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[alchemy-corp]

Give PR the Respect it Deserves

Someone has very rightly said, “Everything you do or say is public relations.”

The time when your son got home the silver trophy, and you told the neighbors, it was PR.

The time when your daughter came first in a contest, and you sent a WhatsApp to all your relatives, it was PR.

When you exchange Good Morning or Merry Christmas messages with all your acquaintances through bulk messaging, you are again doing PR.

Warren Buffet has gone on record saying that, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

PR is like insurance. You don’t realize its value till one day you urgently need it. By then if you have not invested in PR for your brand, disaster has already struck.

In earlier times, PR equated more with media relations, a task entrusted to the marketing person or agencies who could than reach out to newspapers and industry magazines and maintain sustained contact with them for mentions in their publications.

However, with the onset of the digital era, PR has shifted shape to include online news publications and social media platforms.

These changes essentially mean that now the audience for a PR professional has shifted from journalists and editors to include the end-consumers, influencers, celebrities, potential clients, and even regulatory environment.

With such a broad mandate now synonymous with PR, we cannot afford to let rookies run even our social media campaigns. If a tweet could earlier brand you, it can now also scar you ruthlessly.

If you think CEOs can do this job effortlessly then think again. A case comes to mind of Elon Musk, a well-respected figure in the industry, who ended up tweeting and earning himself a SEC reprimand which resulted in a sharp fall in Tesla’s shares and harmed his standing with SEC.

Now Elon is no rookie, he is a brilliant person, but ‘PR’ and ‘diplomacy’ may not be his strong forte.

PR failures can be disastrous for companies. The whole world knows how Boeing has been suffering from the aftermath of 737 Max 8 jet crashes. In this case, the disaster has had reverberations not only in media but in regulatory, legal and insurance circles as well, compounding problems for Boeing.

There are many examples where CEOs have stood up and taken responsibility for mistakes committed by the companies. Almost in every such case, they ended up as heroes. It takes courage to step up to the task, but then you cannot be a leader and not be fearless!

In every such case where PR teams have worked in tandem with the leadership, it needs reminding that if you have not contained a PR disaster in the first 5-6 hours, you have not been able to dodge the bullet. News travels fast in this world and time zones are no longer isolated!

Respect, by definition, comes only to those who are honest, dependable, trustworthy and have huge integrity. They care more about their people and the environment than about saving their own skins.

If you make a careful study of all PR debacles within the last decade, you will see that the ones who have emerged unscathed and been respected are the ones who have acted with sincerity and acted as consummate PR professionals, whatever their designation.

So do give PR the respect it deserves, moreover so in the hugely connected world of today. You never know when you will need it!

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