Public Relations as a subset of marketing communication is becoming increasingly important in India. exchange4media has been continuously striving to serve the information needs of brand managers, marketing communication professionals and advertising decision-makers. PR Watch aims to throw the spotlight on this growing practice and its key professionals.

Prolific marketing guru Al Ries, ex-ad executive and coiner of the phrase "positioning" in his recent book, 'The Fall of Advertising and Rise of PR', joins his daughter and consulting partner Laura Ries in contending that public relations quietly has become the most powerful marketing-services discipline.

PR SPEAK

Public relations over the years in the western markets have seen PR firms identifying their verticals with specialised resources and teams to cater to the specific niches… The PR industry in India is still media led and has the traditional approach. The expectation from PR is to deliver media coverage, while PR goes beyond media and editorial visibility. Over a period, Rediffusion Public Relations has been working towards changing the perception of PR and expectations of the clients to go beyond just media mileage. Lokesh Tiwary, Group President, Rediffusion Y&R PR and CEO, Showdiff Worldwide

The Rieses still see a role for advertising, but primarily as a defense mechanism for established brands and products, not as a builder of new ones. Public relations -- specifically publicity and the resulting word of mouth -- is what really build new brands, they maintain.

Most industry executives might dismiss that as "a gross generalization" but all agree that PR is an important and growing tool being increasingly used by marketers.

However, both suffered last year. PR spending has long paled compared to ad spending, given the lack of media expense and relative lack of production expense involved. A 2001 survey by Thomas L. Harris/Impulse Research found consumer-products companies, for example, spend about 0.05% of revenue on PR. That's a tiny fraction of the 2% to 10% of revenues such companies ordinarily spend on overall marketing expense. Those figures don't count salaries and overhead.

The survey also found that marketers cut PR budgets as a percent of sales from 0.09% to 0.07% last year, a 29% drop. The percentage of client PR budgets earmarked for product publicity, however, actually went up five points to 23%, even though total spending on product publicity actually went down 10% to $518 million.

In India the Public Relations industry reached a major milestone last year in December with the launch and formation of Public Relations Consultants Association of India (PRCAI), an umbrella body representing all the professional consultancies in India. The PRCAI, mooted by a group of seven leading public relations firms, is a pioneering body that will represent the over Rs. 1 billion industry, which employs about 8,000 professionals today.