Rajiv Sangwan, Vice-President, Rediffusion PR

An MBA from the UK, Rajiv Sangwan’s entry to PR was just by chance. He joined Mudra, hoping that the vacancy was for an advertising job. This accidental tourist to Public Relations, today heads Rediffusion PR as its Vice-President.

In conversation with Gokul Krishnamurthy of exchange4media, Rajiv Sangwan spoke about how to excel in the PR agency business, and PR’s struggle to go beyond media relations. Excerpts:

Q. Does one's educational background help in a career in PR in India?

I do believe that the situation is changing. Clients today expect their PR partner to understand business and to be able to contribute to the growth of the business. Therefore, a management education does help as one begins on an equal footing.

Q. How has your second stint at Rediffusion been? What were the expectations?

Coming back to Rediffusion was easy. I knew what to expect and I guess Rediffusion too knew what to expect from me. Rediffusion is a great place as far as people are concerned.

Q. Would you like to give some advice to those thinking of being a part of the industry?

The world is becoming increasingly digital and my belief is that PR is perhaps best equipped to exploit that. There is also a trend of fractionalisation of media and here again PR will play a leading role. PR is clearly an industry whose time is coming.

Q. Can you tell us something about your professional journey so far?

After two years at Mudra, I joined Rediffusion Public Relations. Rediffusion offered freedom and responsibility to executives across levels as well as complete and unstinting support. The brands we worked on were tremendous for the size of organisation we were. Maruti, Bharti, Dell Computers, Gillette, Canon, SAIL, and a whole lot of equally impressive names meant that we were always on our toes. After three years, I shifted to head the agency's Mumbai operations. The opportunity of working with Vaishnavi came my way soon after that. Given that Vaishnavi was a new entrant into the PR arena with a certain scale of operations from day one, it was a very different proposition to Rediffusion. I had an exciting and fruitful two-year stint there heading the Mumbai office. It was a year ago that the opportunity to return to Rediffusion came my way and I grasped it with both hands.

Q. How bad is attrition in PR agencies? What do you think are the reasons?

Communication agencies have had attrition rates that are perhaps higher than other industries. The need for communications professionals has grown exponentially without a commensurate increase in educational and training facilities. There is a real need for the industry to do something about the dearth of educational options for those wishing to enter the industry. PR as an industry needs to promote itself so that those wishing to make a career in PR know what the available options are, and whom to turn to for advice.

Q. You handle telecom, FMCG, mutual funds, airlines and more. Do you have specialised teams to handle specific domains?

It is imperative to have a differentiated offering. Does one differentiate through specialisation or does one differentiate in alternate fashions? At Rediffusion Public Relations we have followed an approach of being experts in communication, rather than attempting to become experts in IT or pharma or FMCG. We have sought to differentiate on the basis of the work we do and how we do it. We are part of a holistic communication group at Rediffusion, which allows us to have access to experts from other communication domains and suggest solutions when PR may not be the best option.

Q. ‘Rural PR’ is an area where a few agencies are said to be channelising their energies. Does Rediffusion have any such plans?

Most agencies have not been able to play meaningful roles in rural markets primarily because the kind of brands/ corporates that have utilised PR agencies have not felt the need to devote resources in the smaller towns. The reality is that a PR agency of national stature will only invest in resources in far-flung areas if it helps meet the objectives of their clients.

At Rediffusion, we have a tie up with Mart for rural promotions. Additionally, Rediffusion travels very frequently to smaller towns as a part of its service. We are looking at a model where each of our seven offices operates with a given radius of say a hundred kilometers and all towns and cities are networked with the regional office.

Q. How important is strategic thinking when the deliverables at the end of the day are quantified in positive column centimetres?

That is precisely where we are going wrong as an industry. It is not about the output that we generate but the outcome of what we generate. Advertising, for instance, is not judged on how many times the advertisements run but on what it is able to deliver to the marketing function. PR needs to evolve measurement of outcome and not be limited by the column centimeters. As far as strategic thinking is concerned, there is really no option but to be strategic if PR is to be a useful ally in the overall marketing communication mix.

Q. Do you think there is scope for agencies in the PR space in India, besides Media Relations?

A recent survey of marketing managers in the US showed 38 per cent perceived the need to create broad role definition for PR – managing relationships across stakeholders; 21 per cent felt that PR needs to focus primarily on maintaining relationships with consumers; 31 per cent felt that PR should focus almost exclusively on maintaining relationships with the media.

The reality is that even the 59 per cent of marketing managers who felt that PR needs a broad brief would have seen media relations as a significant part of the brief. In India too, agencies and internal PR professionals have tended to focus on the media. Either PR professionals are not involved at stages early enough for them to make meaningful contributions to projects, or they may not have utilised the opportunity effectively and by force of habit veered towards media relations.

Today, I think there are companies in India that see the value of PR in going beyond media relations. We will have to grab opportunities for making wider contributions.

Q. What is Rediffusion PR’s client base like?

Rediffusion Public Relations has been fortunate in being able to partner with significant brands throughout its ten-year existence. Bharti was our founding client and continues to be. Virgin Atlantic, Toyota Motors, Archies, Amway, CavinKare, Emami, Sri Lankan Airlines are some of the other accounts that we work with. More importantly, we have had opportunities not just with leaders but also with virtual creators of categories like Radhakrishna Foodland and RK Marble. This is one of the challenges of PR to ensure that the innovators/pioneers get their due recognition.

Q. You've worked in three agencies - Mudra, Vaishnavi and Rediffusion. Is there a clearly differentiated positioning among PR agencies today?

When I joined Mudra it was one of the leading agencies. Rediffusion and Vaishnavi were pretty much at the beginning of their lives when I joined so they were significantly different experiences. Vaishnavi was large in terms of people, scale and clients from day one. Building on a significant base like that was interesting. At Rediffusion our growth has been more gradual. From a single location, three-person outfit when it started in 1995, it is today a seven-office, 40-person outfit. The growth has been consistent and we opened our latest office at Kochi as recently as late 2004.

As regards positioning, there is the specialist IT agency, system driven agency, and media-pushing agency. I believe Rediffusion is a multi dimensional agency, which allows people constant and consistent opportunities for responsibility and accountability from the day that they step in.