaging?

With hardcore B2B tech communications, we have the scope to show the impact of emerging technologies to people, businesses and policy-makers. Like all parts of our business, we use data analytics to drive our communication strategies as well. Data driven insights help us to devise communication campaigns targeted to business needs in a geography, segment.

Today, there is more data available to us than ever. For that data to be useful, though, you need to have a plan for turning it into insights to improve your marketing campaigns. These insights guide us to know our target audience. Knowing who we are talking to makes the messaging of the campaign more relevant to them. Having data also makes the measurement of the campaign easier.

Digital, Social and Influential marketing are the buzzwords used across brands. How has Dell Enterprise adapted to the digital transformation and how have leveraged digital for your PR campaigns?

The digital medium and social media have deeply influenced the world of communications. While crafting Dell Technologies’ narrative, we go for a 360-degree approach to ensure that our share-of-voice sees mileage across new-age media, social media platforms, traditional publications and digital communications spaces. We have regular outreach with leading new-age platforms where tech-enthusiasts,

C-suite executives and passionate readers will converge to gain interesting insights. Dell Technologies has a strong presence across LinkedIn and Twitter. Our leaders share interesting trivia, bits on upcoming launches, and achievements of the business in India, on these platforms. We are also planning to use LinkedIn Audio Rooms and Twitter Spaces to engage with our audiences in a more direct and interesting way.

Dell Technologies also organises virtual briefings around key events and launches – the latest being our flagship event, Dell Technologies World Summit 2022, where we hosted journalists, stakeholders and enthusiasts in India on a virtual tour of the grand event in Vegas. Our outreach with influencers has also been seeing traction amongst target audiences. During our Cyber Security Month campaign last year, we organised a virtual fireside chat between our spokesperson and a well-known ethical hacker, which garnered over 56,000 impressions across platforms.

We have been hosting a podcast for our internal and external stakeholders, called ‘FineTuneIn’, where we invite leaders from across industries to share their stories and enrich our audiences with inspiration.

Communications has undergone a metamorphosis with the digital era, and with Dell Technologies being a leader in the tech world, we cannot be left behind in utilising out-of-the-box ideas for effective storytelling.

Measurement and ROI has always been a debate in the PR circle. What has been your approach to effectively measure your PR campaign and you follow some global standards here?

Measuring and tracking the progress of a PR campaign is fundamental as it helps examine/ assess the components that worked well, and assists in identifying the challenges. While campaigns cannot be strictly quantified, communication professionals can find methods to highlight their efforts and effectiveness of a campaign. At Dell Technologies, we have adopted various IT and media analytics tools to deliver the required data and gather relevant insights. Monitoring media allows us to stay on top of industry trends, understand which channels are most effective, tap and leverage any ongoing conversations around the company or industry.

Further, I also believe the most important step to effectively measuring any PR campaign is aligning the PR metrics with the business goals to draw a clear connection between the communication efforts and ROI. Having a defined goal in place expedites and simplifies the process of measuring results and evaluating the success of the campaign. Understanding how media coverage affects business performance provides an advantage to make more informed and strategic decisions while allocating resources.

Where is the PR industry heading in the next 5 years? How can one raise the bar of the industry to think beyond coverage and bring in more strategic thinking, which will help in creating meaningful conversation on brands across media?

As mentioned earlier, the role of PR and communications has changed drastically, owing to the growing digital adoption in the industry. While the industry was already making significant technological advancements to create a better customer experience, the pandemic has accelerated the pace of a digital-first PR approach. Organisations are adopting new strategies, with significant focus on the digital space to gain a larger share of voice for their brands. B2B business models are now focused on adopting the ‘segment of one’ approach wherein, the focus is on customer intimacy and on providing tailored, customised messages to them as per their needs.

PR is gradually converging with the approach of marketing in communications. Adaptability to newer forms of audience engagement, fresh ideas in storytelling and newer skills from a marketing perspective are going to become the need of the hour for PR professionals to create high-impact messaging and deliver impactful results for the organizations they represent.