Yes DLF! to Yes Maximum!

Yes DLF to Yes Maximum

Cricket offers lots of exciting moments during the game. IPL, the latest and shortest format of the game offers a complete entertainment package, as it engages people across age-groups, demographics and geographies,  while offering one of the biggest platform to the brands.

IPL, as an engaging event, holds opportunities for the brands and has brought in investments to the game, and the number crunchers actually started comparing it with EPL and NBA. More and more investments got attracted as more and more brands were light struck by sheer glamour and energy.

The money not only helped nurturing the budding talents but also supported old hands at cricket by  engaging them through various ways and means.

In the initial stages of IPL there were lot of apprehensions about success of the format and midst of all sorts of speculations came brands, which shown some real strength by not only committing themselves for trying something new, challenging and paved the path of success for themselves as well as for all others involved in India's biggest fanfare  has made some smart moves by creating and nurturing various properties.

DLF was the first sponsor in history of Indian Cricket to bring in the concept of deriving Maximum benefits through Title Sponsors as it volunteered to offer prizes to inspire young talent and established categories i.e. DLF Maximum Sixes Award and DLF Player of the League.

DLF helped not only players to win their prizes but also created opportunities for BCCI-IPL to earn money as well. It also helped brands like Yes Bank, as in round II of IPL (after initial 5 years when all Central sponsorships came to an end), BCCI raked in money through these categories and brands like Yes Bank bagged it for a cost. 

Is India still a preferred investment desti-nation?

Is India still a preferred investment desti-nation?

The potholes in the journey:

· Sinking GDP growth well below expectation: below 5% in FY 12-13. Q-on-Q  projections continue to fail.

o Govt must loosen its wallet strings to fund infrastructure projects across country.

o It is prudent to release major amount of money for infra projects primarily road, highways connecting major cities as well as rural roads

· Food Inflation (despite the government’s claims; aam aadmi has no respite from the food inflation)

FOOD Security bill:

o State governments must create a common knowledge pool for inclusive and sustainable rural development and agricultural produce.

• Central agencies shall take initiative under Agriculture Ministry

§  Focus on increasing agriculture produce

§  Need to launch another operation ‘Green’ and ‘Flood’

§  Increase Agriculture, Poultry, Dairy, Fisheries produce

·         Major dent of INR 3.5 trillion on exchequer as a result of Food security bill

REVENUE DEFICITS:

o   Both State and Central Govts shall bear the burden and simultaneously try to identify new source of revenues including increase in direct and indirect tax collections

o   DTC could be a major revenue driver

·         Fiscal deficit

·         Declining Rupee

o   This has been addressed to some extent  as dollars have started flowing in

·         Expensive Oil & Gas

·         Lack of implementation of reforms

·         Rising interest rates (rising NPAs of Banks)

·         Dip in industrial and manufacturing growth rate

·         FIIs pulling out investments from India

·         Grim situation in basic health, education, infrastructure, law & order

·         General elections in 2014

·         Indecision tendency of government

Major Legislations hanging with a thread in thin air

o   Lokpal

o   Land Acquisition

o   Real Estate Regulatory Bill

o   Pension Bill

o   100% FDI in Indian Retail

o   GST

o   Mining Bill

Indian Real Estate must address roadblocks to accelerate growth

The basic mantra for INDIAN REAL ESTATE SECTOR is to: 

dilute licensing except for safety reasons, increase competition, allow market forces to operate, gain 'Industry' status

The Indian real estate sector is a key growth driver of the country’s economy. The positive outlook of Indian Government is the key factor behind the sudden rise of the Indian Real Estate sector - the second largest employer after agriculture, in India.

The contribution of the residential segment alone to India’s GDP is around 5 to 6 per cent and to accelerate the overall GDP, it would be imperative to grant an Industry Stature to real estate and help it to adapt professional practices.

One of the most important factors, which has been discussed across all forums and which happens to be the bottleneck in the growth of real estate industry, is the complex and outdated procedure of seeking approvals. 

Currently, such inefficiencies ultimately are being passed on to the customers. Delay on this account also majorly affects the demand-supply of housing units. Hence, there is a need for a uniform approval process.

In any project management scenario -Time is money and any project delay adds to the cost of the project which is ultimately passed on to the customer’s.

The bottlenecks may be overcome by careful mapping of the regulatory jurisdictions, authorities and laws and to remove duplication of efforts and abrogate rudimentary processes. Whilst a unified regulatory framework would be of a major help, re-engineering of the processes and mapping of various regulatory authorities will help real estate development to catch up with the economic development of the nation.

The Indian real estate market is in growing stage and dominated by a large number of small players, with very few organised plyers i.e. corporates and large players with national footprint. The Indian real estate market, as compared to the other more developed Asian and Western real estate markets, is characterised by smaller size, lower availability of good quality space and higher prices.

Supply of urban land is largely controlled by state-owned development bodies like the Development Authorities i.e. DDA and Housing Boards leaving very limited developed space for competitive supply lines. The LARR 2013 would further pose challenges for land acquisition process and would make projects unviable.

There is a huge opportunity for leveraging the large portfolios of un-utilised and underutilized real estate assets of various government agencies. Inviting private participation in housing under Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) would attract investment in this sector. 

A conscious effort on the part of these agencies, coupled with policy initiatives, can unlock the value of these non-performing assets while revenues generated from such initiatives can be utilised for the development of infrastructure.

Is it really CAD which is bothering us

The decade had a promising start in 2010-11 with GDP growth of 8.4 per cent, bringing down fiscal deficit to 4.7 per cent from 6.4 of GDP in 2009-10, as well as containing current account deficit to 2.6 per cent from 2.8 per cent in 2009-10. 

The GDP decelerated sharply to a nine year low of 6.5 per cent during 2011-12 and even below 5 percent in 2012-13. 

The symptoms are quite evident i.e. sinking rupee, rising inflation, rising prices of commodities and fuel. 

But, government seems to be engaged in addressing the symptoms rather than curing root cause of the problems. 

Government claims that CAD is rising due to increase in demand for dollars for Oil and Gold imports. 

However, with subdued equity inflows, depleting foreign exchange reserves, rising external debt and deteriorating international investment positions, the macro economic scenario is getting awry and nothing seems to be going in right direction with inflation at over 9 per cent in the first eight months of 2011-12, before softening moderately in December 12 and remained sticky in the range of 6.9-7.7 per cent.

With GDP growth slumping to decade's low of 5 per cent in 2012-13, and no visible pick-up in any key levers of the economy "the situation remains grim". While the fiscal deficit situation will not allow government expenditure to go up, every means need to be explored for raising consumption and investment demand.

Measures like Reserve Bank lowering interest rates to boost economy and announcements (rather ad-hoc) regarding FDI increase in key sectors may provide interim relief in correcting sentiments but may reflect only in long term.

There has been policy paralysis on literally every front including Power, Telecom, Retail, Infrastructure, Real Estate, Agriculture, Service and Manufacturing sector.  

This country has not seen any new green field project being set up for a long time. There are numerous hurdles at every stage i.e. land acquisitions, approvals, clearances, permissions, finance. Regulations are all time high making conducting business a difficult proposition.

India has unique structure with layers of markets which works as insulation to external factors. We need to work towards further strengthening these layers and penetrate further, efficiently and effectively, into lower layers. 

The social and infrastructure development go hand in hand. Poverty can not be addressed through 'Subsidies' being offered to poor, but opportunity. 

An 'Opportunity' to Learn more and subsequently Earn more!  

One thing which I don't understand is, that even though right people are in right place at right time, i.e. an economist and intellectual PM, an experienced FM along with experienced Cabinet and a learned professional at Planning Commission, how the economic scenario and sentiments are sinking? 

The 6000 administrative officers are far less numbers to administrate the country and they should not be further dragged into running businesses for Government. 

Government wants to bring in inclusive and sustainable development, which is possible only with participation of private sector, which is inevitable in country's growth. Involvement of Private Sector means inclusion of large number of countrymen as well as foreign investors to invest, contribute and participate in India's growth story.

Government should work as a facilitator and provide effective and efficient governance, conducive environment, favorable and proficient policies to enable people conduct businesses and contribute to one of the fast emerging markets of the world which is eventually also the largest democracy in the world. 

PR professionals: The Talent crunch

As we know that Public Relations is as an important and vital communication tool. In my opinion, the Public Relations as an industry, is facing major problem of scarce talent pool of trained professional.

Most of the aspiring yougsters entering the PR profession have the perception that they are fit for the profession because "...I love meeting and interacting with people" .

People are pouring into this profession with different backgrounds, which I consider healthy for the industry, but are we really moving in the right direction? There are not many institutes, which may train and create quality resourse pool for Public Relations.

This may be the issue which we as PR professionals would like to address, so that more aspiring young talent can be attracted to join the industry.

Together, we need to create and promote talent pool of mature, experienced and seasoned PR professionals so that Indian PR Industry can make its mark in the global PR Industry.

Incase, we fail to address the problem at this stage, there will be tough times ahead for PR as an industry in this country!

Writing a communication plan

How to write a PR or Communications plan for a Corporate entity

Let's analyse:
Any PR or communications plan has to ask the fundamental questions, "Why does this organisation exist?", "What is it trying to achieve?", "What are the key objectives?" This will provide the grounding to enable you to construct your plan.

Having done this you need to ask yourself how aware are the public /TG, of your work and what their opinion is? In order to get an objective view, some research/ feedback will probably be required – often a quick questionnaire or phone call to a reasonable selection of people will do. This will help identify your ‘image’ in people’s minds.


Define objective:
Where do you want your organisation to be seen within a certain time frame, say a year, three years or perhaps by the end of a campaign? Do you want more people to know about you, and if so, why? Do you have the capacity to handle larger numbers of users/clients/visitors?

Let's say key message:
Narrow down what you want to say as much as possible. Key messages are usually very simple and rarely involve policy statements.

You should ask yourself "why should our target audience come to us?"

The answer "because we are good" is not good enough.

Why are we good? "We are trustworthy", "we know what we are talking about", are both key messages. You need not always spell out a key message in actual words. For example, it may be incorporated into the design of your newsletter.

Who do you want to talk to? (your target audience)
Which section(s) of the community are you trying to reach? The ‘general public’ or ‘everybody’ is too vague. The more you narrow this target down the more effective you will be. Targeting does not mean excluding everybody else, it just means knowing the select group of people better.

Think how your target audience gets its information. What papers do they read? Do they listen to local radio? Do they watch more of news genre or the local language channels on their TV sets? Are they part of another network? Do they think the local paper is a waste of time? This will all help with implementing your strategy.

The effective tools
How best can you reach your audience with your message? This is based on what you know about them.

Think beyond Media Relations!

If word of mouth is best then use it. Conferences, meetings and site visits can all be part of a PR plan. How about shop window displays, direct mail, or exhibitions? Your methods should be based as much as possible on what you know about your target audience. For example, there is no point in putting a great effort into getting coverage in the Western Mail if very few of your target audience read that particular paper. The local weekly may be much more use to you.

Strategy timetables
In other words your plan of action. Do you want a big blast of publicity or a steady flow? Give yourself targets and a timetable – magazines, even local ones, may need a story or feature three months before they appear in print. If your strategy is to spread the word through attending various meetings, for example, then set yourself a target of attending X number of meetings over the next six months. Each method or way of communicating you have identified will have its own time restraints or limits. If you don't set yourself some targets you will probably forget your good intentions.


Budget
What is this all going to cost you? In an ideal world your budget would simply be set at what it would cost to implement the strategy. In the voluntary sector this is where you start to narrow down your options. You are unlikely to be able to do it all, so target your resources at the methods you think will be most effective, even if they are not the most glamorous ones. Some elements in your strategy may not start for several months, in which case you might have time to try and raise some money. Funders are far more likely to give for a specific item if it is clearly part of a general communications strategy than an item on its own.

Evaluation
PR is a long term exercise and is a continous process, hence, we know this is an ongoing pain to keep up, but how else can you judge whether your efforts have been a success? Plan time in for this on a regular basis, even if it is simply a matter of keeping press cuttings and a record of the number of inquiries you receive. Done regularly you will start to notice if things are not working as you hoped. It’s a great early warning system that enables you to change your strategy rather than bang your head against a brick wall. Remember - the best strategy is one that is flexible and changes over time.
***

“Investment” in Communication

Why to hire PR Agencies?

The buzzword in today’s corporate world is cost control. All the companies rush to the fact of reducing the cost by cutting the operational costs. They cut on employees, they cut on promotional expenses. Amount earmarked for Communication functions is considered to be an "Expenditure" rather than "Investment", even in today’s mature corporate world. The communication budget is the first victim to the 'cost control axe'.

Investment in Communication:

The fact is rather diagonally opposite to this myth.

The moment one understands that the business is sluggish and profits are not coming in, quarterly reports showing the decline graph and the enthusiasm level of employees, business partners is touching sea-bottom. The need of the hour is to “Invest” in Communication.

Because, it is the Communication and only the Communication, which can hold an organisation in high esteem, as it spells out the ideas, values and vision of the management to the inside and outside world of an organisation.

The aggressive communication helps an organisation to counter myths of the world. The Public Relations consultancy is the arm which extends support to an organisation in designing Communication strategies.


Concept of Public Relations:

We now understand the concept of Public Relations: is more of a Corporate function than a Marketing one.

A PR consultancy supports its clients in projecting a corporate identity and helps in overall positioning. The process of positioning, supports the efforts of marketing functions, while building the brand awareness and image of its products.


Role of PR Consultancy:

PR nurtures the plant of mutual understanding, belief and faith between an organisation and its public. PR consultancies performs host of important functions including developing corporate identity and image building, issue management, counseling on the effective use of the media, building strong relationships with key media constituencies.


Need of PR Consultancy:

‘Companies may survive even without outsourcing to a PR consultancy’.

But the corporate world is becoming increasingly competitive and a PR Consultancy in place extending full support to develop brand image, provides the organisation a competitive edge is critical!

Are PR Consultancy firms are performing their roles to the core are they just actng as PR 'Agencies' ?

There is a worldwide business trend to turn towards specialization as companies tend to focus on outsourcing for specialized services.

PR consultancy firm should offer expertise and competency in its field while providing synergistic approach towards solving the communication-related problems of the company and offers an unbiased and objective perspective.


The PR Perspective:

‘How many press clips in a month can you deliver?’

The Corporate world expects PR consultancies to facilitate big news items published on prominently in the media in favour of their Organisations. This is the only deliverable any organisation expects out of a PR Consultancy. The Corporate world doesn’t seem to understand, the way to make best use of a PR Consultancy.

The Indian PR industry is in its infancy stage and is still learning the key basics of this art.

The senior professionals working with leading PR Consultancies are busy enough to justify their jobs to their bosses, their bosses are busy enough to justify huge fee amount being charged from clients.

PR Agencies, who at the top of their voice, shout for Transparency in their Client’s business, better (two-way) communication, better HR practices and so forth, don’t practice best of internal communication, within their own organisation. PR Agencies are afraid of loosing Clients as Chickens fear of loosing their lives. One branch office may not even be aware of their colleagues working in other branches.

Yes, they are Agencies and not Consultancies. They don’t practice what they preach!!

Public Relations! …I know the job…!!

Reason for this is, mushrooming of anybody and everybody as PR agent. They try to beg, borrow or steal business from other agencies, while charging relatively less amount as retainer fee.

The client/s also, being smart enough to save some money, doesn’t spend time to even think twice before appointing their communication partners.

Public Relations industry in the country has many freelancers, small indigenous units with loose international affiliations and advertising agencies masquerading as PR agencies.

Now, the PR ‘Agencies’ have also joined hands with Event management firms and other promotional activity related firms to collectively offer the ‘Integrated Communication Solutions’… aha…sounds greeaaaat!!

But the reality is far away from the fantasy, it is yet to be realized,
What is a PR Consultancy?
Why a Corporate needs to hire them?
Why it is required to have clarity on their deliverables?
Which PR Consultancy to be hired?
What is an ideal size of the Consultancy?
Why a Corporate needs to pay them and what is the right amount to be paid?

These are the questions anybody and everybody would like to answer, and yes, there are no set rules or formulas, which may be applied while implementing Public relations activities.

There is a need for well defined PR concept which can be well understood by the business communities across borders. PR is a science and application of the same is an Art and you need professionals to understand it and experts to practice the same.