VoiceTAP (what’s VoiceTAP?) expert for the call on Public Relations as a career was Garima Punia, who used to work with the public relations agency Text 100 (a technology-sector focussed public relations company) before starting off on her own company. (Her husband Karan Punia still works with Text 100.)
Listen to VoiceTAP Public Relations as a career call by clicking here
Public Relations in a nutshell
Public relations (better known as PR) is a discipline within marketing, and closely with advertising. “The job of PR is to inspire trust”, says Garima Punia. The basic principles of PR are awareness generation (stakeholders should be aware of the company), education of stakeholders (telling the stakeholders more about the company), and relationship development (maintaining fruitful relations with the stakeholders) – all of this together is called reputation management. ‘Stakeholders’ can mean employees, customers, partners, analysts, the industry at large, government, et al.
Specialist degrees / courses do exist (Indian Institute of Mass Communication has one) but this not a prerequisite to get into the field. If it’s possible, you can showcase some of your work like someone wanting to get into advertising would do using portfolios. You need to show that you have good comprehension / communication skills; writing a 500-800 word article on why the company should hire you can be an excellent way of showing this. Otherwise, you can always call up the HR manager of a company (keep your CV ready) and join in.
When you join in, you start off as trainee. Generally, you stay in this role for around a year. You are expected to undertake basic support roles and get enough of an exposure to stand on your own when you’re promoted to a junior / senior executive after a year. As an executive you will be drafting press releases, staying touch with the media to get your client coverage, getting speaker slots for your client at industry events, etc. This role typically lasts for 1-4 years, after which you are promoted to the level of a manager. A manager is the first point of contact for any client – you’ll be developing PR plans for a client based on their requirements and making sure those requirements are met. Beyond that you can either take up a senior consulting role for your agency, become a regional head or take on the role of a director, whose task is to do strategic consultancy.
Crossing over to marketing is always an option that you have. Another option that you can exercise is to leave an agency after you have a few years of experience under your belt and move over to the corporate side. If you do this leaving a director-level role in PR firm then you could be taken in as head of corporate affairs for a company – a role considered to be among the top echelons of management.
Within public relations there are many fields, but for those who are starting off with their careers, they would be advised to take up media communication – by far the biggest sector within PR. It’s the oldest PR path, and involves interfacing with traditional media such as print, television, online media outlets of print / television etc. Once you’re in and have worked for a few years, you can think of going into specialist fields such as social media (handling ‘new age’ mediums like blogs, Twitter; managing blogosphere relationships), employee communication (getting the company’s ethos out to its own employees), analyst lobbying (maintaining the image of the company amongst analysts), and government affairs (interacting with the government for the company’s affairs). PR firms specialising in particular domains also exist (PR firms focussing on technology-related matters, for instance) and this is where knowledge of a domain comes handy, if you’re coming into the role from a degree in science or engineering.
Bottom Line
Public relations is at a nascent stage in India right now, but it’s close to a tipping point for massive growth. A lot of foreign investment is flowing into this field. PR might not exceed advertising in the amount of expenditure but it might soon exceed it in strategic value. Those who are thinking about working in the marketing sector, but in a field which offers more opportunities for growth can think of taking up public relations as a career.
Further Reading
- Indian PR firms: There are many public relation firms in India. Some of the major ones are Text 100, Genesis, IPAN, Ogilvy & Mather, and Weber Shandwick.
- India PR Blog: Blog on the Indian PR scene written by experts in the domain. It’s extremely popular – with 5000+ followers on Twitter too!
- exchange4media PR Watch: exchange4media is a well-known outlet to keep track of advertising news, plus it also has this section on public relations.
- India PRwire: An online press release distribution site focussed on India. Browse around to see what a press release actually looks like, and how PR agencies try to communicate a client’s strategy across to stakeholders.
PS – VoiceTAP is going to do a call soon on taking up MBA as a postgraduate degree. If yould take some time out and leave your response for this quick poll below, that would be really nice.
