Manoj Chandra, Head, Corporate Communications, RPG Enterprises
PR can be a wonderful complement to the marketing activities any brand manager has to undertake. In fact, some of the most successful brands were built by them using the tool of public relations rather than advertising such as The Body Shop, globally and Barista in India.
PR can be a wonderful complement to the marketing activities any brand manager has to undertake. In fact, some of the most successful brands were built by them using the tool of public relations rather than advertising such as The Body Shop, globally and Barista in India.Manoj Chandra is currently heading the corporate communications function with the US$ 1.6 billion RPG Enterprises, and is responsible for internal communications, events, advertising, media & investor relations and online services for the group.
Prior to joining RPG in May ‘02, Manoj was heading Corporate Communications with the Godrej group of companies and was instrumental in creating a public face for the group’s promoters and their products. A communications professional to the core, Manoj began his career in 1991 with Triton Marketing and later on moved in 1994 to help set up the Delhi office of Corporate Voice Shandwick.
In this session, Manoj Chandra, Head – Corporate Communications, RPG Enterprises talks to Jasmeen Dugal about the role of corporate communications in promoting a large and diversified conglomerate, the importance of image audits and how, PR as a tool, helps in reputation management. Q. Does RPG follow any set PR formula to attract different target segments like the media, institutional shareholders, individual shareholders, employees, vendors, customers and the public? Different publics have their individual information needs and have to be met accordingly. Corporate communications works with the different departments to look after this by providing specific vehicles to aid the flow of communication.
While at the global level, we have a group website – rpggroup.com – which enables a quick overview about the entire organization to a visitor, more specific communication vehicles could be in the form of analyst meets or customer newsletters which are periodically used.
Q. Has corporate communications been utilized as damage control in a crisis? Did this benefit the company and achieve the desired results? Every large organization has its share of crisis, large or small. Communications plays an important role in helping the organization to go through this phase with ease and achieve normalcy.
At RPG, we have had some of our businesses going through this phase and we have helped them by preparing the management for the media scrutiny, which follows any such incident. We had to ensure that the communication barriers were not broken and factual information was made available to the media quickly so that rumours were not reported. This helped the situation to get diffused very quickly.
Q. How does RPG measure the results of a PR campaign? PR is an ongoing process, relatively subtler than the high visibility of ad campaigns and hence difficult to quantify. However, if objectives have been clearly defined for a PR program, it is much easier to assess the impact, which could be based on the nature of media coverage, improved sales or higher employee satisfaction.
We use existing business measures to qualify the result of a PR activity. But the best feedback is of course the one given by the owner of the PR campaign, the CEO himself.
Q. Does PR compete with or complement marketing activities? Good PR is all about building image and changing perceptions. In this respect, PR never competes with any organizational activity, but complements it. It can be a wonderful complement to the marketing activities any brand manager has to undertake. In fact, some of the most successful brands were built by them using the tool of public relations rather than advertising such as The Body Shop, globally and Barista in India.
Q. How is PR different from reputation management? Reputation Management is today becoming an increasingly used buzzword amongst corporates in the global arena, especially after the debacle of megacorps like Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and many others. The role of the CEO is increasingly become subject to scrutiny and his stake in managing the reputation of his firm is becoming larger. Reputation Management is all-encompassing for an organization in today’s context.
The fortunes of big businesses are also getting tied not only to how they perform but also to how they are perceived. A good reference point to understand this impact is the AC Nielsen – ORG Marg Corporate Reputation Index. In the study announced last year, there was a clear connection between corporate performance and stakeholders’ perception. Tata Motors (earlier known as Telco) is a case in point. In the light of a Rs 500-crore loss in fiscal 2001, Tata Motor’s rankings dropped from 7 in 2000 to 12 in 2001. Following the successful showing in its passenger car sales, the company was able to improve its ranking to 8 in 2002.
Clearly, the bottom-line can make or break a reputation—but increasingly, the reverse can be true as well.
PR is the tool, which helps in reputation management. Through precise communication to the diverse publics of an organisation, it helps in building correct perceptions and shareholder satisfaction.
Q. What are some of the impediments communications managers face in India? The biggest challenge is the lack of understanding of what we do. Mostly the Indian communication person is seen as a fixer for a media article. The vital contribution that the function can make to an organization’s success is yet to be understood in a larger context of the Indian business.
Also, the highly fragmented nature of the industry is another big impediment, which is contributing to the lack of understanding about it. While the advertising industry was able to grow very quickly and was seen as a professional body, public relations still does not have enough unification. Some steps have been made in this direction such as the PRCAI, but it still has a long way to go.
What this also impacts is the growth of education facilities for this profession, which in turn affects the availability of quality manpower.
Q. Besides corporate communication, what are the other activities undertaken to build and strengthen the RPG brand? RPG is a highly people-driven organization and a lot of effort goes into inculcating the RPG culture within our employees, who are perhaps our best spokespersons. We encourage our employees to be leaders in their communities – professionals or personal.
Apart from this, RPG is deeply involved with culture. During the year, many activities are undertaken to deepen our associations in this area, such as the annual RPG art camp, where we encourage young artists.
RPG also has a large social responsibility program, wherein RPG employees contribute back to the society through personal time and effort such as the ‘Akanksha child education program’ or through contributions such as the reconstruction project of Vamka village after the Gujarat earthquake.
Sports is another avenue for brand building. Over the past nine years, CEAT has constantly been promoting cricket through its famous cricket ratings and the Annual CEAT Cricket Rating Awards are today synonymous with excellence in the game.
Q. In India, in your opinion, is the role of corporate communications going to remain in media relations or it will stretch to individual specialization? While media relations will remain as the primary role, today’s business environment is creating special areas for this function to evolve into, especially in the IT & BPO space where communications professionals are helping more in internal processes such as marketing and employee communications, and community programs.
I believe the profession would see the emergence of niche professionals based on the requirements of the emerging industries. However, the basic qualities of a communication professional would not change, namely a keen and inquistive mind, good grasping power, creative and innovative thinking, an expressive nature and a knack for making friends.
Q. RPG Enterprises has many diverse groups – Retail, IT & Communications, Entertainment, Power & Transmission, Tyres, Life Sciences and Specialties. What is the role of corporate communications in promoting such a diversified group? Which area demands the most attention? In any large and diversified conglomerate, communications is the binding force, which keeps the organization together. RPG Enterprises is composed of nearly twenty-five different entities with unique businesses and more importantly, 50,000 employees and over 5,000 managers. The involvement of corporate communications is therefore very large in keeping this heterogeneous group together. A lot of effort is on internal communications to bind the people together.
Apart from the constant process of managing the public image for the group and building its identity, corporate communications also assists the group companies in communicating about their business initiatives and addressing the needs of their target publics.
Recent efforts have been to work closely with our focus areas of growth namely – power, tyres and retail.
Q. What role does corporate communication play in organized retailing? Retail has been a pioneering area for RPG. Today we operate in four different formats, namely Foodworld (chain of supermarkets), MusicWorld (chain of music stores), Health and Glow (chain of health and beauty stores) and GIANT (chain of hypermarkets).
Being a greenfield areas for the group, as well as, a new industry, communication’s role was not only in building the brands but also in educating the consumers about the concept of organised retail and the benefits that it brought to them.
Retail is all about building economies of scale through continuous addition to your store numbers. This therefore involves communication not only for every store launch, which is almost every month, but also creating interesting opportunities within the store through promotions, which helps in maintaining the footfalls to the stores.
Q. There have been a number of focused promotions at Music World. What role did Corporate Communications play in this brand-building programme? A case in point is our MusicWorld store at Kolkata. Located at Park Street, this store has today become one of the most happening destination for the youth, primarily through the image built through regular promotions and newspaper articles on the same.
Q. How important are image audits for RPG? How frequently do you conduct image audits? Image audits are interesting tools, which build insight into how target groups perceive a particular entity, individual or issue. However they have to be administered correctly to deliver good results.
We conduct image research using our large target base including vendors, analysts, new and past employees, and key customers.
Prior to joining RPG in May ‘02, Manoj was heading Corporate Communications with the Godrej group of companies and was instrumental in creating a public face for the group’s promoters and their products. A communications professional to the core, Manoj began his career in 1991 with Triton Marketing and later on moved in 1994 to help set up the Delhi office of Corporate Voice Shandwick.
In this session, Manoj Chandra, Head – Corporate Communications, RPG Enterprises talks to Jasmeen Dugal about the role of corporate communications in promoting a large and diversified conglomerate, the importance of image audits and how, PR as a tool, helps in reputation management. Q. Does RPG follow any set PR formula to attract different target segments like the media, institutional shareholders, individual shareholders, employees, vendors, customers and the public? Different publics have their individual information needs and have to be met accordingly. Corporate communications works with the different departments to look after this by providing specific vehicles to aid the flow of communication.
While at the global level, we have a group website – rpggroup.com – which enables a quick overview about the entire organization to a visitor, more specific communication vehicles could be in the form of analyst meets or customer newsletters which are periodically used.
Q. Has corporate communications been utilized as damage control in a crisis? Did this benefit the company and achieve the desired results? Every large organization has its share of crisis, large or small. Communications plays an important role in helping the organization to go through this phase with ease and achieve normalcy.
At RPG, we have had some of our businesses going through this phase and we have helped them by preparing the management for the media scrutiny, which follows any such incident. We had to ensure that the communication barriers were not broken and factual information was made available to the media quickly so that rumours were not reported. This helped the situation to get diffused very quickly.
Q. How does RPG measure the results of a PR campaign? PR is an ongoing process, relatively subtler than the high visibility of ad campaigns and hence difficult to quantify. However, if objectives have been clearly defined for a PR program, it is much easier to assess the impact, which could be based on the nature of media coverage, improved sales or higher employee satisfaction.
We use existing business measures to qualify the result of a PR activity. But the best feedback is of course the one given by the owner of the PR campaign, the CEO himself.
Q. Does PR compete with or complement marketing activities? Good PR is all about building image and changing perceptions. In this respect, PR never competes with any organizational activity, but complements it. It can be a wonderful complement to the marketing activities any brand manager has to undertake. In fact, some of the most successful brands were built by them using the tool of public relations rather than advertising such as The Body Shop, globally and Barista in India.
Q. How is PR different from reputation management? Reputation Management is today becoming an increasingly used buzzword amongst corporates in the global arena, especially after the debacle of megacorps like Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and many others. The role of the CEO is increasingly become subject to scrutiny and his stake in managing the reputation of his firm is becoming larger. Reputation Management is all-encompassing for an organization in today’s context.
The fortunes of big businesses are also getting tied not only to how they perform but also to how they are perceived. A good reference point to understand this impact is the AC Nielsen – ORG Marg Corporate Reputation Index. In the study announced last year, there was a clear connection between corporate performance and stakeholders’ perception. Tata Motors (earlier known as Telco) is a case in point. In the light of a Rs 500-crore loss in fiscal 2001, Tata Motor’s rankings dropped from 7 in 2000 to 12 in 2001. Following the successful showing in its passenger car sales, the company was able to improve its ranking to 8 in 2002.
Clearly, the bottom-line can make or break a reputation—but increasingly, the reverse can be true as well.
PR is the tool, which helps in reputation management. Through precise communication to the diverse publics of an organisation, it helps in building correct perceptions and shareholder satisfaction.
Q. What are some of the impediments communications managers face in India? The biggest challenge is the lack of understanding of what we do. Mostly the Indian communication person is seen as a fixer for a media article. The vital contribution that the function can make to an organization’s success is yet to be understood in a larger context of the Indian business.
Also, the highly fragmented nature of the industry is another big impediment, which is contributing to the lack of understanding about it. While the advertising industry was able to grow very quickly and was seen as a professional body, public relations still does not have enough unification. Some steps have been made in this direction such as the PRCAI, but it still has a long way to go.
What this also impacts is the growth of education facilities for this profession, which in turn affects the availability of quality manpower.
Q. Besides corporate communication, what are the other activities undertaken to build and strengthen the RPG brand? RPG is a highly people-driven organization and a lot of effort goes into inculcating the RPG culture within our employees, who are perhaps our best spokespersons. We encourage our employees to be leaders in their communities – professionals or personal.
Apart from this, RPG is deeply involved with culture. During the year, many activities are undertaken to deepen our associations in this area, such as the annual RPG art camp, where we encourage young artists.
RPG also has a large social responsibility program, wherein RPG employees contribute back to the society through personal time and effort such as the ‘Akanksha child education program’ or through contributions such as the reconstruction project of Vamka village after the Gujarat earthquake.
Sports is another avenue for brand building. Over the past nine years, CEAT has constantly been promoting cricket through its famous cricket ratings and the Annual CEAT Cricket Rating Awards are today synonymous with excellence in the game.
Q. In India, in your opinion, is the role of corporate communications going to remain in media relations or it will stretch to individual specialization? While media relations will remain as the primary role, today’s business environment is creating special areas for this function to evolve into, especially in the IT & BPO space where communications professionals are helping more in internal processes such as marketing and employee communications, and community programs.
I believe the profession would see the emergence of niche professionals based on the requirements of the emerging industries. However, the basic qualities of a communication professional would not change, namely a keen and inquistive mind, good grasping power, creative and innovative thinking, an expressive nature and a knack for making friends.
Q. RPG Enterprises has many diverse groups – Retail, IT & Communications, Entertainment, Power & Transmission, Tyres, Life Sciences and Specialties. What is the role of corporate communications in promoting such a diversified group? Which area demands the most attention? In any large and diversified conglomerate, communications is the binding force, which keeps the organization together. RPG Enterprises is composed of nearly twenty-five different entities with unique businesses and more importantly, 50,000 employees and over 5,000 managers. The involvement of corporate communications is therefore very large in keeping this heterogeneous group together. A lot of effort is on internal communications to bind the people together.
Apart from the constant process of managing the public image for the group and building its identity, corporate communications also assists the group companies in communicating about their business initiatives and addressing the needs of their target publics.
Recent efforts have been to work closely with our focus areas of growth namely – power, tyres and retail.
Q. What role does corporate communication play in organized retailing? Retail has been a pioneering area for RPG. Today we operate in four different formats, namely Foodworld (chain of supermarkets), MusicWorld (chain of music stores), Health and Glow (chain of health and beauty stores) and GIANT (chain of hypermarkets).
Being a greenfield areas for the group, as well as, a new industry, communication’s role was not only in building the brands but also in educating the consumers about the concept of organised retail and the benefits that it brought to them.
Retail is all about building economies of scale through continuous addition to your store numbers. This therefore involves communication not only for every store launch, which is almost every month, but also creating interesting opportunities within the store through promotions, which helps in maintaining the footfalls to the stores.
Q. There have been a number of focused promotions at Music World. What role did Corporate Communications play in this brand-building programme? A case in point is our MusicWorld store at Kolkata. Located at Park Street, this store has today become one of the most happening destination for the youth, primarily through the image built through regular promotions and newspaper articles on the same.
Q. How important are image audits for RPG? How frequently do you conduct image audits? Image audits are interesting tools, which build insight into how target groups perceive a particular entity, individual or issue. However they have to be administered correctly to deliver good results.
We conduct image research using our large target base including vendors, analysts, new and past employees, and key customers.
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