Public Relations and Communicators Blog

Crisis communications has always been of utmost importance in any organization. Its impact and, by corollary, its importance & relevance has become higher due to the interconnected world we live in. Speed of response and a well thought through strategy is essential in solving crisis. Crisis response time and risk of crisis are inversely proportional on a logarithmic scale. Meaning, a delay the response by a few hours (or days) and the potential risk of the crisis grows many times over. We at Blue Lotus have a three stage crisis containment & communications plan. These stages are referred to as Anticipate, Participate and Mitigate. In the Anticipatory stage, we do scenario building, develop war-room situations, and conduct spokesperson training to be prepared for such situations. In the Participatory stage, we have our media relations cells in 9 offices keep a close watch on the story movement and evolution. Also, this is the stage where we are sensitizing the relevant media tow...

Communication across audiences is becoming more and more important today. There are multiple reasons for the same. There is a slowdown, and so everybody is looking at value. That's a reason for us to force-multiply and take experiences and various other aspects of the brand from inside the room, to the outside world. It is an important aspect of the marketing communications business to showcase value. The other is to show that we actually enhance value for people interested in the particular topic on show - be it a brand or a service or a launch or anything else. In order to reach out to everybody, you need to force multiply. The third is to actually build a very important part called 'trust' -the one thing that is being eroded in the current context. When trust gets lost, the things easiest to eliminate get eliminated. And therefore. as communicators - and trust is essentially a communication platform - it's important that we look at trust extremely carefully. Ther...

[At the very outset, I must strongly state that what ails the PR industry can be mostly attributed to the agencies themselves. As each agency strives to achieve better results for its clients, educates those who are not aware and trains the professionals continuously, we will see the industry become better. This, of course, is a well known and well accepted fact. In this piece I have focused on those things that can be bettered outside the agency set-up.] It may not be a stretch to say that the maturity of any industry is reflected in the maturity of its stakeholders. This barometer would be a direct reflection on the most important four stakeholders of the PR industry. In our case, the four main drivers for this ‘barometer’ are, the type of people that PR is attracting, PR industry’s focus, the academic rigour of the educational institutes conducting the courses and, finally, the scope of work that the clients are demanding. Let us consider our four metrics of the PR industry baromete...

Morbidity and Mortality analysis helps in systemic correction leading to growth Popular theory has it that the IQ of a person (or corporate) falls to 10% when faced with acute adversity. Is there a way that we can add to the intelligence by learning from adversity? Is there a way that we can end up adding IQ points when faced with a situation of adversity? When any company loses clients, markets, mindshare or reputation, it is unfortunate that very few do a serious introspection to understand what really happened. A parallel analysis, termed as termed Morbidity and Mortality in the hospital environment, is a common feature when an adverse event happens in a hospital. Not only has it helped improve efficiencies, but in the hospital context, the M&M analysis has actually helped saved lives. I categorize experiential learning in two categories, subtle and gross. Gross learning happens by pure observation of something new. On the other hand, subtle learning happens due to experimentati...

The key role of any association is to inform. An association of enterprises or people works towards a common goal that benefits its members and the society as a whole. Advocating issues before policy makers & regulators, influencing public opinion, educating and creating awareness are among the core roles of any association. Successful associations critically depend on the relationships they build with their internal and external audiences. Shaping public opinion and persuading people to act is no easy task. The art of persuasion requires appealing to intellect and to the interest of the audiences. For some, like industry associations, this may mean lobbying to effect policy changes and for others, like healthcare associations it may mean creating a more conducive health environment the citizenry. Public relations, or the relationships that these associations cultivate with its publics becomes an intrinsic part of any Association life-cycle. In late 2002, the Association of Hospit...

(An interesting article from Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle on training) When was the last time you learnt management lessons from a dog or a horse? Two organisa­tions, Canines Can Care and Japalouppe Equestrian Centre teamed up to conduct an off-site training programme for the employees of Blue Lotus Communication recent­ly. Here's why it worked: Communicate silently Getting a horse to jump, using only verbal commands or getting a dog to put on a light switch within a span of 10 min­utes requires high levels of communication skills. Rohan More, Japalouppe Equestrian Centre, Pune, says, "Both hors­es and dogs are similar to humans because they move around in groups and have a complex hierarchical social structure. Since they don't have our level of verbal communica­tion, they mostly communicate through non-verbal cues. -It's easy to draw a parallel on how we do this as humans. Many of the ways we express ourselves are genetically hardwired into us like clenching our tee...

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