Public Relations and Communicators Blog

Trust is the underlying substrate of every decision we take, so much so that it is evident in everything we do. The more difficult the choice, the more it is pinned on the essential intangible of trust. Let’s take relationships, politics, and commerce. Though the three streams may seem distinct and discrete, the trust (or lack of it) in one, can impact the others, either positively or negatively, depending on the disposition of the person making the trust decision. Contrary to what may seem, and a little counter-intuitively, most trust relationships depend more on our own behavior rather than that of the environment. A brand (or a person) may be able to alter or adapt to a few behaviors of trust temporarily, but the innate 'behavior tendency', the natural conduct of the brand, becomes an overwhelming factor in the results of its interactions with the world. For a brand to build permanent trust relationships, therefore, behavior changes must be or become natural to i...

The #UberShame and subsequent cascading bans on the $40bn valued, cab-hailing app, and the vigilante-or-extortionists #RohtakSisters are the two occurrences that everyone is talking about in the past week across India. Admittedly the sequence of happenings in both cases have been quite extreme, shocking the nation into discussion, debate and argument, on every known platform, by every person who wanted to make a point. I did too. Uber did not do relevant background checks of its drivers while promising ease and safety to its passengers. They flawed, and it is not a easy flaw to forgive - especially for the traumatized girl who suffered the consequences of their 'oversight'. The government did come in and recommended ban of Uber till the proper procedures were put in place and licenses were acquired. Other such cab services also suffered similar consequences. Many states followed through the ban. Uber, the giant which often got away when uttering unutterables was suddenly vul...

(As it appeared in adgully.com) osted by Adgully Bureau | on October 9, 2013 Android-lovers have been calling the Android Kit Kat deal the biggest thing after man's landing on the moon, and Apple-lovers have been calling this the total destruction of marketing ethics. If anything, the Android Kit Kat announcement has, in one swift more, polarized the worlds of technology, confectionary, advertising and marketing even more acutely than it was before. This innocuous partnership, of two unseemingly unconnected brands, has opened out the future to experiments where everything is connected to everything else. Innovative Android names like Cupcake, Donut, Icecream Sandwich and Jellybean - all of which gave a ring of 'niceness' and 'enjoyment' that get coupled with deserts to the brand - has with the addition of Kit Kat to the list, painted the open source wonder with a commercial taint. While it was a total win for Kit Kat, in becoming clubbed with generics lik...

The power of Public Relations is the power of the masses. If used well, not only does the Brand get etched into the public minds, but it also has the ability to turn mere ‘carriers’ into ‘idea transmitters’. Public Relations can convert mere believers into self-powered evangelists. What is it that gives an evangelist missionary purpose, infectious zeal and volcanic energy, to go about spreading the ‘faith’ unflinchingly? The idea-meme which converts them, if pure and potent, has the ability to make the transmission of idea-meme a vital reason for their very existence - sometimes even the only reason for their existence. Those who dedicate their lives to religion, country, family, community, society, or organization, exhibit visions similar to that of ‘faith-keepers’. Ideas that may seem insignificant to many still find their faith-keepers, and often these evangelists turn these ideas into revolutions. A few examples include the legendary Jane Goodall who dedicated forty-fiv...

If language is the liberator of human beings, the Communication function is the liberator of an  organization. It frees businesses from the constraints of time and space and the incarceration of their own mindsets. Of the various communication tools an organization uses, Public Relations is the one that comes closest to taking on the role of a mind-liberator, almost like a spiritual guide. PR is a versatile communication tool which serves the organization by serving the needs of the community and society. It is the only such tool that was created for the sake of the public, in response to their needs, facilitating “public understanding and acceptance”. One definition of Public Relations has the following words:  “Public Relations helps our complex, pluralistic society to reach decisions and function more effectively by contributing to mutual understanding among groups and institutions. It serves to bring private and public policies into harmony.” Sounds more like a mes...

If there's a commodity that perishes as swiftly as it is created, it is news.  The longer it takes to create, the higher its longevity and by corollary, news produced by the second, dies by the second.  We want our gratifications without any waiting period, we want to gulp down our food, build instant abs, get rich immediately and also know everything now.  We are also anxious to know more and more, and information has become a status-according social currency.   Fortunately, acquisition of knowledge does not have a finish line and so it behaves quite differently from instant abs or instant noodles.  In this hurried age, magazines play an important role by balancing societal myopia with perspective; need-for-speed with understanding, and anxiety with patience. The magazines analyze and opine like the elders of society - and hence also play the role of elders in the information society. In an age when every new opinion becomes news, magazines bring perspect...

Humans are animals of habit. If we sit in a particular seat in any forum, we will automatically gravitate towards it the next time, if we walk on one side of the road, it will almost always be the same side every time. We lessen the use of our brain by using more of 'muscle' or mechanical memory - the known and comfortable route we know to be safe. Marketers bet on that. Whenever marketers bet big on a campaign, they know that there will be a 'trial' spike in sales after which the cliched 'new normal' will settle at a higher base because of the  neo-converts. Once you've become a convert, another change is not easy. So not only do you make a convert of one through a campaign, but the brand also ensures that this customer  has been blocked from future conversions. We have evolved to believe that if we've tested a method/product/service out any new experimentation is an unnecessary waste of effort. However, in the new age, nothing could be further th...