PR is increasingly critical to new ventures

Few weeks back, I was surfing the net and stumbled onto a report published based on a survey with hundreds of new ventures about what they see as important for building their brand and which area they regret not having spent adequate time, effort and resources. The resounding answer was – Public Relations (pat yourself if you guessed it right!).

I must also mention here a remark made by Al Ries that if only all these dotcoms had invested in PR instead of huge advertising they would have been much better off. Believe me, I am not just trumpeting about Public Relations or overdoing it.

To me, the Indian scenario is no different and I feel that it is time most new ventures spare adequate time and focus on the role of PR in building visibility for their product/service. Before any of you jump into conclusions, let me clarify. I am not saying hire an agency, do an overdose of media relations, get yourself splashed across publications and remain content with that. I would like to exhort the management of these ventures to go beyond media relations and use PR as a strategic resource with medical relations as one important tool.

First, define your values, culture, vision and mission. Then create an identity comprising your logo, baseline etc. in alignment with this vision. If you can afford, hire an agency early and get the team to work on these and refine it. Once these are done, ask them to frame key messages based on these materials and spend time, fine-tuning and finalizing it. Only after this blueprint is ready get into actual planning and tactics that you will employ on the ground. To me rushing into a launch press conference without going through this process is like putting the cart before the bullock.

As an example, I could cite the example of Yahoo! Which hired a PR firm much before it was launched formally with amazing results – landing on the covers of leading publications in the US. Closer home, I vividly remember the experience when working with the core team of Fabmart during their launch. Sudhakar who founded Fabmart, spent hours talking about their vision, how they started, their core values and what they are expecting out of PR. The process helped in proper execution of the launch without compromising on tactical results.

Coming back to the point of criticality of PR, let me try and put it in perspective. When you have the team, capital, resources and the right idea, success boils down to two things – execution and building competitive barriers. PR, if carried out properly out properly helps with the latter by giving you a profile and positioning which is often a significant barrier in these competitive times. Someone else can replicate the model, the idea, but the credible equity you have built-up, certainly they cannot. The more powerful that equity is, the more difficult for competition to match and overcome it.

Come to think of it, how much would it take for anyone to replicate the Yahoo! Model? A few millions probably. But to replicate the equity and recognition it commands, well, therein lies the answer. Will meet you all again in the next issue with something more to chew