Someday

As my thoughts strayed beyond the labyrinth of nimbus clouds to an universe untraversed, they call- Big Bad World, I wondered how different our worlds have become as we tried to keep pace with the hands of the time clock. Memories kaleidoscoped to the days when happiness was all about tossing pebbles in the pond, climbing walls, running behind kites, watching the raindrops seep down the window panes. When fear was all about thunderstorms and lightning, dad’s scolding and kneeling down outside the classroom coz of not memorizing those thick books some fool wrote to bother us. Now feel like we are just sleepwalking through a life incomplete forever with limitless dreams and ambitions…always unsatisfied…where joys are unknown and fears endless, where hopes are dreams and reality misgiven. Blindfolded we are following the piper to lead us to some obscure glory some day….someday the dawn will dawn upon us…someday..

I am not addressing anyone in particular

Walking down the long serpentine deserted lane called life;
I saw your visage against my own shadows.
The more I stepped towards it, the more it faded away.
Once a horizon, now a mere shadow- Illusion just changed its identity.

The west winds whispered your name,
Every mirage reflected your essence.
As the moonlight and the wintry branches troubled the darkness with their own game of hide and seek,
As the silver ocean waves carried your voice to me,
As the dark clouds began to look darkness in the eye,
A figment of thought told me- maybe she will never realize that my tears have formed rains in the sky.

I walked on listening to the muffled sound of my own footsteps with my shattered shadow as the only companion walking beside me
The rain and the tears blurred my sight as an obscure happiness awaited me…

Somewhere far away, somewhere- unknown!

What PR agency people do?

Yesterday one of my friends asked me what PR agency people exactly do.

I have been asked this question so many times and by so many people from all walks of life (Not from PR obviously) that I really get sort of pissed answering this question in layman’s term. Most of the times, the conclusion drawn by the other person, turns out to be “ Puri Ramayan sunke poochta hai Sita kiska baap tha?) J

So I tried to give him a simplistic description of what I used to do and what many people in the profession do when they start their career in PR or Public Relations.

Take Away: PR is a divine profession. You are the only ‘human’ among Gods.:-)

PR agency has clients, which can be organizations, individuals or Govt. etc.

To start a career in a PR agency, you got to have that light on your eyes, fire in your bellies, a grand dream inside that skull and heights of patience- Imagine a one-handed man hanging from a cliff on the support of that one hand and still smiling away till glory kingdom comes - Thats the kinda patience I meant. And, talent ofcourse- mostly shrewdness and people skills, ahhhh..that misquoted communication skills.

The Work:

The agency goes and presents to the client what all they can do to give that client visibility in the media and as a corollary bolster its image to its relevant target audience.

Then, the money talk and clients fasten their belts and comes to tangible stuff- “We need 100 great stories in a month and in these publications”, as if the poor agency guy’s father in law owns all publicationsJ. We will pay you XX on retainer basis.

The man returns and briefs his agency what the client expectations are- Now, wait- the client is God (in literal terms)- you cant challenge him, you are subject to his mercy if you manage to goof up somewhere, he can me nasty and unfair with you but you cant, you have to obey and obey orders. Coz he is the reason, you can eat, drink, sleep, marry, have children and grandchildren, if you manage to live that longer doing a PR job for so many years of your life- Its killing you see!:-)

Now, how to we get stories for our clients

To add a nice name to an often filthy job- we call it: MEDIA RELATIONS

Alternate 1) You call up a jurno to publish some shit you have written for your company and flirt if that person is of the opposite sex. You can also threaten and bribe him, depending on who the jurno is and how reputed the publication is (most jurnos of the print media are poor and hungry people, so not a problemJ)

Alternative 2) you are an ethical & intelligent person, you write a brilliant story. Either you study, do a lot of research and find out some enlightening stuff about your client that none of its immediate competitors possesses or you just ‘manufacture’ something out of nothing…I mean you relate a SPADE TO –WHAT EXTENT AGRICULTURE IS CONTRIBUTING TO INDIA’S PHENOMENAL GDP GROWTH- Just because farmers use SPADES!:-)

You also go for “MEDIA ROUNDS’ if you are blessed with either great looks or Gift of the Gab, where you can convince people in a clique

If you want to play things safe- make friends. You call up that jurno often, first to discuss the industry, then you develop a rapport cribbing about each others job, then you catch up for a drink and present yourself as some very intelligent guy who just managed to fall into the trap of this strange profession somehow, while wandering here and there thinking of what to do after the graduation day.:-)

You get a third party to recommend the points you talked about in your story- That brings more credibility, you see

So, now your story is published where you exactly wanted. Your client sends an appreciation mail- you happy, your boss happy and people around you - happy or jealous of you. See, jurno is God too, you don’t respect him/her more than wat they actually deserve, they wont file your story.- Your Job is gone.:-)

Yes, you do use tools like- writing press releases, ghost-writing for the MD of the company who is always busy fooling people and making big money, writing press notes, organizing press conferences feeding the famine stricken poor and hungry people, I mentioned earlier.

The story doesn’t end here, Client’s expectation increases- he finds his bait- he wants more stories, better stories, in better publications, and also wants you to figure out more and more opportunities where you can exhibit him to a larger audience through a big industry event may be; build his unmatched image and so on. – Your work INCREASES, pay may not.

The hard part- Now you try to justify to the client through a baffling multitude of reporting formats what kind of torture you go through everyday for delivering those beautifully cursed stories. The client seems never satisfied- Human nature you see~!

Unanswered Questions in PR

Confessions of an overworked mind

A perfect read for a gloomy ‘work-cannon’ loaded Monday

After about two and a half years of my stint in the boxing arena called ‘public relations’, I am faced with these inexplicably intriguing questions. Yes I agree that, to most of us, the questions may seem unintelligent but as the wise man say- Questions are never stupid, answers are. There can be countless justifications negating the validity of my question’s intelligence quotient, but I won’t ask you to relax and then think about the answers coz in that state, most likely your answers can only label my questions as ‘stupid to the stupidest of extent’.:-)

So, here I make a humble request to all of you. Try and answer my questions on a typical PARANOID day at work when all the devils of the world and beyond contaminate the souls of our revered journalists, corp com people and other stakeholders.:-)

Here are some of my questions (there are many more)J:

· Why does that particular abandoned lonely soul in corp comm needs an SMS update early in the morning, inside his washroom post a press conference/interview/trade briefing a day earlier and why they can’t get out of their washrooms till the scans hit their inbox- I guess the they fear that the coverage would evaporate in thin air if they are late in brooding over it…(Or their email inboxes are perpetually in the self-destruct mode?)

· Why do we send the ‘same’ clip to the client in a wide spectrum of multiple diametrically diverse formats that technology has ever managed to bless us with. – SCANS, PDF, PPT, EXCEL, ZIP, MONTHBOOKS, WEEKLY REPORTS, CDS, DVDS, TRANSCRIPTS, Calculating their AD rates, etc etc- Cant they not decipher things in the first go…?

· Why do the that impatient corp com soul behave as if they will lose their jobs, their stocks would crash and their employers will be on the streets begging if a particular coverage that appeared 5 years ago is not mailed to them within a 5 mins timeframe?

· Why do they spin protracted yards and wax eloquent about going ‘Green’ and similar policies and enclose this line in their mail - “Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. “ if on the other hand, they want coverage on every piece of paper in the planet?

· Why do they endow us with incredibly inhuman deadlines and act as if the universe will fall apart if we don’t meet the same. Finally, when we do manage to kill ourselves to meet that cursed deadline, they forget about it and send a stinker at the end of the day for committing a gruesome crime- Why didn’t we remind them on time?:-)

· Had another crazy client who is as much shy to a media as a newly married Indian bride is to her in-laws- Still they want coverage in all the existing media?

· Why do the Presidents and VPs of the world suddenly wake up one fine afternoon and starts hallucinating and contemplating about their worth in this life and pester their PR agencies to send them all the best coverage that they were lucky to receive over the past 8 years within 60 mins. Are they so in secured? Or, do they think we are Gods to meet such a divine deadline

If it is all about positioning our work to the client as some Pro-client PR professional will like to argue then I would like to put it- Don’t we anyway do a lot of other work as an agency to prove to the client our expertise and efficiency.