The role of a PR professional is to influence the influencer: Arwa Husain

As part of the build up to Adgully’s first PR summit – IMAGEXX 2021 – we present the valuable insights provided by our esteemed jury panel comprising the leading names from the country’s PR and Corporate Communications field.

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. However, at the same time the industry has been facing stiff challenges, moreover client expectations has 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.

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In conversation with Adgully, Arwa Husain, Director, Adfactors PR, speaks about how individual contributors and digital native publications have taken over from the traditional newsgroups for breaking stories and information. She also highlights how understanding the digital landscape and user data is opening communication to unexplored channels.

The transition to digital is happening at an accelerated pace. Going forward, what will be the role of digital in PR and how brands and agencies will adapt to this in the new normal?

The role of a PR professional is to influence the influencer. With the influencer base expanding and becoming more digital, it has become imperative for brands and agencies to adapt to this new normal. In the pre-pandemic world, media relations, domain understanding and client centricity were the most important elements in being successful. Today, understanding the digital landscape and user data is opening communication to unexplored channels such as Podcasts, Redditt and, more recently, Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. The orientation is very clearly digital-first thinking and in all probability, will remain so for the next couple of years.

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AI and technology will be the game changer in the coming years, especially in the area of data. What are your views on this and how are agencies and brands gearing up to face this new challenge?

An overused statement – ‘Data is the new oil’ – is not overstated. One must witness the current battle between Facebook and Apple over the collection of user data to know that this is truer than ever. Through user data, one can focus on campaign messaging and target the communication sharper towards business objectives.

At Adfactors PR, we have invested in building a proprietary tool that gathers data from publicly accessible information to create a model specific to each client and its industry. Some of the key use cases include – developing brand cohorts and mapping relevant influencers (by impact rather than follower count) and crisis management. We do not use our ‘hunches’, but design communications based on this research.

PR has evolved a lot in the last 10 years and is still evolving. How does the road ahead look like and what are some of the new trends that we will notice in the PR industry in the next 5 years?

Having been a PR practitioner for the past two decades, I have witnessed changes every few years. The last decade saw media houses investing heavily in digital platforms with consumers gathering information through social networking websites of Facebook and Twitter. Public Relations firms added passively by focusing on the bloggers and digital contributors.

In the last two years, however, I think we have moved to a different world. There has been an explosion of individual contributors and digital native publications. These platforms have taken over from the traditional newsgroups for breaking stories and information. At the same time, podcasts and YouTube channels have become spaces to understand complex subjects rather than periodicals and magazines. Forums such as Quora and Redditt are becoming the first-port-of-call for questions and queries since these forums are seen as authentic spaces for unbiased information.

I believe that there can no longer be five-year horizons as technology is moving at almost 18-month cycles. Less than a year ago, Clubhouse did not exist, and we do not know what will be developed before this year ends. Over the next two years, we see hyper-personalised and hyper-local communication winning over as more people look for information that is most relevant to them. Actively working with tools and playbooks that would cater to this requirement would be the key to success.