Christopher Graves, President and CEO, Asia Pacific, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide

Christopher Graves, President and CEO, Asia Pacific, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide had been a business journalist for 23 years before he decided to switch over to PR. He brings to board a balanced perspective on the changes, trends and challenges that pubic relations is facing and adopting across Europe, Asia and India.

Graves joined Ogilvy in January 2005. He had spent the last 18 years of his life as journalist with Dow Jones on both the editorial and business sides. He was one of the founders of Wall Street Journal Television, Managing Editor of Asia Business News (ABN), Vice-president of News and Programming for CNBC Asia, Vice-president of News and Programming for CNBC Europe, Managing Director of Business Development (EMEA and Asia) for Dow Jones Consumer Electronic Publishing (WSJ.com), and Managing Director of Far Eastern Economic Review.

In this interview with exchange4media’s Tuhina Anand, Graves shares his views on the various issues faced by the PR industry today, the challenges ahead. He also discusses in detail about the manpower crunch and the steps Ogilvy PR is taking to overcome it.

Q. How do you propose to reach these goals?

We do this throughout the world in two ways. The first is through organic growth, which means we bring in people who know what they are talking about into the company. You can’t just re-label people as experts, particularly in healthcare and financial PR. It’s a specialised area, we bring in people, hire people, find people and transfer people. Secondly, we acquire. In the Asia Pacific, where we are the fastest growing, we will be doing both organic growth and acquisitions in order to beef up those areas. India today fits in not as one of the top 3-4 among our network in terms of revenues, our top ones are Mainland China, Australia and then you get into a whole tier below that. They are way above in terms of magnitude; growth rate wise India comes up close to China.

Potential? I think in a five-year period, India will grow four to five times. It’s quite a substantial growth. If you look at incremental growth, let’s be very realistic and say we will certainly double that in five years and not just through organic but also through acquisition, probably grow four times in five years. We are always looking for acquisition in every market; we have done five in Australia, a couple in Japan. In India there are a small number of them I would love to be with and there are a large number of options and certainly I am looking at those. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I weren’t looking at those.

Q. Do you think for a smaller agency to survive, the only way ahead is to morph into a bigger network?

No, I don’t think so. Morphing into a network gives certain advantages for certain kinds of clients, to be specific, we have clients such as Nokia, Microsoft, IBM or UPS who are big multi-market clients that demand huge coverage and whole range of expertise. However, if you have a niche specialist you could survive and thrive without being with any giant company. I think what is happening now is the notion that you can be broadly based and serve everybody under the same banner would be difficult.

I think differentiation in mature markets becomes important. So, you either have to sub-divide if you are very big – as we have done – so, we have an Ogilvy Financial or Ogilvy Health rather than just Ogilvy. You need to do that if you are big and broad, if you are small and boutique and that’s all you do then you have already differentiated. You may have many suitors, but you don’t necessarily have to accept them.

Q. You had said earlier that you would be looking at having on board experts, but it’s a fact that there is a talent crunch and not just in India. So how do you think PR agencies can attract the best of talent?

I think one of the things PR agencies are doing more and more is to get people from outside the PR world and they are doing it quite successfully, I am one. How to get them? Well, you pay them well. You have to treat them well and this is where network does have an advantage. We do something like a global work dissertation where we take our best and the brightest even if it’s for few weeks at a time as a way of retention and upgrading skills. We also have training programmes, which are kind of career development that you would not have in a smaller organisation. What we don’t want to offer is bureaucracy and we don’t want to be slow and painful, but need to be fast moving and nimble. That means we offer huge amount of autonomy to our country heads to run their local businesses in a local fashion wherever they need to.

Q. What would be the focus of Ogilvy PR for the next five years specifically in India?

Since India does not sit completely on its own and is part of our network, we can’t talk of India by alienating our other network countries. Having said that let me elaborate that every single country is in different stage of growth, development and re-investment and this will fit back into India. But over arching the entire network, our goals are to continue to raise the quality of people, which we do through massive internal training, teaching and other development activities. We have our in-house talent development team. We conduct workshops every year where we focus on growth specialisation by doing forward analysis of 10 years. We look at country wise growth chart and project where they are headed and try to reach there now. Last year, we brought all our country heads together where we zeroed upon areas that need focus – financial PR, healthcare and digital influence, which includes blogs, pod casting and social media. Third is to leverage our geographical network in a 360-degree angle because we have an advertising agency and presence on the Internet. If you look at healthcare and financial PR, those are the two real goals for us to beef up in India.

Q. You’ve spent close to 23 years in journalism, how does it feel to be on the other side of the table?

Yes, I have been in journalism for 23 years, in three media fields and in three different continents. I came to a point where being in the same company for 18 years and same industry for 23 years, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t compare the offers as none of them were in the traditional industry that I was in. Miles Young, Chairman, Asia Pacific of Ogilvy & Mather, asked me if I would consider joining them. In 48 hours I was up in Shanghai and the decision was made. While it sounds impulsive, it was perfectly right, the timing was fantastic, where I was looking for a change and get into something which would stretch me where I wouldn’t feel so comfortable.

Having been part of the TV network, published a magazine and Wall Street Journal online, all this while I never felt scared. You could throw me in journalism and I was confident to the point of arrogance, I had been there, done that. But how do you run Asia’s largest communications network with no prior experience? That gives you a bit of an adrenalin rush and makes you feel alive all over again. It has been great because it’s not about arrogance or machismo, but Ogilvy is like a cult of David Ogilvy and in that I found that it is one of the few places with deep corporate culture. Everybody at Ogilvy asks his or her peer for help, which is completely different from what we are used to. Also you get to deal with an array of issues, which is phenomenal. You think PR people try to sell you stories where there aren’t any and block your access when you need something. Now that I have lived and seen the dynamics, I owe the entire industry an apology for arrogance in the past for being a journalist and a huge respect for what PR professionals are faced with and how they deal with that.

Q. So how do you attract talent?

You lure talent and lure them in a fashion you would anyone in this world, they got to feel great, pay them well and offer opportunities, offer scenery change and things they can’t get from the present one. Part of it is whether they view what we do as interesting, it’s a matter of how we portray we are. That is the problem, in many markets PR is viewed as press relations only, cheap arms and legs, dumping ground. Quite frankly, in some markets it’s not a well thought of occupation.

Q. PR is usually thought to be press releases, what are the other tools to be brought to leverage the standard of PR?

Ogilvy’s trademark is insight, ideas and influence. What we mean is that you develop an insight which is difficult to arrive at. It’s kind of an ‘Eureka!’ sort of moment. What we do is that WPP also owns research firms like Research International. I worked very closely with them on a project for the Dove campaign for real beauty, real women. Instead of beginning with a campaign, we started with research on women’s self esteem what they felt towards their own bodies, daughters, media, and cosmetic surgery. PR can use research to develop insight.

Second is to develop new ways of story telling, which has moved dramatically away from traditional formats, yet a great story is a great story. I hold workshops with my staff on mastering storytelling. Because of lack of attention span and fragmentation in media, it is imperative to understand the tools of modern story telling. It means education, both internally and externally, in terms of new media, which we do.

Q. What ails the PR industry in India today?

The same that ails the PR industry in many markets in most countries around the world. I do a monthly finger on the pulse for every country in the Asia Pacific and I ask them what’s tough, what are you guys worried about? The reply is talent, finding them and retaining them. The fact is, in a fast growing economy – be it India or China or the years when the US was coming out of recession – it’s tough to retain people who have a pent up desire to advance and make a whole lot of money. Couple that with the fact that in emerging markets if you work with Ogilvy and it’s like going to Harvard or the greatest of Indian institutes, it’s like getting an approval and also a way to double their pay somewhere else. Then we have boomerangs, people do that and then people who come back to us. Also another issue is to convince clients of true value of strategic PR.

Q. How does Ogilvy PR differentiate itself in terms of its offering and leveraging the standard of PR?

We have a group called 360 Digital Influence specialising in social media. We also offer very high-level counseling. You have to earn the right to do that, you can’t just say I will do very high level counseling, introduce me to your CEO. They will not trust you. They have to come and see case by case what you have done for others and then it does work. It’s really across the board, it’s helping them differentiate, helping them in crisis management, every company has a crisis no matter how well run they are. It’s not about covering up but about preempting crisis, handling one that you have got and mitigating them. Crisis management is a big part of PR before there is a crisis. We have something called Brand Shield, which is a process we go through with our clients way before we have a crisis. It includes all around crisis preparedness, crisis communication and crisis management.

Then there is the internal communications about which people don’t think about ever. Before you go and convince the entire world you have a great brand, if your employees don’t believe it, it will never work. We are finding a huge opportunity and have acquired a company that specialises in that; we just can’t do it on our own. There is a set of tools and communications that is required for this. There are a bunch of ways where PR can go beyond just press relations. In some ways it’s also anti-press relations, if you are doing crisis management you don’t want too much coverage for it.