I have been recently invited to author a PR blog on Indian PR Forum blogsite. Below is the copy of the post.
It is on the link: http://indianprforum.
wordpress.com/2012/03/12/we-
We are like this only!
It has
been established that in India we do public relations, using the
personal influence model. This model states that public relations
practitioners try to establish personal relationships, friendships, if
possible with key individuals in the media, government or political and
activist groups.These relationships with key people were known as
contacts from whom favours could be taken.Krishnamurthy Sriramesh has
done some extensive studies in the 1990s and has further developed this
model. In 1991, he identified a technique which led to the further
development of the personal influence model, it was called hospitality
relations.The main idea behind hospitality relations was to build a
strong bond with journalists or other individuals which could later help
in important decision making situations.He added in his observations
that a public relations practitioner working in India said that 60% of
the reason a news release gets published is because it has its roots in
personal influence and only 40% has news value. Thus personal influence
model played an important role in practicing media relations, a function
of public relations.
I
did a research sometime back on the effect of the rise in regional
journalism on regional public relations. The study was presented at an
international conference organised by AMIC (http://www.amic.org.sg/) in
Hyderabad in 2011. A significant finding was that most of the public
relations practitioners felt that there was an increase in public
relations practitioners servicing the regional media, though the trend
for all organisations to hire more practitioners was only slowly rising.
Respondents from all categories interviewed such as public relations
practitioners, academicians and journalists gave their views on the
education and skills, understanding of regional cultures, to name a few,
required by current and future practitioners while practicing regional
public relations.
A
thought that arises from the above discussion is that is there any
practice in public relations which is peculiar to a region in India
which is clearly distinct from other regions? Have you observed this in
media relations, event management, CSR or any other functions of public
relations? So for example will a public relations activity conducted in
Maharashtra, influenced by its regional culture, be different from say
another state like Gujarat or Tamil Nadu? Do we have a 'regional public
relations practice' which needs to be studied?
What has been your experience?
