Consolidation in PR- What the industry needs today?

As a leader of a Public Relations company, you are certainly playing the role of a fire-fighter, dealing with pressing emergencies for your clients. As you spend most of your productive hours situating your team in the new remote working arrangements, interacting with clients, and still trying to shore up your situation, what could be the way forward, the new normal post lockdown?

In the past, many PR agency groups have increasingly consolidated and brought together synergistic offers. Sometimes they are led by the needs of clients, who prefer dealing with a single agency partner, the other times, like the situation we are in right now, it makes complete sense to join hands and collaborate on our strengths, which could be as diverse as vernacular superiority and location advantage or as strategic as local media relations.

Here’s how you can prepare yourself for an evolving and unpredictable future:

Accept reality :

It is tempting to use data points to convince that all is well with your world and things will be back to normal. Gear up to adapt by being focused on the crisis we are in. Gather information and prepare scenarios- a base case, a bad case, and a worse case. Stay as honest and fact-based as possible.

Scenario Planning: Ask What-if questions:

As you will start coming to terms with the macro environment- huddle with your core team and ask what-if questions- for your present as well as future clients. What if you require to improve scale, integrate compatible capabilities to maintain a healthy revenue baseline, and give the best PR support to your clients?

Scale-up and be open to look out for synergies:

Remote working has been like an eye-opener for many in the PR industry where traditions still demand face to face, in-person interactions. By collaborating with an agency that is in the same geographic location as your clients, you can ensure that you provide the client with a first-hand, value-added relationship without compromising safety and health concerns.

Finding the right fit with an agency which has same values as yours and has considerable experience and proven expertise in the verticals that you wish to focus on will be the right strategy for scaling up of your operations rather than setting up a one or two people office far away from your area of operations.

As the world is moving towards a new normal, embracing change, being agile and yet maintain the PR spirit at the core of your business is paramount and a win-win strategy for both clients as well as public relations.

About the author:

Shiv Shankar – He is the Executive Director & Founder of K2 Communications. Under his astute leadership, K2 Communications has developed into a frontrunner among PR agencies that incessantly delivers excellent regional and national PR support to clients belonging to various sectors including government, IT, education, consumer, and healthcare.

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