PRCAI PRologue held on July 28 saw participation of professionals and achievers not just from PR but from diverse backgrounds. It began with Kunal Sinha; Vice President PRCAI and Co-founder Value 360 who emphasised that Talent will play a critical role for the PR industry. He also highlighted the need for the profession to be more purposeful and innovative. Following Kunal was Atul Sharma; President PRCAI and Managing Director, Ruder Finn who articulated PRCAI’s vision to create a more Professional, Ethcial and Prosperous industry. He underscored PRCAIs prime endeavours i.e. increasing member base, increasing engagement and keeping in line with the industry.
Deeptie Sethi, CEO-PRCAI then shared a presentation on PRCAI’s achievements. She spoke of leading growth & inclusivity, learning & development and need for evangelising the profession. She reiterated on the talent challenge along with areas of gap such as Writing, Research, Trend spotting and Inclusivity. She opened the stage for felicitation of 18 candidates who qualified for Accreditation Programme in Public Relations (AIPR) by PRCAI in February 2022.
Sairee Chahal; founder of SHEROES spoke about brands inculcating safety, trust and authenticity in customers. She equated SHEROES journey and PR profession with trust and authenticity as the common link. She opined that most effective way of achieving trust is reducing the gap between words and reality.
Next up came the keynote address by President and Managing Director of MG Motor India; Rajeev Chaba who presented MG Motor India’s success story in India despite a fiercely competitive Automobile market. MG Motor India has created numerous positive stories with cross section of people. The best content is derived by positive sentiment of customers. Rajeev also mentioned that there is a need for combination of talent handling old as well as new media. On the aspect of client delight, he propagated the approach of doing exemplary work and then talking about it i.e. under-promise and over deliver.
A Fire-side chat between Diana Marzalek-senior Reporter Provoke Media and Madan Bahal, Co-Founder and Managing Director Adfactors PR saw the audience interest peak. Madan highlighted that Indian PR profession has the potential of growing 10X. He shared a very interesting comparison. Apparently at 250 million dollars, the Indian PR industry’s size is smaller than Edelman New York office’s annual turnover.
According to Madan, “Instinct comes from knowledge”. The competency gap needs to be filled and analytics and strategic thinking must be adopted.” Favouring Indian PR Firms, he mentioned that they enable ordinary people do ordinary things better. He feels that Global PR firms have done more harm to Indian PR than good. When asked if PR is under threat at the hands of Influencers, Analytics, Technology he maintained that these are tools for PR. He added, “PR Counsel is here to stay for as long as mankind exists. The ‘market’ is a great leveler and great organisations go after growth and enable their people to embrace growth. Public Relations is 90 % behavior and 10 % Communication.”
In the PRologue session 1- Tech-ing it to Fututureverse Rajiv Makhni, Managing Editor NDTV held an interactive chat with four personalities in tech space. It started on the backdrop of that tech innovations are seeped into reality and the consumers are the ultimate judge. The panel unanimously agreed that it is incorrect to term a given tech-phenomenon as the future-of-Tech. The classic case in point being success of Iphone vs fall of much-hyped curved televisions. Time and users decide trends that prevail vs the ones that fall by the wayside.
Prologue 2 Weaving New Trends with Zillenials had Rajesh Lalwani, CEO-Scenario Consulting talk to the panelists and draw conclusions like co-creation is the way, transparency is the key and trends of the young generation must be lauded. According to a finding, more kids want to be a YouTuber or Instagrammer than an Astronaut.
During PRologue 3 on Re-Powering Ethics in Communications, Diana Marzalek moderated an illustrious panel. It was agreed that PR and Media share equal responsibility on disseminating credible, correct and accurate information.
Just as Media is accountable for disseminating correct information; PR plays a critical role in feeding authentic information to media.
The resounding takeaway from this session was that Ethics is entirely personal.
PRCAI PRologue was succeeded by 10th edition of SABRE South Asian 2022 Awards; world’s largest PR awards program. The Awards recognise the stellar work in the area of branding and reputation in Asia Pacific.
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