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Corporate communications is about building corporate brands. It’s a specialized area. The analogy I would use is that the way you take care of a fruit is different from the way you take care of a tree that bears fruits. If you understand corporate brands as parent presences, you will accept that designing communication for them is also different.
Median Communications is one of the first Corporate Communication firms – as against PR agencies firms -- in South India, maybe even in India. It began operations in 1998. What started off as a creative shop today specializes in corporate communications and corporate brands, encompassing areas like content writing and design. It still comprises a small core creative team of five. Operating from two design studios and a corporate office in Chennai, it handles the corporate communication needs for several clients, but does not involve itself in the media relations function that one readily associates with Public Relations today.
Joseph Fernandes is the Chief Executive of Median Communications. He started his career with Chennai-based Aside Publications in 1991 where he was Sub-editor, and moved to Cardiff University in 1994 to pursue a Masters in Journalism Studies. On his return he joined ad agency Goldwire Communications. He has written a book, ‘Corporate Communications – A 21st Century Primer’, published in September 2004. Gokul Krishnamurthy of exchange4media spoke to Fernandes on Median Communications, and the business of Corporate Communications. Excerpts:
Q. Which are the growth areas for Median?
We see the teaching and workshops segment as a positive direction in the future. There are a lot of BPOs and ITES companies besides IT companies contacting us.
Q. Do you offer corporate advertising as part of your services?
It is a part of the work we do.
Q. How much of the work you do is from your core – corporate branding practice?
I would say 90 per cent of our work is from the corporate identity programmes. I am talking of cases where we’re sitting with the clients before the company is formed. We help shape ideas from stage zero. The remaining 10 per cent comes from one-off jobs.
Q. Given the larger canvas, is your mode of working also different from that of agencies?
In many cases, we establish people within the company – an in-house person – for a better understanding of clients. There is a high degree of confidentiality and a lot of the stuff we do has also been with the government and other stakeholder units, including liaison. Of course, there are overlapping areas of work between us and those agencies working on clients’ brands, but largely, we take forward agendas of corporate branding.
At no point are we saying that this is the only solution you will need. But it is a specialized function. Broadly, it doesn’t matter what the person is called – a brand manager within the organization, the PR agency person or the ad agency person – as long as you can understand what the management seeks to achieve and communicate that, you are engaged in corporate communication.
Q. What kind of people do you employ?
As a creative team, my experience has been that you can train a handful of people, but it cannot become a mass area. People ask if we have branches. I didn’t find that possible given the nature of work we do. I am not saying that it won’t happen in future.
Because we deal with CEOs and the senior management, education, experience and expertise come into play. You need to tune in. Remember that corporate communication is an internal function. It’s living in the stratosphere and beyond. It is not just the marketing function we address.
Q. How appreciative are clients of your concept of corporate communication as you practise it?
There is a lack of understanding and this makes things a lot more difficult for us. People ask us if we are an ad agency or a PR agency. The first reaction anyone would have is that corporate communication is another jargon floating around. When someone realizes that the principle behind corporate communication is CEO speak, and this is the agency for translating that into communication, the perception changes completely.
Q. What is the differentiating factor at Median? Why should a client come to you and not go to an advertising or PR agency?
Corporate communications is about building corporate brands. It’s a specialized area. The analogy I would use is that the way you take care of a fruit is different from the way you take care of a tree that bears fruits. If you understand corporate brands as parent presences, you will accept that designing communication for them is also different.
We understand how brands grow from the start-up stage. Areas like corporate identity are things that people would look at as an extension of what they do. We believe that one needs to look at it differently. I have worked in ad agencies. Typically, what happens is that the agencies are called in to work for a brand that is being launched in the market or just before it is launched. Corporate brand building is not something that is top priority for many agencies. It is a very specific task.
Q. So your services are not marketing led?
It is really about understanding the CEO or the founding team’s thoughts and translating what they have in mind. I am not saying that we don’t do marketing specific activities. For instance, when Kinley came down to Chennai, we handled a lot of the marketing communication around the launch.
Q. So who is the competition?
We don’t have any competition per se. There will be ad agencies and PR agencies pitching for the same businesses we pitch for. But there are no known corporate communication agencies like ours.
Q. You set shop in 1998. In your experience, has this understanding evolved over the years?
We believe corporate communication is a management function. A traditional PR or Brand Manager never sat in a board meeting. That doesn’t happen anymore. That person is a Vice-President, Corporate Communications, and he is making decisions on what needs to be done, and not told what to do.
Q. Any comments on PR as it is practised today?
PR agencies need to wake up to the realities of the market. The Indian entrepreneurial mindset looks at quick results. He is going to look at an equitable relationship between media relations and coverage and market shares. PR professionals need to make themselves more market oriented. They need to help partners achieve market results and not just media space.
Q. How do you plan to grow from here?
Median was a response at a particular time. Since then it has evolved a lot, and we also want to see what happens next. It is a little early to say what course we’ll take from here. I can only speak for the signpost I see today. I feel that corporate branding will emerge in a big way in the future. Brand value has to replace goodwill on balance sheets. When that comes to India, corporate communication will come into prominence.
Content for corporate brands is another area for growth. Right now, we are bang in the middle of seven or eight projects. We are setting up a new team for Brand Content over the next month or two. Companies are telling us that they need specialized content generation. Working without an understanding of corporate brands is like going through life without knowing the secrets of a good life. It cramps the corporate’s growth – no one is able to put a finger on what is happening.
Q. Have you handled any international assignments?
We’ve worked with companies going international from India, and also the other way round. For instance, we worked with Campus Abroad when they set up office in Mauritius and also worked with them on their affiliate office in Los Angeles. On companies coming to India, we worked extensively with a multinational IT company setting up shop here.
Culturally, there is tons of stuff built in that you need to be aware of in a foreign market, especially one like India. We have found ourselves dealing with many companies on such issues. We are at our best when the entire process starts off.
Q. You core team consists of just five people. Doesn’t that limit your output?
That is the core team, and for the kind of work we are doing now, five is a good number. Whatever clients we have is following years of understanding of how branding works. We don’t want to franchise something that needs so much involvement. We are working on a client from Northern England and we find that because the team is small, the response time is fast.
Q. Have you ever tried media relations?
We have organized media conferences where necessary. We scripted a production for the Hot Shoe Dance Company and invited 33 different media and created 33 customized press releases! People came to us after that and said ‘Do what you did for Hot Shoe Dance Company. But that is not what we set out to be. It could have been lucrative but that wasn’t the focus.