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International Women’s Day: Another marketing gimmick or what women want?
Women don’t just need a day! They need the whole year and half the planet! Yes, we are ultimately occupying not just time, but space as well. In the battle for resources on our little blue planet spinning on its orbit around the sun, we need to understand that time, and space are both finite resources and not necessarily dispensed with fairly! Which also brings us to Public Relations and Women’s Day! What’s wrong with that you might ask? Well, nothing. Except how many times have we discussed our PR strategies for women’s day and how many of them are genuinely beneficial to women? If you are already shaking your…
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Looking to get back to a corporate job, are we?
Someone asked ‘did you match the keywords on your resume to the job description?’. I said, ‘hell no, I’m no Google (no offence). And how am I to showcase my creativity as a communicator? They all unanimously said ‘keep quiet and just match the keywords’. So, I did that. Did I get the job? Oh no hold on, there was more. Then someone said, ‘girl this is too much content, please rework’! I said, ‘but this matches exactly to the job description that I just got’! They said, ‘come on get smarter, make it shorter, no one has the attention span’. I was like, ‘seriously it’s a senior role, shouldn’t…
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Gender Diversity in PR
Gender diversity is rapidly gaining momentum across the globe where the corporate world is striving for equal representation of both genders as well as marginalised groups. But we cannot say the same for the Public Relations industry, where it is common knowledge that it is a woman-dominated profession, as a whole. The same goes for India too. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, although women hold 72.8 percent of public relations management jobs overall, only 10.7 percent of roles are held by those who are black, 3.1 percent by Asians, and 3.1 percent by Hispanics or Latinos. However, modern PR as we know it today started off on a…
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PR Insight: How To Crack Budget Stories?
Budget stories: We all agree this is the first stress point of the year for the PR & media community. After a turbulent year, this budget will see high strung responses from all sectors. This is also the time you are warned about DND (do not disturb) posts from journalists and most PR approaches are met with (love or hate) strong reactions. However, this year we want to aim at changing the narrative. So, we reached out to the strong voices in the communications industry and sourced insights that you can use to help make your quotes more relevant for the media and plan the best approach for the coveted…
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Brand Journalism: Passing Fad or the next level of owned content?
In the United States and increasingly around the world, the most commonly accepted definition of owned content comes from the PESO model developed by Gini Dietrich, founder of the top-five PR blog, Spin Sucks (see below). Within the universe of owned media, one of the fast-growing categories is brand journalism. As the president and chief storyteller at WordWrite, a public relations firm that connects providers of complex services with C Suite leaders of middle-market companies, storytelling is at the heart of everything we do. And brand journalism is a premier means of storytelling. I have love and respect for journalism — I spent two decades covering everything from murders to…
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Globalize, Localize, Glocalize!
Political liberalism and technological advancements have been providing a constant push to international trade, with businesses exploring and entering newer markets and servicing the aspirational needs of the new age consumers. It therefore is not surprising that more than one-fourth of the global production is exported, that too at a healthy incremental rate. The contribution of services in total exports is also heading north, indicating a behavioral shift in the international trade practices, and evolution of consumers. The world is witnessing an exponential growth in the consumption of international brands and services. A Euromonitor research states that consumers in developing countries are reevaluating their consumption habits, abandoning exaggerated materialism and…
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Influencer Marketing: The Way Forward
As the world changes and moves to digital formats, one of the greatest pivots that we have witnessed in these times is the rise and rise of ‘Influencer Marketing’. As we witness the shrinking of traditional media options, there is a growing trend of ‘Influencer Marketing and Outreach’. In this new fragmented universe, where media and individuals are vying for eyeballs, what is the future of Influencer Marketing? Will it be the new way brands communicate with consumers? How will the Public Relations Industry navigate through this? These were some of the questions raised in the PRPOI Live discussion on the subject of Influencer Marketing. With panelists Pankhuri Harikrishnan, Founder…
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Time to envisage a new journey – all the way to the boardroom!
A communicator’s purpose used to be straightforward enough. Be it at a PR agency or at a Corporate organisation, a communicator had to ensure impactful visibility for the client/brand through various conversations. However, in the last few years (maybe 5?) there has been a change in how a communicator is now viewed. Rather the role of a communications professional now comes embedded with innumerable unseen layers. Today more than ever Leadership teams acknowledge the successful impact of a communication campaign on the behaviours of the people around, with a focus on building and protecting reputation. Recently on the weekly PRPOI chats, when I read out an audience question for…
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Influencing the Influencer – Advocacy in PR
As the adage goes, “Change is the only constant” and change is beneficial, when it keeps pace with altering times, and as we all know time is one of the biggest game-changers. In context, therefore, the dynamic domains of advocacy and public relations also witnessed radical changes over the last two decades and continues to do so, even today, maybe with a much more accelerated pace than ever before. Speaking from a PR parlance, advocacy in itself, as well as, strategizing campaign outreach for advocacy has witnessed several paradigm shifts through all the bygone years. Wind the clock back 15 years – At that time, advocacy only meant liaising with…
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Advocacy Essentials
Interacting with Interest Group Media and Government In India, as in many other developing countries, one of the key driving forces has been that of inclusive growth. Other factors like the changing relationships between the government and the regulator and the question of basic independence of the regulator has also brought about a sea change in the Advocacy landscape. In this new milieu, the big question is: how can industry remain a significant partner in furthering the growth of the economy. A corporation’s socio-political environment can affect its profitability, growth, and, in extreme cases, its very survival. Not surprisingly, corporations have established Advocacy—often an extension of existing public relations—to deal with…
