Giving the PR industry an image makeover

I recently attended an interesting panel discussion on lobbying at the India PR & Corporate Communications Conference 2011 organised by exchange4media (e4m) in New Delhi. While the panel, which included Essar’s Shivnath Thukral and Moving Fingers Communication CEO Vivek Sengupta, animatedly debated the merits of according industry status to lobbying, what particularly caught my attention were the remarks made by APCO Worldwide director Dr Steven King.

King made two pertinent points, one of which was a casual ‘They don’t work with us because we are cheap; we don’t come cheap,’ in response to a remark by one of the panelists about the Gujarat government overlooking Indian PR agencies to award its PR mandate to APCO. The other comments pertained to King being comfortable being called a lobbyist. According to him, all lobbyists and lobbying firms in the UK are required to register with the industry body and make mandatory disclosures which included listing of all clients. In addition, they are expected to strictly adhere to the standards and policies prescribed by the body. The disclosures are available in the public domain and violation of norms could lead to blacklisting of the lobbyist and/or his firm. In short, transparency was expected of and practised by all lobbyists and lobbying firms.

While I suspect not everything is as rosy as Dr King would have us believe, clearly there are lessons here for the Indian PR industry. It has been almost a year since The Pioneer’s Gopikrishnan broke the story on corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and the 2G spectrum scam which eventually snowballed into a full blown controversy so staggering in proportions that we are still grappling with it. The media is yet to analyse and make all the tapes public.

During this period, the PR industry has gone about its business with an uncomfortable silence barring a few sporadic voices rising in defence of its practices. While industry stalwarts continue to advocate the need for self-regulation as opposed to government intervention, no concerted effort is visible in this direction. I do not see strong evidence of such self-regulation even at individual agencies’ level either by way of adopting a code of ethics or efforts to increase transparency. If such efforts are being made, they are not being talked about enough. The work lobbying and PR firms undertake continue to be shrouded in mystery. It appears that everybody is waiting for the others to bell the cat.

The industry needs to get its act together and utilise opportunities such as the e4m PR summit to reach a consensus on setting standards. Industry bodies such as the PRCAI should lead such an initiative with definite goals and timelines.

The media should be consulted for their inputs and industry surveys should be initiated. While it is certainly not an easy task to bring a highly fragmented PR industry together, this will be a great step towards fighting the war of negative perceptions that currently plague PR in India.

Such an approach will not only help in elevating its status, but also pave way for adding greater value to clients and being seen as true partners as opposed to the vendor relationship many PR agencies currently share with their clients.

Agencies will be forced to dump dubious practices of pestering the media for stories and acting as courier agents or fixers for their clients and innovate instead.

This in turn would also help them command a higher price from their clients like their western counterparts. When the Indian PR industry gets to such a stage, all Indian PR agencies can proudly state that they are hired not because they are cheap and they don’t come cheap.