PR Agencies Seem Unperturbed

Many of us in the PR Agency business were in tenterhooks at the beginning of this year. Would the recession in the U.S., whose impact was going to be felt in the Philippines,  send Clients bidding goodbye, especially when many of them had announced they were letting people go and expected  lower sales and revenues.

Well, it may still be early days, and dire events can still happen. But the fact that they have not reminds us that things often do not turn out to be as bad as they are foretold. 

Clients press on with their projects, and we continue to receive expressions of interest, some from other countries. Other PR agencies seem unperturbed as well, busy as they are: we see them quite often in bids for new accounts.

The PR Agency business is one particularly gifted to ride out rough patches. We have a large array of services that do not require large media buys. Our budgets are closely monitored by Clients and are, therefore,  more easily aligned to their needs and resources. The outcomes of our campaigns are accounted for,  and measured against budgets.

The way to deal with a troubled economy is  not to be deterred by it. During these times, we try to update our organization's skills and create more cohesive and hard-hitting profit centers. We rationalize our costs and create efficiencies and, always, improve Oh, let us make ourselves more widely known,  market ourselves a bit. Make prospects appreciate the fact that PR provides immediate service but also long-term value.

A crisis is not a time to wail and gnash teeth. It is when we get ourselves readier and tougher for the long hard race.

Blooming Bukidnon

I am one of those funny benighted guys, who early on chose to see more of the outside world than my own. For this,  I have been trying to make up. Over the past Holy Week, we saw a bit of the lovely province of Bukidnon, specifically, of its capital city, Malaybalay. I had suggested Bukidnon, because when I was in grade school, we would sing a song that had in it a line about the beautiful mountains of Bukidnon.

Bukidnon is deep in fecund  Northern Mindanao. From  the airport in Cagayan de Oro,   a car drove us up to the Benedictine Monastery of the Transfiguration, in  Barangay San Juan Jose, Malaybalay. We joined a spiritual retreat up to Easter Sunday. The Monastery, cradled in a crib of green beautiful mountains and  undulating hills,  is bewitching: quiet, gorgeous and uplifting. I came for the mountains as well, and I had them and listened to them.

Bukidnon is one Mindanao's most lushly endowed provinces, in mineral  resources,  and fertile soil that yields pineapples, rice, corn,  bananas, vegetables, coffee and many other bountiful crops. The Benedictine monks plant rice and corn and coffee, which help support their mission and their good works. Bukidnon is one of the greenest places I have ever been to. 

A pity that Bukidnon is a largely unknown place,  even amongst us Filipinos. It does not even have a significant  airport of its own. Being more widely known should put it on the radar screens of potential domestic and potential investors, say, in hotels or bed-and-breakfasts and tourist facilities.

The monks spoke to us of little Easters in our lives, how and why we must find and keep them. 

My family and I got  quite a few of them, up in the glorious mountains of Bukidnon.

 

Thinking Holy Week

I have never read it, but all this past half century, since a professor of mine, who had completed a short course at Oxford and became, and still is, a Carmelite nun, mentioned  the Gerald Vann lecture on The Two Trees, I have been captivated by the image. Gerald Vann,  a Benedictine priest, was a celebrated British  theologian. 

In 1948, he delivered a series of  broadcast lectures entitled The Two Trees. There are two trees in our lives: the first  in the Garden of Eden,  from which we fell from grace, and the other, the tree on Calvary, where Christ met his martyrdom.  

We struggle through life, with our imperfections and sins, allured by the glow of the first tree.  Its green boughs and refreshing shade entice us and we reap unearned riches, lose our honor us human beings, and "die in a ditch like a dog" (Pasternak). 

Or, with faith and grace, we win the salvation of the second tree. We suffer for our sins, but we are given the means  and the power to renew ourselves. 

The beautiful thing about the Passion of Christ and the joy of  Easter is that they are ours to garner and be enriched with. 

We do not have to  be saints or heroes; we just have to be our humble, believing and paying-our-dues selves. We have to be giving and forgiving folks, generous with our belief in the goodness of others and contrite when we make fools of ourselves, which is most of the time.

I was a boy when I first  heard of the Two Trees. The two trees stand tall, each with its promise, and a beautiful picture of the sadness, and also, and finally, the glory of the life and passion of Christ. Happy Easter!