Public Relations if looked in simplest terms, refers to an art of convincing the target audience about the ambitions, goals, worth and present market position of a business or organization. But this simple definition will go through a complete transformation in 2018 with the objectives of PR taking an interesting turn, social media changing or in a way threatening the fundamentals and the push provided by the AI and automation tools.
Here are the 5 major trends that will revolutionize the Indian Public Relations industry and about which the advertisers, publishers and digital-age business heads and entrepreneurs need to be aware of:
As the year 2018 begins, let’s go through the major shifts and trends that will revolutionize the Indian Public Relations industry this year:
1. Emphasis will be laid more on crisis management:
With many major crisis issues being tackled by the PR firms in the past, there are more such lined up for the year 2018. As social media gains more importance in the PR world, it will be more of managing the credibility and perception crisis for the brands than of fact-sharing. To be relevant and make an impact in the industry PR firms need to invest more in technologies like Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Language. This will help the brands gain more of social listening and predictive analytics to better identify and tackle the potential crisis for their clients.
2. Association of Influencers and Brand Ambassadors will be questioned: Only the association of a celebrity face won’t be enough to make the consumers get into the brand’s influence as it is now more about authenticity. With lines getting blurred between paid and earned media, the issue that has gained prominence the most is the credibility and trust present in the communication. This in turn is making the PR companies realize the importance of identifying and working with ‘real’ influencers and authentic voices. Finally, it is not only strengthening the flow of information but also controlling the truth, trust and transparency in it.
3. Increasing connectivity will increase the regional language communication: The KMPG and Google research works have found that India has around 430 million users with more than 30% of these coming from the rural areas. The numbers will increase exponentially with more and more internet service providers giving cheaper and affordable internet facility. The studies have also revealed that more than 70% of the Indians consider content in local language more authentic and reliable than the one conveyed through English medium. The regional language is sure to increase more as mobile players are coming up with cheaper smartphones supporting the regional languages. To make the presence felt and take the lead in the market, PR agencies need to create authentic, engaging, high-quality, and real-time content in multiple languages catering to this rapidly growing digital population.
4. It will be more of strategic planning than reputation management: With the changing media landscape changes the news consumption habits and the role of different news mediums. It’s not just the brand reputation management that will be of major importance but the role of PR agencies will go much beyond and will involve being strategic advisors to brands too. While Big Data, AI, and other such tools will continue to be in limelight, how this data gets converted in to stakeholder’s engagement will also be of major importance in the 2018 PR campaigns. This means that the PR teams have to focus more on crafting and implementing creative strategies and programs to lead the client’s brand to new heights of success.
5. Inclination towards online will rise, still print will remain critical: 2017 statistics reveal that the media consumption habits of the country people have changed drastically with most of the internet using Indian population spending more than 34% of their overall time on social networking sites. As the online media is gaining attention, 2018 is a year where PR companies have to rely on creating more of concise yet newsy and user- friendly content for different online and social media platforms. In spite of the digital boom, Print media is one such platform that is constantly growing and referred as the most credible source of information. So, while focusing on the digital at its core of the brand communication strategy, PR firms still face the challenge of getting prominent news coverage for the client in the best sorted print publications.
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