Opinions of PR significance for society, business and authorities have always been differing. Businesses often do not see PR activity as their priority. Still, Public Relations is quite a flourishing business in itself. Invest Foresight discussed the development trends in PR industry and its future, a revolution in technology resulting in a revolution in PR, and the part Public Relations play in attracting investments, with Stanislav Naumov, President of Russian Public Relations Association.
– What are the most dramatic changes in the Public Relations industry over the last few years? Is the market landscape changing?
– If it is compared to the situation 5 to 7 years ago when in late 2010 I became RPRA President, there have been no drastic changes. The players that used to be in the market are still there. The main players are in corporate PR, first of all, they are large corporations with large media relations departments. Both economy in general and the private business sector in particular are becoming more open. Therefore, corporate media relations services play increasingly noticeable parts in pursuing corporate strategies.
Governance bodies are a significant sector for the PR industry, too. We all realize the unique roles of Dmitry Peskov, Presidential Press Secretary, and Natalia Timakova, Prime Minister’s Press Secretary. When answering media questions, they shape news agenda. This area of the PR industry also includes promoting initiatives which are important for the authorities, as well as daily PR support for state power bodies. It is not smooth with developing the so called Open Government, that is why its real openness is not impressive either. The next big area is the scholars, those who train the new generation of professionals for us. Over the past years we have managed to bring together the practical realities and the national standards in education.
Finally, it should be noted that due to the social media development there emerged quite a big freelancer community. The industry landscape is certainly changing, hence the changes have impact on the said PR areas. Social media, for example, ruin many habits in public communication.
– Nowadays, there are businesses which are active in PR while others are very quiet. What is the cause for that? Is it because money likes silence?
– Not at all. This is an absurd wording. There is only one even more absurd wording, money does not stink. Non olet pecunia was the saying about public toilets in Rome. That had to do something with the smell indeed. What does it mean, money likes silence? There are lots of examples when money is only made due to a consistent and transparent public stance. Generally speaking, the technologies of startups, IPOs and other business stories suggest quite the opposite, namely, to attract investments, one has to have a properly elaborated openness. I think, we see some substitution of notions here. If one is afraid of competition, one is certainly guarding one’s business secrets, but is concurrently depriving oneself of other opportunities.
– Can we say that PR significance for attracting investments is growing? Is the trend to separate PR and IR justified?
– PR significance can not grow. As any other management technology, PR exists in its own relevance cycles. When saying PR, one is referring to some set of established messages for the audience to see, hear or read. That traditional set includes media conferences, media releases, interviews with executives. Investors never ignore them these days. That is an integral and inseparable part of Investor Relations, but not of Public Relations. That is the fundamental difference.
Rules of Investor Relations are distinct from the ways of dealing with regular media – in their purpose of reputation management or implementation of some integrated communications issues when all you need is telling about some new product. All the instruments used by Public Relations have become part of Investor Relations since long. These two sectors do not promote each other and that is not possible.
If IR does not include Public Relations instruments, it is not Investor Relations at all, but something else. Any investor will collect information from various sources and compare all the different information images available. If not Public Relations, what is it then?
– Recently, demand for personal PR has been growing resulting in broader advertizing of respective services, personal consultants and coaches. How much is personal PR in demand now?
– Personal PR means you are in a center of a communications situation and that is your intention. Personal PR is not about three make-up layers on your face. It means you are personally involved in regular public communications. It means, among other things, that you spend some of your time on activities in social networks.
Media do not have any obligations whatsoever to do the correct reporting, especially to correctly report somebody’s viewpoint. Every media exists in a belief that advertisers must pay for the ads to this particular media because the media has the best suited audience. What is the media and what is the audience is irrelevant.
A person who complains about media being superficial, has no right to claim being a good manager. What do you expect? Do you expect all your words are literally reproduced by the media and that is an adequate representation of your viewpoint? Such misperceptions should be cured. It is exactly for that purpose the skills of personal public communications are required, in order to make sure there is no time wasted on warring with media. If you have a Twitter account or a Telegram channel, you can write whatever you wish and you can even do that anonymously. But you must keep in mind your words will be misinterpreted instantaneously, once they are reposted.
In my Facebook account I often have to delete some comments. Sometimes, I am surprised when I repost, say, an unoffending article from the governmental Rossiyskaya Gazeta and see a lot of comments critical of the president. But I posted that article with no intention to establish a club of Putin antagonists. Nevertheless, it may appear exactly like that, since any activity may generate certain response which will create an intricately structured communication.
– Regretfully, there are lots of adverse postings in social networks.
– True, but where else would you be able to arrange your personal PR? In a village paper or in evening news of a local town TV? Everything depends on your goals. The issue which currently concerns me is the debate battles technology. In communications terms, this format is now the broadest. Personal battles gather the largest audiences. What are the subjects of such battles? The most significant political matters. Who is the audience? The younger generations, Generation Z. How do you reach out to them if you are a PR specialist and you have a client who says, ‘I want a full range service’. You would say, great, let’s issue a media release, convene a media conference, arrange a personal interview. But your client may say, ‘No way, what I really need is a dispute battle, just like…’ – with some well known names to follow.
I believe, the personal public communications era is coming. Those communications will include all the matters which used to be PR domain. At the moment, we do not fully comprehend the scale of the Public Relations digital transformations. Bots will start communicating with each other, and at times that may be a more meaningful battle than this conversation of ours, since each of them will command a synergy of your entire knowledge and my entire expertise and be capable of committing them at the right moment.
– How will Public Relations in business sector progress? What may be a three years’ forecast?
– We witness a very significant process of shopping personalization. We now live in a global world. There is no tiny local market nearby, where local potatoes are sold, any longer. Potatoes are all produced in Latin America now and shipped all over the world.
On the other hand, everyone can use the potatoes to cook something special, something to one’s own taste, whether mash, chips or French fries. A special decoration or design may be created as well. In this respect, entire business is arranged, I think, as a B2C business model. On the one hand, it has to meet the requirements of millions or even billions of people, whereas on the other hand every customer is getting something special and individual.
In a store, there may never be found two identical slips. On the average, a slip would include milk, cream and bread, but the last item on the bill would be toothpicks in one case, and ear sticks in the other, as one buyer needs cleaning teeth, while the other ears. Hence the number of differing purchases is in billions a year. The scheme of Public Relations will have to adjust in line with such business processes. Consumption personalization will be accompanied by production quasi personalization, with the marketing focus on everything being tailor-made for you personally.
Let’s imagine you walk along a street and by a café you are offered a flyer. If you feel like helping the person, you may take a flyer and even put it in your pocket. If you do not feel like that, you will not take a flyer or through it in a bin right away. But in a few years’ time your cell phone may go flat, and the last message you see, is the information you can charge it for free in a next door café. In this case, you do not need a man giving out flyers, since you will go to that café all by yourself. While your phone is charging, you will have a cup of coffee there. Such a situation will require ensuring customer loyalty to the business. As a consumer, you will also have to become part of the public.
We may think that is fantasy, but in fact that is our daily reality. The Black Mirror series is not about tomorrow, but about last night. As a matter of fact, in terms of behavior, there is nothing in the series which is not already present in social relationships. Digital transformations are the only thing from Jules Verne’s fantasy world. A different matter is, speaking impolitely to a police officer resulting in less gas and inability to get to the airport. A situation like that may become reality now. Any car can be equipped with an alcohol detector and if driver’s outbreath is not up to the standard, the car stops and the driver has to proceed on foot.
Such innovations enforcement is inevitable, therefore one may not expect that Public Relations technologies will remain the same only because elites, including regional elites, do not see them in a different light. Who cares about that? They will have to accept the realities or be replaced by new elites.
These days, a reputation of a regional minister of healthcare may be ruined merely due to a fact that he was in a plane where he was recognized by an individual active in social networks. That individual wrote that during the flight some passenger felt bad and the plane captain asked if there was a doctor on board to help. So, the healthcare minister did not volunteer but went to sleep. In a situation like that, you may not be pursuing your personal PR goals. It will be taken care of by a passenger in the seat next to yours. In a case like that, no PR service can help. Before the plane landed, the minister’s reputation was gone. This is a good case study, a black mirror of the present-day reality. A reputation was wiped out while in flight, as the person either breached the Hippocratic oath or may not be a healthcare minister due to lack of medical education. Whatever the case, it was caused by solely a tiny post in social media.
– Do you believe PR will evolve in that direction?
– Such stories will attract ever growing attention and there will be no customary PR at all, it will grow numb. If someone is not present here, there is no point to promote one elsewhere.
This innovations enforcement mirrors the present-day policies cynicism. Some while ago there was a lot of talk about supercomputers. So concrete basements, white rooms and special buildings were constructed to make sure that even an earthquake on the other side of the globe could not shift a single computer chip. But then all of a sudden we get distributed networks, and there is a lot of talk about a new issue. It is not about the way you erect your special building, but about your chances to be allowed by countless owners of 128 or 265 MB smartphones to store some of your data flow at their personal mobile devices.
As soon as you make your technology cheap and easily available, innovation enforcement starts. To fry eggs, you only need to turn the gas on without waiting for hours until the sun heats stones.
Innovations enforcement means better living standards, as it becomes useless living in worse conditions if costs are comparable. As a rationally thinking creature, I see no point in doing that. That terminates a technological pattern in its entirety. With it, management technologies of the previous pattern are gone as well. In the new pattern, you get peer-to-peer relationships which are absolutely new. The future has already come yesterday. The one who fails to comprehend that, has no future at all. Not in the public communications, at the very least.
By Sergei Nikulin