For me, this is the year of gratitude: Kunal Kishore

Kunal Kishore, founder and director, Value 360 Communications, is a PR professional and an entrepreneur. He kick-started his career with e-Lexicon Corporate Communication Consultants Limited and from then, he kept on learning and growing in his professional life. He later started his own agency known as Precision PR and Media and finally in 2007, he established Value 360 Communications. During his entrepreneurial voyage, he played multiple roles as a founder – an employee, sales person, head of administration, HR manager and accountant. During his entrepreneurial journey, he played multiple roles as a founder – employee, salesperson, head of administration, HR manager and accountant.

Today, after 20 years of his incredible journey in the industry, Kishore spoke exclusively to exchange4media and shared his perspective on how the PR fraternity has evolved, his ventures – ClanConnect and Popkorn, important tools to mitigate a crisis and his future plans. 

Excerpts: 

You are one of the first generation of entrepreneurs in the PR domain. How have you seen the industry evolve over the years? 

The industry has gone through a massive change from where it started, that is, right from the basics of how we were managing communications, to complexity of what all accessibility we have today for managing brand communication with layered as well as with new directional approach. From my experience, we can also break it into four phases. 

The first phase (2003-2008), we saw the dominance of the media where it was one of the most important vehicle for brands to connect to consumers, external stakeholders or sometimes even internal stakeholders. When media dominance was there, communication was a monologue.

However, after 2008, social media gained a lot of traction among the consumers. It also provided platform to the consumers to voice their opinion on how they like a specific brand, their product, how they would want to see their brand if they (consumers) were upset with it and reach out to them through social media. It become a main stay along with the traditional media which continues to play a critical role in terms of how you connect with your different stakeholders.

From 2013-2018, we saw that as digital world gave opportunity to connect with consumers, it also provided a massive data to the brands. From 2018-2023, the most important thing that we could recollect is the whole disruption that happened in the world of working due to Covid-19. We saw emergence of various tools which were also critical at that time for connecting consumers.   

Tell us about your ventures – ClanConnect (influencer marketing startup) & Popkorn (creative digital agency). How did the idea of establishing these two germinate? 

ClanConnect is the first step where we believe that like emergence of brand communications through influencers has become an important vehicle for brands to connect with their consumers. In 2019, we realised that this trend is going to grow and become complex. ClanConnect is a tech platform which is a SaaS-enabled marketplace where creators get a lot of tool from us in terms of working as a business entrepreneur and then are able to discover creators across the geography.  

Popkorn has been a work in play for a long time. It is capable of delivering a very comprehensive solution to the brands. Today Popkorn is a creatively led digital agency which has a capability of end-to-end digital marketing solution, that is, from performance marketing to social media marketing to online reputation management (ORM) and to response management solutions. So, today with Popkorn and ClanConnect, we do feel that we have positioned ourselves as the most relevant business which is focussed on being future-ready.  

At both venture side, we have fantastic leaders to lead the same. We have Sagar who is the leading ClanConnect. He has spent more than half a decade in digital space. Coming to Popkorn, it is led by Vishal Mehra. He is a digital veteran who worked with some of the leading digital agencies before joining us.  

How PRCAI, as an entity, is promoting the PR industry on the global stage, and also what work is being done/needs to be done towards regional PR?  

At an association level, we are looking at all the stakeholders who are important for us to address. From the talent perspective, we are now going down to important academic institutes to help students to understand the opportunity that PR has to offer to these candidates. From the industry association perspective, there are a lot of initiatives that has been brought in a lot of standardisation in terms of how the industry is operating which requires different workshops and programmes. An industry should also have an element of fun, therefore, the association has come up with one of the most look forward event every year which is the cricket tournament that we organise with the agencies. It has brought a lot of team, talent and people closer to feel that they are a part of one industry. Our team also represents PRCAI at many global platforms and highlights on Indian PR industry’s scenario. We are also trying to bring in some important initiatives which will help the industry at large in India to understand and bring in right set of standardisation in terms of how they are operating. At the regional PR level, there are a lot of members from the regional PR who are a part of it. We also have regional chapter who are representing it at large.  

Initially Value 360 focussed on start-ups. How have you seen the start-up ecosystem evolve?  

When we started working on the start-ups, no other agencies looked at them. I do feel that one level of contribution that we might have done to the PR industry is to open their eyes to the opportunity that the start-ups offer. By 2021, we had 100 unicorns in the country. It is creating massive chance for different people. It also brings in right set of solutions which requires to solve a specific problem. Interim period trouble, that we see with retrenchment and job cuts, are going to be a short-term outcome. If you calculate the job opportunities startups have created, it is a small percentage of  people losing job versus the kind of options that this industry has created.  

We have recently seen a few brands suffering from a PR crisis. How important is the role of a communication professional in managing crisis when reputation is at stake and national and international bodies are involved?  

The crisis in business makes the role of PR even more important. If you look at reputation of a brand and every function that is available to you in the business, the only function that helps you to rebuild your reputation is PR. Crisis is not a one day affair. It takes many years of work to build a reputation and if it gets impacted due to a crisis, you need to start to work in terms of rebuilding it. It becomes critical to understand as to how to manage a crisis because in that case, if you are able to manage a crisis effectively, you are able to mitigate the potential losses connected with that particular name. You cannot control the flow of information today. You can control the narrative that you want to build, create a pool of people who can help you in controlling the portrayal, bring in voice of authority neutralise situation. Listen to your PR agency. Don’t try to think it’s a fire that needs to be stopped.  

As a PR professional, do you think it is wise to come to the forefront and discuss challenges or stay back behind the scene?  

When it comes to crisis, acknowledgement is a critical part as the first step. If you stay in denial, you also create another problem. Sometimes you need the crisis to be managed by the functional head. Honesty is one of the best tool in times of crisis resolution.  

How can agencies and brand custodians avert a crisis if things are beyond their control?  

I feel that any crisis today, when you look it from the time when it’s happening, might look out of control, but as you scientifically start to work on it, you will be able to mitigate and recover the reputation of the brand. We are living in a noisy world. Media is picking up what is conversational. Similarly, is then the time when you start to creating right steps of recovering your reputation loss. We cannot have defined steps for each crisis to be managed. One should see it from a long-term perspective.

What is your vision for in industry for the next 5-10 years? 

I feel we have a lot of entrepreneurs in our industry who are going to create a huge value of businesses and a good job opportunity. As the world is becoming volatile in terms of how opinions are shared on the internet, PR is going to become a main stay for any organization because that’s the only insurance cover that you have against your reputation. For group level at Value 360, my vision is to be a future-ready organisation. We also have a new venture which is to be launched in this year and will be a platform for communication industry and independent writers at large. We would want to become a group of specialist entities who are providing specialised services. For me this is the year of gratitude. We have gone through our own phases of struggle in this journey but every time we have come out stronger. In next two decades, I would want to keep working and also contributing to the industry.