Financial Times

Shining a new light on PR

By Robert Ingall

The job of public relations should be about getting inside the head of clients and customer to understand both sides of the equation to ensure the right information gets across, according to Jim Dowling, Director – Strategy and Planning Asia Pacific, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide.

Jim Dowling

His visit here was in the form of an invitation, to see first hand what was happening in the country and to hear from clients thoughts on the strategies being offered, especially to meet representatives of one of the company’s biggest clients, Unilever – a multinational conglomerate – to find out if business was moving in the right direction.

As for what his job entails, “I try to help out. I look at the work coming out of each company. I look to move PR on by working with newspapers and magazines, interested readers and clients to ensure that what is being produced matches what people are looking for,” he told The Sunday Times FT during a brief two-day visit to Sri Lanka recently.

When it came to what constitutes good PR, Dowling said that first was getting people to understand the difference between PR and advertising: where the latter just tries to sell a product while PR has the job of broadcasting a message that people trust. “It means finding out the reason why a person wants to buy a particular product. It’s not just because the ad looks good. For most people when they want to buy something they talk to friends about it; they want to get on the Internet to see what sites there have to say; they want to look at consumer magazines to see what the experts say; even these days accessing the blogs that harp on that particular product. Just trying to persuade a person to buy something by sending a press release to a load of newspapers is boring and out of date,” Dowling said.

“Today, PR is all about understanding what goes on inside a consumer’s head; what makes them tick.”

Here an example was given concerning Dove, a beauty product aimed at women. For most of its shelf life the product had been sold with testimonial ads. The ads featured the classic accepted method of having a model-thin beauty using the soap to prove that it works.

“It was about ‘defining’ what beauty was perceived to be, say, in the US. But of course this is not the real image. The product should also appeal to those that are not anywhere near the perceived image as well, be they overweight or plain. A campaign was put together to say that whatever your size or features, you too can feel pretty. The result was debate; on the TV and the press when the campaign came out,” Dowling said, adding that here there was no need to “sell” the product to the people; it was being widely discussed with relatively minimum input.

The campaign was reworked in Asia to the same results, where long hair is perceived as a characteristic of beauty. Here people in the street were shown women with short hair and asked, boy or babe? “It was letting the people make the choice and again the discussion became big news in the various media outlets.”

What Ogilvy was succeeding in doing was offering these events, with TV, where the public could get involved, “thus leaving a lasting impression”.

What the Englishman instilled was that brands had to be looked at to ensure that they weren’t overdone in hype and glitz as can happen in launches, where those attending get so entertained they forget what the event was intended to introduce.“A way of using such launches is to get a known band and invite 50 people to a one-off concert. The feedback you get from such an event doesn’t cost over the initial expense but it drives talk about the product,” Dowling continued.

As for why Ogilvy is different to other companies in the same business, Dowling said that one reason was all aspects of what the company offers is under one roof, as in the PR, the advertising people, the networkers, the direct marketers, all working together to make things happen.

Then there was also the fact that the company is the biggest agency in the Asia-Pacific region, (700 staff in 15 countries) so that the best talent can be harnessed from India to Japan to work on a particular branding.

“Also we have trusted advisors who get to the heart of the matter with the clients, where every step of the way is discussed; where effort is put in to ensure the mood is right between the two parties. We should be working as one,” the strategy and planning director said.

For Sri Lanka, with Ogilvy Outreach just celebrating its seventh year in business, Dowling said he was here to share his knowledge and experience in the time he had. And those wanting to get into the business? “You need people who can make sense of what’s going on, what is wanted; to be able to get inside the brain of both the client and the consumer. A person needs to be inquisitive; be naturally curious; be hungry; as well as being full of ideas,” he said.

What was also needed these days was to be aware of the Internet and how it’s used and what is on it. “Blogs are something that people in our business have to be acutely aware of.”

As an example he uses a certain British company that sold its locks as being unbreakable. In the days before the Internet explosion, if someone managed to break one it was difficult to get the news to travel far. As a result the lock company offered silly money back if one of their locks was breached.

Not too long ago a guy used a ball-point pen to open one, videos the process and attached it to his blog, offering the world to claim the company’s reward. It seems the company changed track rather quickly.

“These days you have to be aware of the Internet so that you cover the unknown as best you can,” Dowling said. Of course with the present limited access to such software in Sri Lanka, such worries aren’t top of the list but they should be taken seriously.

“Being in PR means you have to keep up with all the trends. It’s a job you never stop learning on. There is so much knowledge out there that you have to try to keep up.”

For the regular complaints that the press releases sent to newspapers and the like, that they are badly written and full of adjectives, Dowling said this is where PR companies need to be more in tune with the papers and magazines they are sending them to. “In a perfect world a press release should be written in the way that a particular print media will want. Again it goes back to talking and understanding individual needs,” he said.

As for Dowling himself, he’s been in the profession for 10 year and after working in England, moved to Ogilvy in Hong Kong in May 2005.

Taking PR beyond the press release

Sri Lankan companies and institutions have employed PR historically, but often PR is only used to issue company media releases at times of celebration or in moments of crisis. PR was the tool to inform the public of the company’s position or point of view under duress, nothing more, according to a statement from Cameron Pale & Medina (CPM).

“Although many companies around the world still continue to hold this opinion, Public Relations today definitely encompasses much more than the traditional press release,” said Lucie Rerichova, formerly of Best Communications, a PR company in Prague, in the Czech Republic worked as PR Communications Executive at CPM which is claimed to be the most sought after PR communications partner in Colombo.

CPM, which commenced operations 10 years ago, says some of its biggest PR successes came only in the last couple of years, noticeably after the company was selected by the Sri Lanka Export Development Board, for a critical launch in India.

Commissioned by the EDB in 2004 to handle the launch of Sri Lanka’s first ever export gateway – the Sri Lanka Trade Centre in Chennai, India, CPM has seen its fortunes and reputation rise. Its reputation has gained more shine on the back of several other successes in integrated communications carried out by this progressive communications agency. It is, however, for the runaway success of Orange, a brand that was forged out of the biggest crisis faced by Sri Lankan light engineering industry, that Cameron is currently enjoying its reputation as “the agency” for companies aiming the market leader crown, the company said.

Jayantha Sittampalam, the creative head who founded the company and now also leads the strategic planning function, explained, “Orient Holdings, who makes Orange, was initially looking for crisis management from Cameron. But the strategic solution and the most logical business initiative were to go beyond the crisis and plan for the best-case scenario.

That’s what we did – set our sights on achieving the ideal solution – which in this case was wrenching market leadership from the established brand. We did better than we had imagined in our wildest dreams,” he said.

“We had our own communications personnel visiting dealers, distributors and other channel partners. We had events and made presentations to other important influencers such as architects, contractors and electricians. We used indirect communications as our main weapon of attrition,” recalls Ananda Rajapakse, then CEO of Cameron PR and the key player and leader of the Orange crisis management team who later joined Orange Electric as its first CEO.

Cameron currently handles the public relations and activations of the Dulux Child Protection Trust of CIC Paints (Pvt) Ltd; others amongst their prestigious client portfolio are Associated Motorways Ltd, Darley Butler, CBNsat, and Shell Gas.

Majority of US media manufactures consent

Today you needn’t be a Noam Chomsky to say the United States media “manufactures consent”. The fourth estate in the world’s most powerful state has got egg on its face again.

The UK-based media and public relations firm PR Week interviewed senior marketing executives in the US recently and 50 per cent of them reported paying for an editorial or broadcast placement. Almost half of those who hadn’t, said they would do so in future.

The fourth annual PR Week/ Manning Selvage & Lee (MS&L) marketing management survey, which polled 266 US chief marketing officers, marketing VP’s and marketing directors, focused on integrated marketing, the rise of new media and industry ethics.

“The question of editorial credibility is as critical for the future of public relations professionals as it is for consumers and the media,” said Mark Hass, CEO MS&L.

“If people with big marketing budgets think they can buy a story, it rubs against the very premise of earned media, the notion that there is an objective brain filtering the information. The bottomline is that no reputable marketer should pay for a news placement. It must be earned,” he added.

The importance of maintaining a clear distinction between paid and unpaid media coverage has got considerable attention in the United States recently. Last year, Armstrong Williams, the conservative commentator and columnist, was heavily criticised for using his television show to promote the US Education Department’s “No Child Left Behind” Act, without disclosing he was being paid to do so.

The US government has also been under fire for its deceptive use of video news releases. Most recently, it was accused of conducting broad-scale payoffs to Iraqi media for favourable US coverage.

(Down to Earth Magazine, July 2006)

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