Economic Times (Click on image to enlarge)
Track2Realty Exclusive: A leading Indian real estate company recently invited pitch from the PR agencies for its prestigious account. The short listed PR agencies were given a level playing field and there had been nothing to suggest any element of favouritism when one of the PR Agencies clinched the deal on the merits of its exposure in the given industry.
It looked like a normal competitive pitch where one of the agencies got the account on its sheer merit, read the ‘Case Study’ of the past. It was so till the time another agency which had lost it in the competitive bid poached for one of its key professionals. After that it was an expose of sorts.
Switching to the new agency made the professional change his loyalties too, and hence it was brought to the light that the Agency which bagged the prized account was actually handling the account of the competing brand as well which had a clash of interest with this client.
The greed of the agency had made them conceal this information despite of the fact that they had signed the contract with the clause that they will not handle the account of any competing brand till the completion of their agreement.
The expose was not confined to the board room of the realty company. It was rather selectively leaked to the media and hence there were newspaper reports on the subject. The agency was immediately summoned by the developer.
To the utter surprise of one and all, the agency tried to defend its act by reiterating that they are not handling any PR campaign of the rival group and are actually taking care of just the Investor Relations for them through a subsidiary company managed by different set of people. And what does this Investor Relations mean?
To the best of my knowledge as a communication professional, it means issuing Press Release and sharing other financial information with the audience who are key stake holders and have invested money in the company through equity. Well, if Investor Relations is not part of Public Relations, then I suppose even Event Management and Public Affairs too are not part of the PR business.
The question is whether public relation is the weakest link in the brand management of real estate. Real estate, as a matter of fact, has been very PR greedy.
Unfortunately, what stands for the PR is neither clear to the developer nor the PR practitioners and hence it stands at a juncture where it is neither a management function of researching, communicating and collaborating with public, nor is it building any mutually beneficial relationships. It is just distributing the press releases and follows the age-old adage of “Advertising is what you pay for and PR is what you pray for.”
…to be continued
