The
Holmes Report CEO Arun Sudhaman talks to Maxim Behar on modern PR, old school,
building teams, social media, ethics and fake news
Arun Sudhaman: Welcome to the Echo Chamber. This
is Arun Sudhaman from the Holmes Report. We are very lucky to be joined today
by Maxim Behar, who is the CEO and Chairman at M3 Communications Group, Inc. in
Bulgaria, and of course, widely known around the global PR industry as the
President of the International Communications Consultancy Organization (ICCO).
Max, welcome to the Echo Chamber podcast.
Maxim Behar: Hello, Arun. Very nice to be with
you in this prominent program.
AS: Thank you very much. So, Max, you
have been doing a lot of traveling around the world for your ICCO duties. It
seems you have been speaking at most of the conferences on PR in various
countries. I am curious to know how you are seeing the growth of the global PR
industry from your perspective.
MB: I don’t call it growth, I would
call it rather change. Because in some countries, which are more advanced in
the social media and in some countries where people do understand the market as
general, understand the changes in our business, there might be growth. But in
other countries where people are not so advanced to change rapidly the way they
do their business, the approach to their customers, it is not necessary to be
growth. But the fact is that nowadays PR business is the most dynamic business
in the world, having in mind that since many, many years, more than 100 years,
since this business existed, there is one change, which happened several years
ago and has never ever happened before. And this is the ownership of media. You
remember, Arun, something like 10 years ago the clients were coming to our
offices, they entered our big conference rooms, they sat down and said: “Mr. PR
expert, please, help us to get our product to the media. Because that was our
main business – how to get to the media, how to make it more attractive, more
interesting, what would be our approach to the journalists, how to attract
them. But these days they don’t need to do this and we don’t need to do this,
because we all own media. The first and most important change to our business,
which happened recently, is that from mediators, from bridges between media and
our clients, now we are much more managers or publishers than mediators. So, it
means that in our offices, we should start learning how to manage media, how to
make content, how to put this content in a way that it is not controversial, it
is honest, ethical and also influential. So, this is really the first important
change – the change of the ownership of the media. But the second change is
happening these days and this is the very fast, almost invisible, but existing
merge between the three main elements of our PR business – and this is
advertising, digital and public relations. And there are many, many opinions
among experts, which of those three businesses will lead the future business,
the future merged business. And I really think it will be the Public Relations.
AS: Now, it is interesting what you
have talked about in terms of the change. But I wonder in some of the less
mature PR markets, that you and I are both familiar with, is it that much of a
change, or is it just kind of what they have known about what have the PR
started with? Perhaps, they are more comfortable with this new reality, because
they haven’t had to change.
MB: It is a change. It is a big
change. Sometimes, even very often the clients don’t understand that we operate
in a different communications environment, because the commercial environment
very often is the same. And when they approach us, and negotiate with us, PR
companies or experts, they really prefer that we operate with the same,
old-fashioned ways and instruments, and tools – just to invite journalists, to
have a media breakfast, to start convincing them how good is the product or
service, but in fact this is a change. Because even the traditional media, they
take their news from the social media, as social media are much faster, much
more independent, which is their biggest advantage, and also I would say much
more influential than the traditional media.
AS: It is interesting because it seems
to me that these changes require in many PR markets perhaps a different
consideration of the types of skills, and the types of talent, that work within
whether it is PR agencies or communications departments. How do you see in that
play out? Do you feel like that the industry is doing a good job in bringing in
different skills?
MB: You are absolutely right. In our
offices we observe total change of the skills which the stuff or the managers
should have regarding the new way of doing business. First of all, we should
emphasize very much on the speed. In order to react in a high speed in a PR
situation or crisis we must be absolutely well prepared. Something which
happened 10 years ago in 10 minutes now we don’t even have 10 seconds to solve
it. It requires a lot of preparation and a lot of simulation training of
different PR cases which may happen. And another example, 10-12 years ago the
clients were having crisis in the morning in the newspaper and then usually we
had about 10 hours to solve this crisis – to had a press conference or a press
message, meet the client, discuss with the team. But if we had 10 hours in the
past, now we don’t have even 10 seconds. Once the bad news is online it may
spread in a way that it will go beyond our expectation, it will go
internationally, it will reach many more countries, it may hurt the
international business plans of the client. So the advanced preparation is one
of the most needed requirements, which we have in our offices. Secondly,
simplicity is something, which is very crucial. Nowadays we are overloaded with
international news, different information, social media, some of this
information is fake, even if not majority of this information might be fake
depending on the case. So we must create a very simple way to differentiate the
most important news, the priorities we have in a way that our client feels in
good and secure hands. So providing very fast service to them, emphasizing on
the priorities of the projects, is something which is the base of the modern
PR, not talking excellent knowledge how to create content, how to create a
story, how to make this story a real one, influential one, but also very
interesting and serving the client. Because I know a lot of people are dealing
now with a storytelling and in every second forum or summit or conference I go
storytelling is obligatory one of the main topics, but in the end of the day
storytelling is nothing else than journalism. Because we are journalists. I
used to be a journalist for about 20 years. And what were we doing in the
newspapers, radio stations or TV channels? We were creating stories – nice
stories, good stories, interesting, catchy. So that is the job of the PR expert
these days. And going back to my vision or point of view that now we should be
masters of the content it covers really the biggest change.
AS: It seems that in the kind of
skills that are required there are as you mentioned a change. As you may not
always be that easy to find people who can do all of those things. What does it
look when you hire new people?
MB: Usually I am training them,
because I don’t think the old-school PR professionals or experts might be
changed very easily. So the new generation, the Generation F, which I call them
up to the title of my book a couple of years ago, Generation F, which comes from
“Facebook”, “Fear”, and one more word with four letters. A lot of young people
say “We don’t care”. They say: (sorry for the language) “Fuck off. We don’t
care. We don’t want to live in this world, we would like to live in another
world with different relations, we don’t want to be approached by fake
profiles, by fake news, by trolls. So the second word was “fear”, because a lot
of people experience a lot of fear from the new media environment. Because they
are not used to this. In the past we used to have one TV channel and one
newspaper, and that was it. But the Generation F, the new generation, which
manages very well with the new environment – I think is very easy to be
trained. And also in our business I see a very weak enlargement of the need of
professionals in different fields. And I usually say I can make from a doctor a
good PR expert in 6 months. But I cannot make from a PR expert a doctor. So it
means that I hire doctors, engineers, financial experts, and train them in our
offices to learn how to manage with the social media and the public
communications and it is a much easier way than to rely on (sorry to say that)
the university education. What I see recently is a huge gap between the
university education in PR or marketing and our practice. And this is because,
as a trend all over the world, education is moving 20 miles/h and in our
offices, in case studies, in practice we are moving with 100 miles/h. And it is
not the problem of two speeds, it is a problem of the fact that if they are moving
with 20 miles/h and we are moving with 100 miles/h, then this gap between us is
getting bigger and bigger and bigger, so in any case we hire a person graduated
in Marketing or PR anywhere in the world, and I still need to train this person
6 to 8 months in the office, to explain the practical approaches, the practical
ways to make PR successful and to make our clients happy.
AS: So when you are looking for
someone to hire, even if you are going to train them, what are the
characteristics of people, who you are looking for?
MB: It might be weird for you, but I
will tell you now. When I have an interview I usually look at the eyes of the
candidate and I have one and only one request to the candidate – and this is
“sparks in the eyes. Because if the young man or woman have these sparks in the
eyes – it means they are ambitious to make a career, to handle the business, to
be better and better professionals. It means that everything might be fixed.
Because I can make from an amateur a professional from 6 to 8 months, but I
cannot make from a lazy person a hardworking one. I cannot make from someone,
who creates intrigues within the team, a team worker. So these are
characteristics that most probably cannot be changed. So for me, of course
English language, and some communication skills are the basics, which I am not
even talking about, but when I see that a person has a good attitude to the
business, which I called “sparks in the eyes” and would like to make a
successful career, then for me it is more than enough. Nowadays you can teach
very easily your employees.
AS: That is a great point and I think
a useful one for anyone who wants to have a successful career in this industry
should bear in mind. So you mentioned Generation F – it seems to me that when
you write the next edition of that book you can add another four letter word
beginning with “F” – “Fake”. What do you thing the fake news era means for the
PR practitioners?
MB: It is a very good point because
unfortunately the word “fake” has been circulating in our business much more
aggressively in the past 1 to 2 years. And the reason, first of all, is fake
news which became much more visible during the US elections last year, but also
were existing and still are existing in many countries in the local elections
and they concern mainly politicians and politics. I think that this is a
problem for the PR business, because we must unite ourselves, we must declare
to the society that the professional PR business has to do it transparently,
ethically, of course, to take engagement, to take the full commitment that PR
professionals will never use trolls, will never use nicknames, will never work
illegally on Wikipedia, which happens very often, will never try to influence
the society with illegal approaches, or approaches which are very much on the
border of legally and illegally. So this is an important task again because PR
experts in the past years started to create content. We are the content
managers. If we create content and if we are journalists from a certain point
of view, because it is a journalism – even to write a short post on Twitter, or
even to write a post on your Facebook wall. It is also journalism. So, it is
very actual for ICCO, we are discussing with our Board and our Executive
Committee to launch a code of content, which will make all the real PR
professionals to commit themselves that they will stick to the code of content
and whenever they write content it will be only transparent, only the truth,
only the real one. So if we manage to convince our colleagues from the PR
business worldwide it will be a great step ahead.
AS: Is this something that you are
looking to do via ICCO because it seems that it would be a good vehicle to
develop this kind of a code of conduct?
MB: We have a draft Code of conduct
written by me to discuss within the Executive Committee, and I would like to
put it to the attention of the Board very soon. I also had long and extensive
talks with my colleague from IPRA, who you know very well – Bart de Vries, the
President of IPRA, so we agreed both ICCO and IPRA, that if we have a good
basis for such a code of conduct or code of content we will sign it together.
ICCO and IPRA, I guess, can cover something like of 60-70% of the PR business
all over the world. And it would be a good message. But again I don’t expect
that the politicians will sign and promise something. I don’t expect that the
media will say we will keep the ethical standards, we will write only the good
truth and the reality. Or they can say it is OK and they fully support this.
But I think that also it is a code of the PR business to say a word, to make an
international appeal that we should keep the standards of honest and ethical
business.
AS: Tell us a little bit about your
work at ICCO. I think it would be useful perhaps for our listeners to get a
better understanding of what ICCO does and perhaps what benefits it could bring
to agencies that are part of the organization.
MB: The International Communications
Consultancy Organization is a great community, which I am involved within the
Executive Committee and the board for the past 12-13 years. And I had the
privilege and the amazing chance to follow the development of ICCO, which
nowadays unites 48 countries. And we unite the PR associations with more than
4,000 company’s members of these associations. Which means that our voice is
getting stronger and stronger every year. And I think that we really do
represent the PR communities all over the world. And it is very worth to
whatever country or organization or PR agency joins us even just of the fact to
be a member of this big group of experts and professionals. With our awards,
ICCO Global Awards, we gather more and more excellent projects every year, like
you do in the Holmes Awards and the Holmes project, which is much more advanced
than ours in ICCO, not only because of the years, but because of the coverage
of the topics. I think that we have the good chemistry and the good way to work
together, to cooperate. So all those contests, all those award ceremonies at
the end of the day are good benchmarks, public and professional benchmarks, for
all our members to know how their achievements are progressive and innovative.
Secondly, we are organizing every year the ICCO Summit. A lot of people,
hundreds of people are joining the Summit exchanging their opinions, but also
meeting and exchanging business cards, talking to each other, getting to know
the latest trends in the business. So belonging to the voice of the
international PR community, keeping a good professional and ethical standards,
is a big advantage for each company or national association.
AS: Max, thank you so much, not just
for taking part in this podcast, but frankly for all the work you do on behalf
of the global PR community. I am aware that you do most of this for no payment
at all, and that is very important work. I hope to see you soon and indeed it
is a good news that, of course, the Holmes report is working closely with ICCO
now in terms of our own global events calendar.
MB: I would like to thank you
personally and also to my good friend Paul Holmes for the excellent
cooperation, for what you are doing for the PR community, because you are
amazing innovators, for the event management and also for the networking
between the communities. So without you, guys, maybe without us as well, but
without you the PR business in the world will be completely different.
AS: Well, Max, you are too kind. Thank
you very much. I hope to see you soon. I am sure I will. Thank you for taking
part in our little chat today. We will be back on the Echo Chamber soon. Thank
you.
MB: Thank you, Arun. Bye, bye
*Maxim Behar is a leading global PR expert and practitioner. He is President of International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO), the largest PR community in the world, also lecturer in tens international forums, summits and conferences, member of many international Boards, including the Board of the PR Museum in New York. Maxim is also Honorary Consul General of the Seychelles in Bulgaria.
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