Why Public Relations as we know it has come to an end?

Senjam Raj Sekhar, Head of Global Communications, Mobile Premier League, shared a keynote address at IMAGEXX 2021 on ‘The End of Public Relations’. Edited excerpts below…

The end of public relations is an intriguing topic and slightly controversial as well. I thought I’ll start my hypothesis by testing it against the top PR firms in India as well as the world. Here’s the test – how many top 10 PR firms in India and across the world actually use the term PR to describe themselves?

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The next panel has three veterans of the PR industry in India. People who actually built the industry, which is now 30 years old. I’m talking about the modern PR industry post liberalisation. Dilip Cherian of Perfect Relations, started using the term ‘image management’ way back in the 1990s. Ashwani Singla of Astrum, uses the term ‘reputation management advisory’. Archana Jain of PR Pundit, where the descriptor reads ‘integrated communications agency’.

I’ll take three agencies who are not on any panel today – BCW, Edelman and Ketchum. BCW calls itself an 'integrated communications agency'. Edelman and Ketchum use the same term ‘global communications’. Nitin Mantri is the first India President of an international PR organisation, but the organisation calls itself ‘International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO)’. His firm, WE, is described as an ‘integrated marketing consultancy’. Atul Sharma, President, Public Relations Consultants Association of India (PRCAI), represents a body that uses the term PR, but Ruder Finn, the agency he represents in India, says ‘integrated communications consultancy’.

Let me come to two more agencies that actually do not use the term integrated or communications or marketing – Weber Shandwick and Archetype. Weber Shandwick says ‘moving beyond Public Relations’. Archetype does not use the word communications or PR at all, it is described as a ‘global agency working across the field’.

However, I must say that there are outliers, people who firmly describe themselves and their services as PR.

Adfactors PR, the largest agency in India, is very clear on the firm’s footing. It says we are a PR firm and everything it does is defined by PR. The only top 10 firm globally that calls itself a public relations firm is MSL. Value 360 is another firm that calls itself PR. These are the outliers, however, if you look at the top 25, 50 or 100 PR agencies across India and the world, you will find that increasingly agencies are moving away from the term PR.

Does this signify the end of PR?

In regular reporting if you use the term PR, it is actually used pejoratively. When people say Yogi Adityanath or Modi does PR, it is not used to describe something very nice.

That’s the term itself, now I will come to the discipline.

There are two key essential instruments of PR. The first one is a press release. The press release that we know is actually 115 years old. It was made in 1905 by a gentleman named Ivy Lee for Pennsylvania Railways. When he sent out the first press release, The New York Times actually published it without any changes. The form and way we write press releases has not changed in 115 years.

We have milked the press release to an extent where there are thousands of press releases sent every day from organisations. As a result, the press release has become commoditised. Press releases used to go in the junk box, now they go in the spam mail.

Major news announcements do not come via press releases anymore. They’ll happen via Tweets and this is even true for big companies and governments. Or, they could be announced at a large event. They may also be a deliberate leak or slipped in via interviews. While the press release instrument has remained, it has lost its purpose.

The second instrument is the press conference. In my earlier years, the companies I worked with did press conferences quite frequently. Increasingly, I find that press conferences are not only becoming rarer, but, more importantly, they have actually morphed into something else.

Reliance leverages their Annual General Meeting (AGM) not just to address their stakeholders, but also the press and general public. The latest Reliance AGM has four lakh views on YouTube. So, it has become another avenue to make announcements.

10-15 years back, mobile handset manufacturers used to make new product announcements via press conferences. But look at what brands like Xiaomi are doing – they do large fan events. They book auditoriums, pre-pandemic, with 1,500 capacity and invite influencers and just about anybody who calls themselves a fan or a super fan.

Apple announces its major changes, updates or product launches at events like the World-Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) and has perfected this formula to a point where everybody looks forward to the annual WWDC.

Take our current government. PM Modi has not done any press conference.  All the important news comes via tweets or special events and announcements.

So, are the press release and press conferences – two essential instruments of public relations – dying?

Next, we’ll look at the earned media space. That space is shrinking and not just in print. Advertorial and paid media came in 15 years ago with the launch of Delhi Times. Now, that’s happening on digital media as well. Go to any news website and you’ll find on its homepage 4-5 posts that are sponsored. Even media outlets that are favoured by the youth don’t do anything that is organic. So, the earned media space is shrinking and this is staring at our face.

The large scale pureplay PR campaign does not exist anymore. The boundaries have blurred. You do not know where PR ends and where advertising begins.

This is an Olympic year, with less than 15 days left for the Tokyo Olympics. Let me take you through a campaign P&G had done, called ‘Thank You Mom’.

This was a large-scale activation with a lot of media coverage. They put the mother of the athlete at the centre of the campaign.  They flew athletes' mothers to the venues. and there was a lot of social media buzz. The question is, would you call this a PR campaign, an advertising campaign, a mass activation, or a digital campaign? I don’t think you can make that distinction anymore.

Another campaign, regarded as the ‘Best PR campaign’ in the world, is not really a PR campaign – ‘The Best Job in the World’ campaign.

Not just these two campaigns, in today’s world, the boundaries have also blurred for agencies. The advertising or creative agency of yore that did a 30 or 60 seconder ad does not work anymore. All agencies have morphed and are competing for the same space. A majority of the communications and campaigns that happen in the consumer space have merged.

If you look at the Cannes Lions awards that recently took place, most of the PR Lions were won by ad agencies and not PR firms. Similarly, the ‘Best Job in the World’ was conceptualised by Nitro, an ad agency in Australia, which is now part of Publicis.

Take something as basic as crisis preparedness or crisis management, which is considered the bread and butter of PR. The 1982 Tylenol crisis with Harold Burson as advisor is considered a gold standard in crisis management. You’d think as far as crisis management is concerned, PR firms are king. But I found out I was wrong when I did my research. A firm called ALM Intelligence did a study on the best firms who do reputation risk and crisis management. None of the PR firms appear on that list. Instead, the Deloittes, McKinseys, Bains, E&Ys and PwCs of the world actually have the most market share when it comes to crisis communication.

The annual revenue of a top consulting firm in India ranges from Rs 2,000-3,000 crore. While the total revenue earned by the entire PR industry in India is around Rs 1,600 crore. You have one consulting firm that earns more than the revenues of an entire industry.

When it comes to public affairs or the multiple stakeholder domain, PR firms are seeing increasing competition from law firms. There are also specialist public affairs firms that are competing for market share. A large chunk of the revenue in public affairs has been taken by people who have no background in PR.  

The bigger threat is something more fundamental. This is both good and bad news in a way. PR is becoming more intrinsic to a business or organisation. As it becomes more intrinsic, leaders themselves have  become accomplished in the science of PR.

In many cases, the leader has become the organisation’s chief communications officer. Let me share an example.

In 1923, Calvin Coolidge was preparing for the 1924 US Presidential Elections. He had accidentally become the President after the previous President had died. The ’24 elections were tough and he engaged a gentleman called Edward Bernays, regarded as the father of public relations. Bernays told Coolidge to lighten his stuffy image and host a pancake breakfast at the White House. He pioneered what is now known as the breakfast meeting.

Ninety years later, a certain Chief Minister from Gujarat decides to hold ‘Chai Pe Charcha’. It is the same concept, but is regarded as a political masterstroke. His advisor Prashant Kishore is called a political strategist. A lot of the things politicians and business leaders are doing today are PR techniques that were developed years ago. In his fireside chat, Madan Bahal has said that PR has always been at the bottom of the value chain.  I would say, looking at history, that he is wrong.

Bernays used a very scientific approach to communications and public persuasion. The things that he pioneered in the 1920s and 30s have actually become the basis of marketing today. Business consulting came much later. Public relations has lost that first mover advantage.

The PMO has an institution of media advisors. This institution once comprised legendary figures such as H.Y. Sharada Prasad, who was a key aid to Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Vajpayee had a media advisor or press secretary, as they were called in those days, called Ashok Tandon. Similarly, Manmohan Singh had Sanjay Baru. These were very powerful men. Currently, there is no media advisor of note in the PMO.

PM Modi himself has perfected PR techniques and uses them very well. Take the Statue of Unity, which collected scrap iron from villages across India to actually build the statue. That is PR. Another contribution by PM Modi is Yoga Day, which is held on June 21, which is the longest day of the year as per the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. The record for highest number of vaccinations in a day was achieved on Yoga Day to ensure that it remains unforgotten. ‘Mann Ki Baat’ and ‘Howdy Modi’ are other examples of PR. Tesla famously dissolved its PR department in August 2020. Elon Musk said he doesn’t need a PR department anymore. If leaders are using PR techniques, where does that leave us advisors?

So, is this the end of PR? I think the PR industry as we know it has ended, but PR professionals need to come together to reform it. Here are some takeaways:

Talent: PR usually hires talent that are generalists. I feel the days of the generalist have come to an end. We need specialists to come into the PR profession, including designers, creative directors, writers, data specialists, artists, management consultants. If HR and marketing has a function called data analyst, why doesn’t PR?

Knowledge: So what can generalists like us do to stay more relevant? There is no substitute for good old learning. Read, learn, listen to podcasts, watch videos. Do whatever it takes to upgrade your knowledge. Learn from Mukesh Ambani, who along with being a great businessman is also a voracious reader and spends a lot of time on Coursera. Before he launched JioFiber, he actually went through all the courses on 5G, data and connectivity on Coursera.

Start-up mindset: I think agencies are underselling themselves. The entire PR industry of India is valued at Rs 1,600 crore, and even worldwide it is a very small percentage of the entire communications mix. We should not be happy being acquired by an MNC firm or look at an incremental growth of 5-10 per cent year on year. What I learned from the start-up industry is that they don’t talk about 15-20 per cent growth, they talk about 2X, 3X and 10X growth. Why can’t agencies think like that?

The adtech industry has around 5,000 start-ups with a global funding of $25 billion and value of $20 billion. What do these guys do? Ad exchanges, ad networks, data management, campaign measurement, everything to assess advertising. InMobi, an Indian adtech firm, is going for a listing of $15 billion on NASDAQ. Similarly, you’ve got firms like DoubleVerify, Magnite, Taboola – all of which are valued at $3-5 billion. Incidentally, none of these adtech companies have been pioneered by legacy communications firms.

If there is a flourishing adtech industry, why can’t somebody take a leap of faith and start a PR tech industry? Let there be a new beginning for Public Relations.