"Perception is reality and factual leadership plays the second fiddle to the popular opinion," believes Perfect Relations. The Delhi based, Public Relations firm founded by Dillip Cherian in year 1992, it hasn't looked back since then. It has a list of clients, which includes BBC World, Moser Baer, Ashok Leyland, Hindustan Motors, Electrolux Kelvinator, Reebok and London Stock Exchange.

Consulting Partner, Perfect Relations

Apart from being a dominant player in the corporate arena, Perfect Relations has also been handling State governments, helping them in improving their image and in communicating their objectives to the masses.

Dilip Cherian, Consulting Partner, Perfect Relations, has been a prominent figure in public relations industry, delivering important inputs from his vast experience to Indian corporate clients, government institutions and political parties. Known to be a 'Tycoon Tracker', his columns appear in Indian Express and Asian Age. Former editor of Business India and The Observer, he believes, " Image is the only devise that is growth inductive and recession proof.

In a chat with exchange4media's Nikhil Gupta for PR Speak, Cherian talks about the importance of perception, about crisis management, new trends in corporate India and consolidation of PR industry.

The concept of 'image management' is what we really specialize in. We as a company believe that image management is something that begins with the CEO. Involves a shared vision of the top management, and is actually a part of the corporate strategy. We have multi-target audience approach, where the audience could be shareholder, distributors, dealers, the media, consumers, and government.
We don't ever discuss client methodology publicly, again that is unique with Perfect Relations. Perfect Relations has handled almost all the major crisis that has faced the Indian industry, whether it is a take over, whether it's a merger, whether its an acquisition. This confidentiality gives Perfect Relations an ability to present itself and work with companies at the CEO level.

The biggest factor, which ensures that crisis will be managed, is preparedness. At a short notice, it is usually impossible to handle a crisis effectively, but our network is so large, we are able to manage crisis even without notice.

We forecast the future, which is again unique to Perfect Relations, it is another way to deal with eventualities, and our clients ask us- what is going to happen in future?

For example, a client of ours, a large company based out of non-metro decided to come up with an IPO in 2003. We felt 2003 would possibly be a low IPO year with only blue chips attempting to enter the market. So, we advised them to allow the market to be tested by the blue chips, before going for an IPO. This client was able to work on other plans for raising finances, and we helped him in doing that. So, forecasting the future is based on three things, the ability to understand the client, the ability to understand the competition of the client, and third the ability to understand the environment.

In my view, 2003 will be dominated by politics, and therefore economics will continue to take a backseat. What is happening is that a large number of Indian corporates have figured out that if they wait for the government to determine economics, then nothing is going to happen. So, a lot of them have now decided to do launches, to do expansion, to make acquisitions, which were pending for sometime. So, in 2003, you will see a lot of companies getting active without waiting for the support to get active.

I think there are agencies in PR industry who probably because of the crunch in the market, because of the market downturn, working on methods, working on techniques which are damaging both to the media as well as to the PR firm. I think in 2003,we are likely to see some consolidation; we have already seen several agencies go under. We are presently examining some proposals; we are looking at buying out some agencies. I see a process, which slowly began last year accelerating this year.

I think communications is increasingly becoming a specialist function. The clients are focusing on ensuring that their communications is outsourced to the specialist. So, you will see corporates looking at suppliers in the PR domain, who have the strength. The second big change that I see is in the use of the net, I think corporations are going to look at agencies that understand the net better.
Corporate communication has to strengthen to use specialist skills of PR. I think, corporate communication will move up the ladder in terms of quality of management, but will move down in terms of number of people used to handle the function. It is corporate communication that will outsource the specialized skills of PR.

The split between media relations and non-media is probably across most agencies 90% media and 10% non-media. At Perfect Relations we have already moved to a 70-30 phenomena. I think in the next 2 years, it will go down to 60 -40 ratio.

In general, there is no doubt, that for example, the perception for Disinvestments for Government, was created by a process, where today Disinvestment is seen as a fundamental part of the government. So, therefore its perception, the reality is that it hasn't got enough money and enough sales have not happened. But it is still the big buzzword in Government's list of success, part of that was achieved by communication and by image management.

By communicating governments objectives, if they are real. If they are not real we ask the government to get real objectives.