The Hindu Business Line : PRand-building

PR agencies of the future will have to redefine their role in building brands, which should occupy consumer mindspace and not be restricted to columns of print.

BRANDS in the future will be built by PR! Small dollops of public relations that will aim to build great big brands in every image space there is to build. This will happen in the space of corporate brands (as we see it happening today), in the space of people-brands that CEOs tend to build for the good of the organisation they represent, and equally in the space of consumer brands. Therefore, never mind if it is Enron as a corporate or Enamor as a bra, each will depend on PR in a big, big way!

Public relations and all that it represents in a tiny cramped space occupied by professional practitioners and hacks alike is therefore most likely to emerge as a vital tool the brand manager will seek out with a greater degree of craving in the years of the future.

Why so?

Simply because branding is becoming pretty pari passu in a territory that is so full of clutter. Guess what? The best brand managers in the best of companies go to the same business schools. They read the same books. They learn the same cases. They understand the same basic theory that is taught with gusto! They enter the same market, in two different brand camps, of course! They fight literally with the same tools. They market research the same minds. They diagnose largely with the same methodologies. They distribute through similar means. The only cutting edge that is different is the element of execution added by advertising on the whole! For how long?

Simply because advertising will not be trusted on forever! Look at the television medium for a start. First of all, the medium gains its credence in content. In the beginning, it is all content. As days pass by and content leverages large viewership, advertising creeps in. As the pie of advertising becomes larger and larger in what used to be a content medium, credibility of the medium keeps falling, particularly if over a period of time the content is seen to be advertiser-friendly. What's worse is when a stage does come when the channel is ready to leverage content in favour of the advertiser. The day programmes start beaming subliminal brand-friendly messaging, the credibility of the medium suffers that much more!

Simply because several brands in categories that face social ostracism will be looking out for ways and means to keep their very popular brands in the fashionably `untouchable' categories of liquor, cigarette, gutkha and products of their like, in the dominant mindsets of their consuming classes! And they will find PR a useful tool!

PR practitioners need to get excited. Very excited about the opportunity that will lie ahead of them in the years to come. Time to hop into top gear then. Time to grab the brand-wagon by the horns and to reinvent methodology and purpose themselves altogether.

Watch out, though! Brand PR will mean much more than what PR pundits of the day propagate. Brand PR will mean an intrusive involvement with the consumer as a whole. It will call for an in-depth understanding of the consumer. It will mean catering to a much larger target segment than the typical PR agency that deals with the media at large is familiar with. The core competence required for this much larger game of brand PR is different as well!

Let's explore in brief.

The typical PR agency of the day is a savvy, well-networked entity that swims in media space. Talk about the print medium to these guys and their eyes light up. Talk of television, the nascent FM radio and media of the kind, there is a great degree of competence at hand! The formula of the PR Guru (and I hope there is no company that has this name already) is a rather simple one. PR success to the traditional and typical PR agency lies in column centimetres of print mentions (never mind the issues of medium weight and consumer credibility variances across media and vehicles in particular), a whole mix of front-cover stories in the leading magazines of the day, interviews of every kind in the many columns that the print medium proliferates, speaker opportunities at seminars and placed-articles in journals and magazines! Add to this a couple more innovations that don't really last long, and the formula of the PR agency at play is right in front of you!

The PR agency of the day is therefore an entity that is proficient in the space of handling media of every kind. Public relations that are media-centric are not everything there is in brand space, though!

If PR agencies of the future need to be prepared for the future that lies in deep budgets that brands represent and bring to the party, there needs to be a dramatic shift of format. PR agencies need to reinvent themselves to meet the new needs of brands.

Here goes. Media-centric PR is all about image building and communicating what is meant to be communicated. The task is pretty much achieved the moment a story hits the medium as it is meant to by the mandarins at the PR outfit. Brand-based consumer PR really starts out from that point on. While media-centric PR can afford to be hollow, brand-centric consumer PR needs to be solid. This part of PR is all about inventing a long-term and more solid consumer interface for the image requirements that brand managers would want to vest in their offerings.

Brand-centric PR is all about getting out there in the great Indian marketplace where the action rests. The great Indian kitchen! The great Indian toilet! And indeed the great Indian bedroom! These are the action spots where consumer loyalty programmes will need to be built! The brand manager is looking out for partners who will take on this huge big task of building equity among consumer groups! The brand manager wants communities built out here. Communities of consumers who will exude positivism for the brand offering!

PR agencies of the future will be asked to help in building this! The Harley Davidson and its cult club need to be run! What's more, this club needs to be built for my brand of toilet cleaner! I need people to go out there into the homes of people and create clubs of users who will meet often and discuss their many problems! I want an agency that will run image groups for my brand in the deep hinterland I want to penetrate! I want self-help groups that will take my brand message, both overtly and subliminally into the rural hinterland. These groups need to be formed, loyalty programmes need to be put together and then run to efficiency!

The new-improved PR agency (a mix of the direct marketing agency, the marketing services company and the loyalty programme catalyst) will aim to conceptualise, create, run and evaluate programmes that lie in the realm of brand imagery. This is the solid turf of the consumer! The new PR agency that can do all of this will be a much-respected entity in the brand armour of corporates of every kind. The budgets at play will be much more robust for interventions of this kind. Certainly bigger by huge multiples of what companies spend on PR today!

Something to salivate about!

(The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. Feedback can be sent to bleditor@thehindu.co.in)

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