| Crisis Communication Planning IS essential to the trust-centric Arab business environment
The UAE’s Public Relations (PR) industry continues to show signs of vibrancy and increased productivity amidst a global financial crisis that has managed to affect almost all businesses in the international and local market. As the demand for market driven campaigns is increasing, the industry has seen a dramatic shift wherein consumers are now exercising more awareness and influence over the products that they decide on purchasing and patronizing.
The current economic downturn has resulted in the emergence of consumers that now carefully analyzes the purchases they make and thinks more about their needs versus wants before buying a product. Whereas before the downturn, the power of brands ruled over, consumers have now gained the upper hand by being more conscious of what they want to buy. This shift has challenged PR and Marketing agencies to change their approach—shifting gears from sending out one general message to suit all audiences to sending out more direct and prevalent messages to carefully constructed consumer segments. This challenge reminds these agencies of the important roles they will have to play during the crisis: which is to provide their clients with key creative concepts and out- of-the-box ideas.
Complementing the need to be more consumer-centric, the UAE’s PR industry is also faced with the challenge of embracing newer technologies and utilizing these as affective tools that can be incorporated into their concepts and campaigns. The advent of digital media and key components like internet and mobile connectivity has given companies a medium abundant with marketing opportunities. Social networking tools have allowed PR agencies to deliver messages to consumers through an unconventional route that takes advantage of the consumer trend of people wanting to belong to a greater community.
Agencies based in the UAE are in the process of equipping themselves for the digital forefront, with a basic understanding that although traditional practices are still preferred, more and more companies are now requesting for digital and social media strategies. The country has seen campaigns conceived and delivered via this new channel in consumer and business-to-business segments that have reaped positive results.
Utilizing digital media to its full advantage acknowledges the success that online PR has achieved since being introduced a few years back. Although still considered to be a fairly new practice in the PR trade, online PR has become a parallel coverage platform that works just as effectively like its counterparts in traditional media. Agencies today can attest to the immense advantages presented by online PR; press & photo releases being sent faster via email to multiple recipients; quicker publication results; wider international exposure; better two-way communication between the agency and the journalist and easier news monitoring and archiving to name a few. Online PR has given agencies a friendly and highly effective medium that asks few questions, demands little and provides great value for money.
According to the Chinese Zodiac, the year 2010 will fall under the “Year of the Tiger”. The gung-ho attitude of the region’s Public Relations and Marketing industry shows many similarities with the tiger: embodying strength, cunningness and the willingness to survive in its immediate environment. Coupled with the international market’s attempts to recover from the crisis, the year 2010 will challenge the PR industry to show strength and the ability to survive by creating more consumer-focused campaigns that aim to bring the message directly to the intended consumer market.
Our company, Orient Planet, believes that this consumer-oriented shift within the PR industry will help us to maintain our leadership in the industry. We are achieving this by working closely with our clients to show more ‘mileage’ from their campaigns, as well as utilizing newer tactics such as digital and social media tools through a diverse clientele spread out across the UAE and the rest of the Middle East. The true strength of an agency lies in the ability to engage consumers with the brand and not the other way around.
Agencies should be wary of the growing presence of fly-by-night companies that can harm the PR industry’s growth and development. A traditional Korean proverb imparts, “Where there are no tigers, a wildcat is very self-important.” With major and legitimate PR and Marketing agencies improving their offerings and becoming more innovative, dubious companies offering less than satisfactory PR services will be forced out of business, thus clearing out the playing field of obstructions that can only confuse existing and potential clients. However, as the proverb implies, in the absence of tigers, or in this situation, stronger PR and Marketing competitors, more of these suspicious and fake PR companies will continue to flourish.
The entry of the year 2010 will involve many companies and organizations trying to regain their footing from the crisis. The optimistic attitude to recuperate will be accompanied by an increased demand for more PR and Marketing initiatives. With this in mind, the UAE’s PR and Marketing industry should live up to the challenge of creating content that speaks directly to its audience and launch benchmark campaigns that focuses on its intended audience.
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