Sudha Sarin, Founder, Insight Communications

Armed with a Masters degree in English Literature, Sudha Sarin has had an enriching experience of over 15 years and has handled a diverse portfolio of clients from varied sectors, both at national and international forums, which include power transmission, aviation, IT, television broadcast, telecom, etc. Currently the CEO of Insight Communications, a full service corporate communications company, Sudha shares her vision for the agency in conversation with Sumita Patra of exchange4media.

Q. What is your client base like?

I work with an oil and gas major where I am a consultant, I work with a sports management company, a talent management company for blind musicians and artists. We also work for one of the leading job sites in India and a matrimonial website. We also work with Iriver, which is an MP3 player. So it’s an interesting gamut.

Q. Do you think there is scope for agencies in the PR space in India besides media relations?

Yes, but it is still going to require immense amount of education on part of the agency and immense amount of effort on part of our associations and our seniors to be able to ensure that public relations is recognised in its entirety.

Q. Tell us something about Insight communications?

Insight is young, I am hoping to make it an organisation some day, I still don’t dare to call it an organisation, it’s young and thereby, it is still in some way trying to redefine its positioning and its role.

I think I struggled with the name for a very long time because I wanted a name that was straightforward and in some ways spoke of what we did or what the core competence of the service that we were bringing about was. Insight seemed appropriate because it has a double meaning – it means that the company is ‘in sight’ of other people and the service that we provide gives ‘insight’ to its various audiences about the business that we conduct – and that’s how the name was formed.

It will be a year pretty soon and all I can say is I have had no reason to regret what I have done or to rethink the decision. Things are going very well for us, our growth is steady and it has been deliberately kept so because you need to deliver first before you look at growing and that’s where we are.

Q. You have had handled clients from varied sectors, which have been your most satisfying projects?

In terms of the most challenging projects that I have worked on is the Lakme India Fashion Week, which was a challenge in itself because of the sheer size of the project. The biggest challenge is to be able to find a balance between your clients to make each one of them a rewarding experience and to be able to find your own personal challenges within that, to enable you to deliver and also grow in terms of your own redefining process, because after a point of time if you do not extend yourself, extend your boundaries, you will eventually begin to stagnate.

Q. How do you distinguish the role of PR and advertising? Do you think PR plays a secondary role in the entire communication process of a client or brand?

I am not going to tell you what is the difference between PR and advertising. I think what is happening today is that clearly clients and brands are seeing the value that PR provides and a lot of clients with small budgets prefer to go the PR route. So I don’t think the value proposition of PR is under question any more, but yes, I feel in India it will take sometime before PR is seen and recognised in terms of its true power, a lot of companies still see PR as a cheaper option.

Q. Why do you think brands consider PR as a cheaper option?

It’s very simple. How old is our industry in India? It’s a very nascent industry. Advertising has been there for years, even if you look at the size of the PR industry, it is miniscule compared to what the size of the advertising industry is. But I do believe that we as an industry are going the right way. We have finally established ourselves and I am sure the sort of work that we are doing will ensure that we will find our place in the sun as an industry.

Q. You were part of the electronic media as well, how was that experience?

It’s been absolutely wonderful, it’s young, it’s vibrant, it’s immediate, the learning is tremendous. To be honest, it has honed my skills as a PR person, I think personally for me, in terms of my growth as a professional, my experience with Asia Business News and CNBC helped me develop certain skills which have enabled me to see my role in a 360 degree angle.

Q. You handle IT, telecom, web and more. Do you have specialised teams to handle specific domains?

That’s the way our business is moving towards. If you need to grow, you will eventually have to create specialised teams and be able to define what you call your core competence. We are trying to create synergies internally so this is something that we will be looking at in a few months, where we will be looking at some training programmes that we want our people to go and work and learn from and imbibe.

Q. You have undertaken some corporate media training with some leading corporations in India. Can you tell us something about that experience?

I think training programmes are always challenging because you are expected to complete a certain preset agenda within a certain allocated time, so not only will you have to create the format and do the research, you also have to ensure that you deliver. And while you are delivering, you are able to contain the interest of all senior CEOs CTOs, CFOs, and the marketing heads you are delivering to. The biggest challenge is to make it interactive. The success of any training programme is based on creativity, interactive ness and the crispness of what you are delivering.

Q. What are the challenges and opportunities facing PR agencies today?

We have a few challenges that we need to be very clear about. One is that we need to ensure that our pool of talent grows both in terms of width and depth. The second challenge is to work along with corporates to make them understand the power of PR in its entirety. The third challenge is to help clients understand the importance of media relations. Public relations is communicating with all the public that are relevant to business, media is one important ingredient, but it cannot be the entire basket.

Q. How do you see the roadmap for your agency?

I want to grow, but right now I am competing with myself, I am not competing with anyone else, so I don’t know if I want to be the largest or I want to be the biggest or if I want to be the best. One thing I am very clear is that whatever we do, we will do great work, we will not be afraid to take on a variety of clients because that’s a learning process for us. However, we plan to expand to other markets in the coming year and define our competence as also decide what we want to offer as primary services and what is it that we want to offer as off the label services. But at the end of it all, I want Insight to be a happy challenging enthusiastic environment to be in.