‘Brand’ is now co-owned by marketing and PR: Minari Shah, Amazon India

As part of our latest series on ‘PR Conversation’, we at Adgully are speaking to some of the industry leaders from both PR agencies and the corporate communications world about how PR as a business and communication tool has evolved and grown over the years. In the last 10 years, PR has taken a different dimension, especially after the entry of social media in a big way. While the PR business has grown, some of the challenges that the industry is facing have also multiplied as clients are becoming more demanding and are expecting their consultants to be on their toes to manage their brand reputation, as news today travels fast and clients are expecting quick response and action in case of a crisis situation.

In an interaction with Adgully, Minari Shah, Director – Public Relations, Amazon India, speaks about the changing dynamics of the PR industry.

How has PR evolved in the last 10 years? Going forward how will the Industry shape up as the dynamics of the PR is changing with the acceleration of digital?

What we have seen is an acceleration of trends that began in the earlier decade – where digital platforms & social media have brought in a fast(er)-moving globalised world, where events in one part of the world immediately impact elsewhere. Audiences are more fragmented than ever before yet consistent messaging across all stakeholders like customers, employees, investors, partners, policy-makers, media, etc., is imperative because every communication is transparently accessible to all. This has brought a fresh dynamism to PR, bringing corporate reputation at the centre of leadership concerns and ‘Brand’ is now co-owned by marketing and PR. Technology continues to impact story-telling – from the rise of visual story-telling, the challenges of harnessing the ephemeral moments (think of Insta-Stories or Twitter Fleet) to what will content look like as more and more people begin to use the voice technology to search and consume content. And finally, it has changed the channels we used to communicate with traditional media getting supplemented with social media, but also owned channels like corporate blogs and branded content.

The Pandemic has disrupted everyone. In these times how have you managed the expectations from your PR agency? Did you redefine your objectives to them and revisited your deliverables?

The need to reach out to our key stakeholders, internal (employees) and external (customers, partners, policymakers) remains important – what we have had to do is pivot to different ways of reaching out. As we cannot do physical press events or on-ground activations, we have worked with our PR agency to find virtual alternatives to engage with the media as well as build social campaigns.

Today, artificial intelligence and data analytics are becoming very important in marketing and communication. How are you making use of this to help in your overall messaging and achieving your ROI?

Data Analytics are still at an early stage of impact for the PR industry. Many of us in the industry are trying to better understand the relationship between our inputs and campaigns to the outcomes. So, strong research and data analytics that can help define inputs as well as better measure outcomes and results are important, but an evolving journey. Similarly, AI is still at a very nascent stage, though we should expect it to play an important role in times to come as it moves to the heart of research and better understanding of our audiences as well as help in more targeted messaging. The AI/ ML interplay as well as issues around data privacy and how we interact with technology in our day-to-day life will continue to change how we reach out to communicate.

PR measurement and effectiveness of PR has always been a subject of debate. As a PR professional, what steps the PR industry should take to bring in uniformity so that everyone speaks one language when it comes to PR measurement?

For one, we need to absolutely move away from the concept of ad value and it is time the industry came together for this. While many modern companies have indeed stopped measuring PR effectiveness with ad value, there continue to be enough practitioners who still follow this. There have been different attempts at monitoring tonality, qualitative landing of messaging, but these are largely geared towards the traditional media and do not account for more holistic 360-degree campaigns. So, it would be important for the industry to find ways of measuring campaign success and strong research, data analytics, AI/ ML would be the future direction to build more objective measurement.

Getting the right skill set and training has always been a challenge in the PR profession. What is your view on the same and what would be the valuable tips that you would like to give to the budding young professionals?

This is primarily a challenge in India – there are some really strong colleges for PR in some of the other countries. Perhaps this was because it was a smaller industry in the past. So for one, the industry hiring from campuses need to push the colleges to invest in building a better curriculum, which includes stronger, more experienced faculty. The agencies need to start looking at PR more holistically than as mere media relations and even with that traditional PR, look for more strategic ways for media engagement. This change will enable them to approach their training of young newcomers differently. And finally, PR professionals need to develop much strong story-telling skills – verbal, written, visual.

Do you feel the traditional role of interpersonal communication which was so critical to the profession has somehow been put to the back burner because of too much virtual engagement? How are you experiencing that, is it bringing down the efficiency and the final output?

Interpersonal communication will always remain important, but what’s more important is that it is led by a genuine understanding of the business (deep diving into their own clients/ companies/ industries), the channels of communication (media/ social platforms) and narratives & messaging techniques. Bringing these together will make the communication richer. And while virtual engagement is not ideal, it may be harder for those new into the field. For those who have been in the industry for some years, this should not necessarily bring down efficiency or final output; though not meeting colleagues and working alone does make everyone miss the human interaction.

Your PR partner plays an important role in building your brand reputation and also helps you in shaping a positive opinion of the company. How do you measure your agency’s performance and evaluate them every year?

Specific periodic reviews, campaign results, quality of ideas from the agency, ability to drive campaigns and big ideas for strategic messages/ announcements are all important parameters of an agency’s performance and are some of the metrics that we look at. Agencies should recognise the need for long-term planning and strategy, build strong tactics for the strategy, enable strong execution inputs, be a partner to build PR-assets (press releases/ briefing docs/ FAQs, etc., as much as visual content ideas) to be an extended arm of the in-house teams.