The Silo Warrior

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No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…

– John Donne 

Ramesh, recently got promoted from a Sr. Account Executive’s position to lead a team as an Account Manager. The only reason Ramesh got promoted much earlier than his peers was his performance. He was excellent at almost everything he did; making thoughtful plans to executing it effortlessly had become his forte. Seeing his performance and his ambition his superiors thought he should manage a team, so that he can develop few more similar high performers.

But then suddenly everything started changing, while he was good at his own work, he was unable to get the same performance from his team, he started getting frustrated, angry and tried to do most of the stuff on his own. On one hand, his team members could not learn…

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Best Practices on PR for Start-Ups

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Pitching for start-ups who want to launch their cool innovative gadgets or services that no has imagined yet? You want to be the maker of next Infosys or Apple? But guess what there are over thousands of start-ups trying their luck every year, out of them over 20% want all the magic that PR can do for them and yes you have one for the show. The media is not naïve either; even they are being bombarded with the suave elevator pitches on how the client’s products are superior blah blah blah…but you have to do your job. You have to position the start-up as the next big thing in the target market and you are all geared to jump and kick the start the campaign. Here are few globally accepted best practices that can guide your way.

1. Understand the objective from PR: When engaging with a start-up company understanding…

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Who are you? What’s your identity?

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The answer to this question may seem to be very simple on the face of it but when you actually think deep within and ask yourself this question, you may not be able to come up with an instant answer. We being in the profession of image management or identity management, understanding our own identity before we mould others’ becomes very important. You may identify yourself as a PR executive or some may like themselves to be known  as reputation management consultants or you may identify yourself as a corporate communications head of ABC organization etc. But that may just be your designation or your work profile but a question about one’s identity stumps the vast majority.

According to the Marshall Goldsmith, author of bestselling book – ‘What got you here won’t get you there’, says, “identity is a complicated subject, and we make it even more complicated when we’re…

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How can PR professionals engage with the Influencers?

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Increasing number of brands are reaching out to the thought leaders and third-party experts that influence buying behavior in their respective industries. Recent studies indicate that most of the media is expected to act like the B2B buyers. 50%-70% of the buying decision is made before the B2B buyer speaks to a sales representative. The buyers have done a thorough research on the product by checking with the domain experts, checking for people’s views and reviews on social networks and more.

Public Relations is about ‘Influencing the Influencer’ but somehow the industry has been limiting itself to media relations. Influencers can greatly impact the PR program: they have high credibility, are authoritative and are trustworthy among the community. Thus the traditional approach to PR will have to be redesigned to understand the key influencers for the brand, develop strategies to build relationships with the unbiased third-party experts.

To start with one needs to go through a comprehensive…

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Take a Leap from just being to ‘Being Positive’

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Hope you had an opportunity to read my last week’s post on ‘Celebrating Happiness’, which talks about how you can celebrate happiness even in the gloomiest situations. Our jobs particularly have all the reasons to make the sanest person pessimist but still you will find people around you who are always brimming with fullness, they are eternally happy; positive and charged. They are the high performers, clients love them, bosses can’t do without them and success is always under their feet. They are the ones who are sometimes called turnaround specialists (they readily accept the most horrible client and make them eat out of their hands); face the crisis head-on and clients insist to have them around in bad times; they win all competitive new business pitches and take home great increments as well.

Then on the other hand we have people who do all the above tasks but…

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Customer Engagement – the next competitive battleground for brands

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Customers are demanding superior service and relationships with companies from across sectors. Companies need to broaden their horizons and address customer-engagement needs, enable more rapid responses, and building internal lines of communication, these steps will help create nimbler organizations.

Customer engagement is quintessential for all industries and requires strengthening your relationship with your current customers and establishing high-value customer relationships. It is all about understanding the rational and emotional needs of your customers thus showcasing the value of your services.

The PR industry that primarily functions on relationships and engagement has somehow lost the essence of this competency. Managers and executives are engrossed in the rigormorole of media coverage and the leadership team is running behind getting more business and does not do much to maintain the existing client base.

Here are some ways to enhance customer engagement across your organization:

1. Leap in Consulting Value: Be more proactive in analyzing…

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Celebrate Happiness

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PR as a profession is ranked as one of the most stressful profession. PR practitioners as we would like to be identified work relentlessly towards creating and maintaining a positive image for their clients or companies they work for. The job as we all know involves extreme pressure either for coverage or for new business, tight deadlines, lesser resources and sometimes even dealing with abusive journalists or clients.

Serious PR practitioners (spent over 4 years in the business), who see this as the only profession towards their career fulfillment often work under extreme stress. Corporate communications are still comparatively better placed, but agency side practitioners are under constant stress leading to excessive smoking, drinking, unhealthy diet and loads of other complementary illnesses. Happiness is something that does not come naturally, unless induced through such artificial means or you are really lucky to have some good colleagues, bosses and friends around…

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