Public Relations and Communicators Blog

With over a decade of professional experience in the field of public relations after having spent the previous decade in various other unrelated businesses, I often remember the time when I was first introduced to term ‘Public Relations’ as a professional opportunity. I gaped back in answer. Despite my outright rejection at the prospect and my first words in reply being “What’s that?!”, I was comforted and told that all I had to do was read newspapers, have common sense; and I would be able to make a business out of PR. The response I first gave when confronted with Public Relations is the very same I get from many others when I tell them what I do for a living. Not much has changed I guess. Even sibling professions like advertising or marketing don’t know what PR can do, much less how it gets done. Almost ten years later after I joined the profession, I have promoted & managed two successful PR agencies (Blue Lotus Communications and i9 Communications), the second of which w...

After the telecom thunder and the retail rush in India, Healthcare seems to be the next biggest bet for everyone. With promises of many billions of Indian Rupees, large diversified conglomerates such as Reliance, Birlas, Tatas are all betting their money in the Indian healthcare delivery space. As has been with other high growth sectors in India that witnessed a rapid meteoric rise, those who don’t jump into the bandwagon quickly are likely to miss the speeding bus completely. Industry experts promise that among other businesses which will ride the crest of this healthcare delivery boom will be the erstwhile non-starter business of healthcare communications. Many communication giants who were early starters in healthcare communications (having started two to three years ago) in India had to face the embarrassing ignominy of their businesses not taking off despite repeated attempts at survival. Some continue to struggle, but on the whole, it would be safe to say that most have been deci...

The Essentials of Managing Ethics in Financial Public Relations The world has woken up to ethical issues in corporate governance & accounting practices. Corporate heads that were not guillotined were forced hang their heads in retrospective shame. The heads that fell were the victimizers, and the axe that fell, fell too late, and the punishment received, was way too little compared to the suffering, pain and financial losses that the organizations’ stakeholders suffered. Trust of millions of investors was lost overnight. Ethics in governance is one part of the story, the other link in this dubious chain of deceit is usually the professional services like auditing, legal and public relations which work closely with the organization. Such large scale deceit becomes possible only with the active collaboration of these so-called ‘professional’ services. Hardly professional, really! The Indian investor has been victim to a lot of companies attempting to make a quick buck in the markets....