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Karan Dev
@Karan.Dev · 1:40
Public Relations and India: In Conversation with Hemant Gaule
While the industry has garnered a bit of a foul reputation for questionable campaigns such as Torches of Freedom in America, which was a plea for women to use cigarettes as a liberating tool, there is no doubt that the industry serves a very important purpose, such as creating awareness for social causes. It also helps people and brands find their identity. And in India, the industry grew over 12% to touch recorded Rupees 1600 Crow in FY 19
Bhomik Mathur
@Bmat · 0:20
Hello Mr Hayman. It's a real pleasure to have you for the interview. My first question would be if you could explain the audience. What is public relations, what is the job of a PR professional and how do they interact with see other Department of a company like sales, marketing, advertising, etcetera
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 0:18
Oh, thank you, Karan, for having me over. I'm excited as well, because like you said, this is a very dynamic industry. There's a lot of exciting stuff happening, and a lot of exciting things are in store for PR professionals in the near future. So I'm very happy to answer any questions
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 2:09
So allow me to start with the very basics. When a brand or an entity or an organization or an individual communicates with the outside world, there are a couple of ways in which they do it. So think of an organization that has their Facebook page and their website and their newsletters, et cetera, all the media platforms that they own to communicate with their stakeholders. That's called owned media. That's the media that you own
Bhomik Mathur
@Bmat · 0:26
Okay. So I think that makes the definition of public relations quite clear. So let's talk a bit about your own journey. How did you get sort of interested in public relations? Because I think today, at least with the rise of social media, there is much more awareness about what role PR agencies play. But like when you had to make career choices, how did you get interested in PR
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 0:35
And brands communicate with their audiences in a number of ways, some from as simple as a newspaper ad to some things that are quite complex, like public relations. And that's where I discovered a couple of things about public relations and corporate communications
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 1:28
And naturally, that's why it's really difficult to build that kind of influence as well. And that's what got me fascinated by this and specifically how difficult it was to deconstruct public relations and parameterize public relations. There's a great deal of art and science in PR that's involved that has to work together in the perfect way in order for this kind of influence to work
Bhomik Mathur
@Bmat · 0:29
I've read up that you also worked for the team that handled the electoral campaign of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. So I mean, that sounds something very interesting. And I mean, the result of that campaign is in front of everyone. It was a massive success. So what was the experience like and what kind of work did you do at the organization? And if you have any memories and experiences, any lessons which you would like to share
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 2:48
Our team was able to analyze about 300 Facebook pages that we were managing and see what were the key concerns of people and what could be the talking points that Mr. Modi could include in his speeches. We were also able to create something called Cha Picha that's relatively more of a known initiative from our side. And that was also done from an organization building perspective
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 2:04
And we were also able to train them on how to what were the best practices of running social media communities as such. And we were able to, therefore, support them in many ways. And these almost became independent properties. Some of them had a smallish following, as few as maybe 10,000 people, and some of them had over two and a half lakh people, 250,000 people as followers
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 1:38
Overall, the experience of working on an election campaign in India for a side that is so large and so resource rich was an absolutely incredible experience. So in some ways, we knew that this would probably be one of the largest communications outreach in the history of mankind, given the size of the mandate and the size of our country, frankly, and therefore, the implications of our communication strategies were huge. Every single campaign that we rolled out was breaking records
Bhomik Mathur
@Bmat · 0:52
And Score is perhaps the only specialized PR Institute in India. So tell us something about Score. How did you get the idea to start it? What is your vision behind starting this institution? And if anyone is interested in getting a career in PR, how can Score help them
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 2:01
And that's how the idea of Score was born. And since 2015, we have been running a bunch of training programs for youngsters to become a part of the world of public relations as PR consultants. And every year we pick about 20 youngsters from across the country, from various backgrounds, who show an acumen and an attitude towards public relations and reputation management consulting. And we put them through a very rigorous program ten months long on public relations
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 1:17
So, for example, we onboarded a group of very smart youngsters for our spring term, which started last week, and we are looking for candidates for our fall term, which begins in August. And what's interesting about this program is that that throughout the program, you get a lot of opportunities to not only understand what is PR, but also experience it
Bhomik Mathur
@Bmat · 0:32
Thank you so much Hemant, for joining in. This was a wonderful conversation around PR, the work a PR professional does and the dynamics of this extremely energetic and fast paced industry and I'm sure the audience has learnt a lot about PR. So thank you so much for taking our time for this interview. Also, guys, the floor is now open for questions. You can post your questions by replying to the conversation and I Hemit will be answering them
Satyam Tiwari
@satyamtiwari · 0:10
Hello. Hey man. Actually I also have a question to a youngster starting in the industry. Okay. What advice would you give about how to specialize, you know
Tanjot Singh
@whothetansin · 0:09
Hello, sir. Tanjot this side. So I hope that you're having a great time. And my question to you is, when you were in College, who were your role models
Olivia Debroy
@itsoliviaaaa · 0:12
Hi Hayman. So my question is are the traditionally PR firms losing ground to the newer digital agencies? What is the way forward
Gaurav Chauhan
@Gaurav1106 · 0:35
Hi Hemant. Great swell, great insights. Love the entire conversation. I wanted to understand the challenges you probably will face or how challenging is political PR as companies there to the traditional because I do feel that there are a lot of challenges which will go through and have to be on point and pretty much everything you put out there. So if you can tell us a little bit or if you can just highlight the main differences between political and traditional PR, that would be great
Hey Haiman I would like to add on to Godrav's question here we all remember the Chaipa Church campaign I think it was among the most successful campaigns political campaigns that have ever run in India so how have you seen this particular scene evolve that is political PR over the years? What kind of tone and medium? Of course we know that there's a lot of digital play involved now but I would like to understand in terms of the tone, the positioning, the style etc
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 1:42
It's a great lead for communications professionals as well. And it gives you an insight into how the Tata group over all things and what rotten Tata's role has been in that case
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 1:34
And if there is a client with a PR agency that is only currently using PR services, the PR agencies can upset their social media and digital media service to that same client. And it's happening all the time, all around us
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 2:59
But when you do political PR, languages change and dialects change and cultural norms change within a matter of a few hundred kilometers, even within the same city, you have to truly understand what is the mix of demographies, what is the mix of people that you're speaking with? So therefore, there is no same approach that you can apply across different demographics and geographies. There is no one size fits all approach in political PR
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 3:34
There is, however, an impact of social media on the issues that people fight elections on, because social media by nature amplifies the size and impact of different kinds of issues. So a local issue becomes a national issue and a national issue becomes take some time center stage. And that's where the second key difference comes in as well
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 1:11
So invest in your learning, take up internships projects and other initiatives that might come your way, especially with regards to PR. For example, we have built the South Asia Communications Council for Student, where student representatives from South Asian countries, basically India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh come together and they collectively create events and activities to promote PR as a career option. So basically they're job is to do PR for PR and it's a really successful console
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 0:28
Well, I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and answering some of these amazing questions. And I have some questions of my own. And it would be a missed opportunity if I didn't get a chance to understand your perspectives as well. So my question to everybody here, all the young especially, what is your understanding of PR? And what would it take for you to become genuinely interested in pursuing a career in public relations? I would love to know your opinions
Bhomik Mathur
@Bmat · 2:08
So I mean, a person needs the ability to sort of make conversations, ability to reach out to people to make some small talk. So I think there's one of the most critical skills. And that's why probably the sector is also known as the communication sector or the communication feed
Hemant Gaule
@HemantGaule · 0:38
Thank you so much, Bhomik, for that summary. What I really want to know is what the youngsters of today think about public relations. What are some of the reasons for which the youngsters of India would consider PR as a career option? All things reason why I want to know that is because, as Karan pointed out in the introduction to this group, the PR industry is booming