This episode features Smriti, an experienced integrated marketing communications professional with 12+ years of expertise in delivering exceptional public relations campaigns across diverse industries. According to her, collecting customer data through primary research can facilitate effective communication of the brand’s story through PR and media.

Introduction

0:35 I have 12 years of experience in public relations. I started my career as an intern at Genesis Burson Marsteller, which is now GPCW. I then became a trainee and later moved to 20:20 MSL where I met my current managing director. I went back to Genesis Marsteller for two years before joining The Mavericks, where I have been for almost four years now. I was among the first 10 employees when I joined The Mavericks. We started as a reputation advisory firm, but we have since evolved into an integrated communications agency that values data. We have a research team that helps us measure impact and tell stories effectively. We take a stakeholder-led approach and work with multiple channels, not just media. Our goal is to help brands deliver their purpose through effective communication strategies.

Favourite Campaign  

2:34 So, in my experience working with different brands, I’ve found that the first eight years are all about getting the communications right. I’ve had the opportunity to work with corporate clients from various industries, including technology and entertainment. One of my favorite clients was Zoho, which I handled for about three years while I was at 20:20 MSL. Initially, I used to view PR solely from the perspective of building a brand’s perception. However, my understanding of PR’s effectiveness evolved when I joined Mavericks. One of the first projects we worked on was an announcement for a startup in the conversational AI space regarding their series B funding. Instead of just issuing a press release and conducting interviews, we decided to break down the story angles and target the right publications and stakeholders. This approach was very effective, and the client saw a significant increase in website traffic by 2,041%. This campaign is still close to my heart as it showed me the power of PR for a company or campaign.

Important metrics

5:28 I consciously avoid promising any vanity metrics to my clients. Vanity metrics such as share of voice, competition, and brand name mentions in headlines can be misleading. Instead, I combine them with powerful metrics that truly impact business objectives. I always ask my clients about their business priorities to curate a list of metrics that matter to them. These metrics could include potential leads, customer helpline calls, engagement rates, perception shifts, and audits. I have noticed that my clients are no longer just corporate communications or public relations experts. They are also marketing professionals with OKRs and KPIs to deliver. Therefore, it is crucial for me to pair my metrics with their business objectives. PR is now a part of marketing, and everyone in India understands that. It is important to note that the CXO community within organizations is closely monitoring PR outcomes, as it ties back into marketing. Therefore, our role as PR professionals has evolved to support not only corporate communications but also marketing and sales objectives. We take our role very seriously and strive to provide data-driven insights that support the goals of our clients’ CXO community. Internally, we use data to measure our effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. We track media coverage, social media engagement, website traffic, and other relevant metrics to measure our impact. This helps us make informed decisions and improve our strategies for future campaigns.

Impact of Data Integration on Campaigns and Measurement in the Next Two Years  

8:31 I believe that in the next two years, data will play a crucial role in changing the way we tell brand stories. There are two aspects to this: using data effectively to tell a brand’s story and measuring the effectiveness of that story for the business. I think we should ideally allocate around 30% of our efforts towards this goal and work on defining it internally and for our clients as well. As enablers for our clients, it’s important to arm them with the necessary information and proof to push their case internally. At my company, we use primary research by collecting data from our client’s customer cohorts to understand their perception of the brand or industry. This helps us have insightful conversations with the client and put the story out there via PR and media. Our research team has played a vital role in co-creating stories with clients. Additionally, we have started working on gathering data from our clients’ platforms to understand their impact and create stories from it. For example, we recently released a report for a blue-collar workforce management platform that had 1,000,001 million data points, which helped us tell their story effectively and plant stories with every publication curated carefully.

Favorite tools for generating insights from data  

14:43 You know the answer to this, but I must tell you that we’ve found the magic with Wizikey. It’s been so powerful in telling the client what impact has been made. A lot of it is still vanity metrics, but what’s happened ever since we started using Wizikey is that we can change our strategy in real-time. We can see what’s working for our peers and what’s not working for us, and it’s changed the game for us in every way possible. The data is getting updated real-time, and most of our team members have been able to figure out how the dashboard works. It’s been very effective for us in changing our strategy based on insights. When we go back to the client with a suggestion, it’s become far easier for us as an agency.

Role of PR in recession  

16:15 I think the role of PR is going to be about building a very positive perception about certain brands, given the current climate. While the rest of the world is going through a recession, India is in a fairly decent space right now. We are thriving in the ecosystem that we’re in at the moment, and PR has been able to help build that imagery to a large extent. So, how do we continue doing that effectively across sectors? Communications itself has evolved from post to barriers; it isn’t restricted to just TV or print papers anymore, but it’s out there on the internet. How do we tell our stories in the best way possible that will resonate with every single person who’s going to be reading them? This is the power of storytelling, and that’s really the role that PR plays today – effective storytelling. If I call myself a storyteller or a story communicator, how do I do this? Very consciously, by keeping in mind who’s going to be reading it. I think that’s going to be the role of PR during these times for a short time.