'Brands need to be purposeful at the confluence of societal needs & brand promise'

As we step into 2022 and look forward to it as a year full of hope and possibilities, e4m PR and Corp Comm presents the “Year-ender story of 2021” series with the theme 'The possibilities that the new year holds for PR agencies and the way ahead'. The series encompasses the views, opinions and thoughts of some of the leading names and veterans of the PR and Corp Comm fraternity on how they perceive the New Year, the transitions they expect to see, and their vision for the future.

In this interview, Pranav Kumar, Managing Director, Allison + Partners India, elaborates in detail the top-line trends of the coming year and how brands need to be increasingly purposeful sitting at the confluence of societal needs and brand promise.

Excerpts from the interview:

How important has the trend of personalised pitches become for the PR industry? 

I would not call it a trend but more like par for the course. As PR practitioners, our strengths lie in engagement for which relevance is a prerequisite. That means knowing your client’s business well, unearthing insights, and then carefully researching the right journalist and publication or platform. At Allison+Partners, we use a finely-honed approach which we call  ‘Tap In’ that helps our clients lean into pivotal trends or moments to join the conversation and position their unique points-of-views. This approach stems from our philosophy that brands today live at the intersection of culture and commerce and that means being a part of conversations that matter as a part of our earned media relations playbook.

Artificial Intelligence is the future - irrespective of industries. What are the ways AI can come to the aid of PR and Corp Communication professionals in 2022?

As we know, AI is built on a foundational layer of not just data but good data i.e. data with high integrity. So understanding data, what we collect, and how we use it is key. AI will evolve the analytics and measurement platforms we are already using, straddling across areas such as sentiment, tonality and measurement. In an ideal scenario, as an industry, we want to be in a place where we are helping clients using AI-driven insights in more specific areas such as; how do earned media mentions translate into shortening the purchase cycle and where consumers make informed decisions faster or simply put, how are PR campaigns being able to predict specific business and sales outcomes.

What are the trends the Indian PR and Corporate Communications industry can look forward to/ expect in 2022?

2021 showed us how resilient communications as a function is to businesses. The PR industry overall demonstrated agility by helping brands navigate a disrupted environment where it was important, more than ever, to showcase authenticity, being purposeful, and yet balancing those objectives with a corporate and brand reputation in order to accomplish such business objectives as brand building or increasing market share compulsions. I expect that 2022 will be no different with the lines between marketing and communications blurring even more. Some of the top-line trends will be: increasing focus on sponsored content marketing and amplification, building compelling digital experiences as traditional forms of engagement dissipate, and, finally, to PR driving increased social media engagement (increasingly intruding the turf digital agencies have traditionally held on to given our intrinsic skills in engagement, content and messaging).

According to industry experts, environmental, social, and corporate governance would continue to grow. In what ways will socially-conscious initiatives continue to drive campaigns and outreach programmes in 2022?

Brands need to be increasingly purposeful sitting at the confluence of societal needs and brand promise. PR can help brands by driving purpose-driven programmes that inspire brand loyalty by helping shape their narrative on the positive impact brands have on individuals and communities at large. To this end, communications play a pivotal role in helping organisations shape their narratives on the societal issues a brand seeks to address, helping develop point-of-views and help in mobilising action by building engagement with key constituents and showcasing measurable ESG impact.

How did you cope with the second wave of the pandemic? What were the challenges you had to overcome?

The second wave was a challenging time like no other and our thoughts and prayers go out to all those who were impacted by it or lost loved ones. We can only hope that the pandemic ebbs away in the not too distant future.

As it was with the first lockdown, we hunkered down, switching back to working from home. Our talent and culture teams were quick to realise how hard our teams were at work simultaneously managing life at home or caring for their families. Wellness is a priority and our teams expediently rolled out a slew of initiatives to ensure that people were carving out time to make self-care a priority. Other than engaging with team members on a weekly basis to check-in on them, we rolled out complimentary subscriptions of the wellness and meditation App  ‘Calm’ encouraging our A+P’ers to take out some ‘me time’. The pandemic, in many ways, made us all grateful for all that we have in our lives from our family members to the simpler things in life. Allison+Partners’ culture teams also ran a series of global ‘gratitude weeks’ that encourage people to self-reflect, find their ‘blue sky’ and be grateful. As they say, gratitude is a powerful catalyst towards happiness!

To avoid overwhelm during this time, while there are multiple approaches to this, from operational and planning to cultural, the approaches are unique to every agency but for us, its largely predicated on a blend of smart planning from a people and staffing perspective, managing workloads and client expectations in as much as we can, along with placing a strong emphasis on building a culture that encourages individual and team empowerment at every level, including focussing on wellness and in taking time off.

How have the young generation / new recruits adapted to the system of working remotely? What are your views on how successful the hybrid working model will be in the coming year?

The overall work-from-home and hybrid working model is quite evolved built on agility, distributed delivery and collaboration. As an agency, that has been our mainstay even pre-pandemic, guided by what we call as the ‘The Allison Way’ that drives a set of cultural constructs within the agency that include empowering everyone to be successful at what they do, no matter where they are operating from. Ultimately it is all about the work we do for our clients. Technology and being digitally connected form the backbone of our operating philosophy and will continue to do so as work becomes increasingly geo-agnostic. That is one of the significant advantages our industry has seen in recent times. From the get-go, we have been set up to leverage technology in today’s digitally-intertwined world with tools to enable collaboration and productivity ranging from Microsoft Teams and Zoom to online collaboration platforms such as Box. In fact, we were able to seamlessly transition to a work-from-home environment with zero downtime.  

The pandemic has been a trying time for us all, especially on the psychological level. How should organisations prepare themselves for the next year?

As I mentioned earlier, the focus needs to be inculcating empathy, compassion and being mindful of the needs of individuals and teams. We will continue to invest in the mental well-being of our teams, empower them to manage their schedules as well develop a high degree of trust among one another.