Grabbing attention in 8 seconds: Why PR pros need to up their storytelling game

These are volatile and uncertain times today, and it has become all the more challenging to stay on top of one’s game, especially for marketing heads. CMOs today have to adopt numerous strategies to stay on top of the constant evolution in the marketing space.

The 2023 edition of CMOs’ Charcha – Delhi Chapter, held on February 10, 2023, reflected all the inflexion points facing marketing and marketing heads today. The 4^th edition of CMOS’ Charcha saw Kamna Hazrati, CMO, Toprankers, delivering a keynote address on ‘Scripting a Brand New Story For PR Pros in 2023, From Podcasts to Automation and Beyond.’

Kamna Hazrati began by speaking about how she started as a sales executive in a media house and then moved on to become a marketing manager with a digital agency. Eight years ago she co-founded her first three D2C brands – Giftsmate, TheYaYaCafe and Hopcara and in 2021 she started her second company, called KH Advisory. She said, “The name is very simple, here we work with start-ups, and to build, grow and scale faster, being a consultant for in terms of strategy and acting as their functional CMO. Today, I represent Toprankers, an ed tech platform with careers beyond medicine and engineering. And I’m here to present on a topic called PR pros in 2023. And while I mentioned that my journey has been from a media house, is because I can relate to what it really means to be at that end and I can relate to how that journey is usually. Back in the day if you look at the newspapers, what was the size of the newspapers ten years ago. Ten years ago, newspapers were about forty pages thick. And the yesterday’s HT was about 22 pages thick, that’s almost a 50% fall in how the digital media is really working nowadays. In younger days, PR professionals used to look at bylines, analyse newspapers, who is advertising in this newspaper, who was out for shopping, now fast forward newspapers have become thinner, the audience has moved towards digital and the content on a .com and newspaper is very different.”

“The audience who is reading these media is also very different. They come from different demographics, age groups, come from different regions, and how we consume news is also very different. Simultaneously, how we appeal to these audience is also very different. Gen Z’s reading on a flipboard, maybe a Chingari, maybe a Public, maybe an Insta Reel or a YouTube short, or people like us reading an Adgully, Inc42, YourStory, listening to podcast while we drive, we wash, we fold, and at the same time its not what we are reading, what we are listening to as well that matters.” she further noted.

She added, “The way we are consuming information has also changed over the years. The boomers are reading newspapers, both national and regional, and the Facebook feed which I think a lot of parents and people will be able to relate to. These are tectonic changes. The listener base in India has grown from just nearly four million in the year 2016 to an estimated 90 million in the year 2022. High consumption is driven by high quality content, variety and widespread availability. 56% of the people are trusting what they see, what they hear about on a podcast. The organized market is set to be reaching nearly 3000 cr by the year 2024 and is again fuelled by vernacular content. They can be macroinfluencers, microinfluencers, nanoinfluencers, anyone who is beyond 1000-2000 followers reach has become a part of creator economy. The proliferation of chatbots is the trend number three, how chatbots, Chat GPT, or a Bard may take over how we consume content, and how we write content, the job of content marketers.”

She further pointed out “While I was reading more about that, I was wondering how these tools will enable us to become better in our jobs. Instead of taking them as a threat, they can actually an enabler for us to do better. While a Grammarly can help you to have autocorrection, write better speech or have better sentence correction, it still cannot match the human being on the other end. When we think of machine learning and artificial intelligence, for PR professionals it is very important to realise the importance of double AI, which is adaptability, awareness and innovation. It is important for PR professionals to be adaptable to the changing norms, the technologies coming in, being flexible about it. It is important for us to be aware about what are the events happening globally and how do they affect our businesses locally. And also how it is very important for PR pros to be very innovative, creative thinkers, and to be a great storyteller who can actually dig deeper, the job of a PR professional has changed from publishing a press release, to actually communicating a great story. Effective messaging for shorter attention span is so important for us to address that now the attention span has come down to about 8 seconds.”

She also noted, “Storytelling for the PR professionals is going to be so very important in the coming future. How do you write meaningful stories, how do you write with empathy, stories which make an impact. As a business leader, we are always having something to sell. I have something to sell, I have to put it out in the market, but I have to have a great story, communicate in a way that the other person is willing to buy and willing to spend their time on my product. That is how the future of communication should be. Journalists nowadays are not picking up our press releases. If I come from a good renowned brand but don’t have a story to sell, something which will convince them to put it in a very limited real estate like a newspaper and the landscape has really changed and for someone to give you that space, its very important to have a right story to tell. Its very important to understand the H & W’s of communication, Who?, How ?, Where?, its highly personalized who is your target audience, for you as a PR person, its just not your client but who is actually servicing to that client, consumer of that particular client. As a PR person, its important to understand who the eventual customer of that product is. Secondly the fact how is audience consuming that content, is it instagram reels, voice search, podcast, Youtube videos, Shorts, reels, or short videos like Public, or a Chingari and then you need to go where they are, be it national, regional, local, hyperlocal. It is fascinating to know how a company like Public has been able to achieve 60 million active users monthly on their platform, by using hyperlocal content. If a PR professional is able to target that market with that strategy, that’s any marketer’s dream. The bible of being a marketer is the art of storytelling, as a business owner I’m always creating value, but as a communication team, one needs to capture that value, and communicate very effectively to my audience. How I’m doing that really defines our job.”