Director , Integral PR Services Pvt Ltd

With its focus on the crisis management, Ashok Kapoor, Director, Integral PR
feels being on the ground, being in the midst of the issues, and serving
clients agenda is the key to empowering people in taking the right call for
action.

With 11 offices in India, manned by professionals from marketing, journalism
and advertising, in addition to PR professionals, Integral PR is spreading
it reach.

Integral has client list, which includes Coca-Cola, Bacardi, General Motors
India, Electrolux Kelvinator Ltd., DLF Universal and Metlife India.

Integral, as we evolved out of certain requirement, the focus was the crisis management factor, which I think has been a basis, which we always came across all our clients. May be with the kind of experience we had, and with the genre of the company put together with these sort of people in the company, a level of expertise tends to get created. And that I think manifested itself in the work we did, Coca-Cola a crisis issue, Bacardi again a crisis issue, and we are all aware where Bacardi is today. If you try to recollect there were no advertisements of Bacardi coming till two years back. So, the scope of activity of turning that concept around in this country, was the task that had been given to us.

Bacardi as we all are aware about and as the history goes, it's the rum segment that we are talking about. And Rum in this country, had a very defined picture, it was known as a dark coloured liquid for the strong men in the country. And Bacardi brought in a new concept it was white rum, and they gave a feminine touch to it. So, that's where we worked upon putting the message and concept together to turn that thinking around. It took us almost one and a half years of continuous exercise on a national basis.

I think everything comes back to the kind of deliverable the company has. And we have a whole team of people on the ground at 11 offices in the country. And that's why if we felt something of what we are capable of doing, we have got a history sheet behind us to prove that we have done something. And we will continue to push same quality of deliverables.

I think values and ethics in this profession are most important. As long as the industry is growing the onus is upon the participants of the industry to actually create those values and ethics. But I think the biggest values and ethics factor behind the PR companies is the authenticity of information.

Before we go into the future lets go back to the history, in this country public relations meant PROs. And if we go back and define their roles, they were doing all sorts of things. They were their spokespersons, they were their managers, they were their coordinators, they were their people on the ground, always there as a 'face' of the company. Now PR plays a much larger role and media relations is the focus, as that's the messaging center, on which one has to rely upon. But, 'yes' as a PR company as we usually do for our clients all the time, is a lot many activities, where we are ensuring our clients success ratio. It could be a little away, we can call them non-media activities, but they are all part of the PR services, that should be provided to the client because they are important for the clients success.

Press release is our basic tool, so lets say its going to stay. On the questions of changing relationship then relationship has already changed.

A successful event, will not be known to you if you don't have the right messaging. Why is an event or promotion conducted, it is done with a very specific purpose, where you might have people numbering from 100 to may be 5000. And as we say at the end of the day its about providing support to marketing, PR today is a well defined activity. So, it complements other activities.