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!

IS PR Worth Doing?

The only way we can answer this question is by actually showing that what we do is effective and has made a difference.  Has  the program or project that we embarked on yielded positive, or negative results, in terms of numbers that will show, for instance, changes in our targets' attitudes,  or perceptions and other forms of response? Or, as they say,  has the needle begun to move?

Measurement and evaluation, quite a growing concern in PR practice,  gains added importance these days. When the chips are down, as in when budgets are lower than they have ever been,  PR practitioners must even more clearly prove that their programs are garnering the  desired results. 

Dr. Walter K. Lindemann wrote and updated a few years ago a paper (published by the Institute of Public Relations) setting guidelines  for  measuring the  effectiveness of PR programs and activities. Dr. Lindenmann  promptly clears up what measurement and evaluation  aims at: "to improve and enhance the relationships that organizations maintain with key constituents."

It is a learned enlightening paper that I feel is even more relevant today. Dr. Lindenmann writes, for instance: "There is no one, simple, all-encompassing research tool,  technique or methodology that can be relied on to measure and evaluate PR effectiveness... Be wary of attempts to compare PR effectiveness to advertising effectiveness... The PR measurement and evaluation process should never be carried in isolation, by focusing only on the PR components. Wherever and whenever possible, it is always important to link what is planned, and what is accomplished through PR, to the overall goals, objectives, strategies and tactics of the organization as a whole."

Time was when we were able to keep Clients largely or solely on the strength of the media presence that we generated for them.  That time is past: now we are called upon to deliver a more rigorous discipline to the process of deciding on whether what we do in PR really makes sense and gets positive results. This is just fair. 

PR for Our Hometowns

I have sent letters to the mayor of the hometown of my late father, where I have a mango farm and a house, offering PR services to the town, pro bono. Before this, during the term of a previous mayor, I had called on the tourism officer, again offering my help in organizing visits to the town. I never got any reply. It's a pity, because the town, I believe, has a lot of things it can and should be proud of. This is the land of my father and forebears.

This is an area where PR can play a role. Our towns, cities and provinces, and their people, are what make our country. They are where native initiative and ingenuity are put into play. These are where our natural resources and the bulk of our manpower reside. They are the sources and enhancers of our culture. They are where our growth as an economy should be nurtured and developed.

And yet what and how much do we know of them?

PR should help our towns put across to the rest of the country the initiatives they are taking to further economic growth, and how they develop their resources and industries. PR can help enhance in our towns and provinces pride in their history and the accomplishments of their people. How many towns in our country have their own museums, or public libraries? Why do we allow old houses and buildings to fall into decay? How many of us PR practitioners have given of our time and resources to the towns of our fathers?

PR folks will need to provide their services for free, especially to their little towns for these will have no funds for the kind of thing that we do. The push that PR can make in our towns and provinces could, however, well be the impetus that would stir so many of them from drowsy anonymity.

My father's hometown? I think I will do PR for it, in any case.

The Engaged CEO

What a world the CEO has to operate in today! Whereas the bulk of his job in the past required not much more than assuring that his or her company operated at a profit and stayed out of trouble,  now he has these,  and  infinitely a lot more. The CEO of today has to be a conscious leader, not only of his company,  but also of the community and the society that he lives in. 

The CEO of today has to be a deeply engaged man. He must be guardian and enhancer of the values and vision of his company, apart from being insurer that it makes money for its stake holders. 

The engaged CEO must lead in mapping out long-term plans, but also, especially during difficult times, in the day-to-day, to a certain extent. On the CEO rests the responsibility that the corporation survives and thrives. He must, therefore, be the one to marshall all the creative forces in the organization. 

Above all, he must insure that these are made to work according to its basic values and vision. The engaged CEO must be in many places, not the least of which is his community and society.

He is not a selfish top-performing potentate, but a sharer in a society of many others like him. He is ideally thoughtful and studious, committed and totally given to the task at hand as well as the future. He is of the likes of Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala and Manuel V. Pangilinan, who are deeply engaged CEOs, excellent in their turf, and fully giving of themselves to the society that they are a part of.

Building Alliances in PR

The signs of unwellness are coming in droves---bailouts of big international corporations,  layoffs, lower growth rates, lower spending and   reduced incomes. We should view this with great concern, and as  a warning that in our business of PR, we cannot be sure  of how long  we will be insulated. 

When our Clients are themselves feeling the pinch, how long can  we stay secure? Some of our brethren in the advertising agency business have announced that they will let go of managers and staff.

One lesson I have learned through the years which has helped see us through hard times is keeping and strengthening alliances. Clients are our first allies, and they prove of huge value when the chips are down. When we serve them right, they give us more business, because it is in their interest to do so. Why would they  look over the fence when you are here, ready and able to help?

We also go out of the country to seek allies, and luckily we have found them--individual clients, organizations that can refer us to prospects,  and other PR and other advertising agencies. Even old Clients from decades ago, or old schoolmates, and relatives and friends, have helped us find and develop business. They write about us, or tell their friends about us. 

A PR Agency can thrive only with an excellent track record.  A  network of alliances, both in and outside our home territory is part of its corporate asset that will keep enhancing that record.