PCG Blog
12
Nov 2020
How 2020 Changed PR
Amulya Nagaraj
January is a time for new beginnings, plans and looking at what you want to achieve in the year. 2020 began much the same way. A lot of exciting new plans, ventures and ideas. Many of these were expected to roll out from April 2020, as these strategies usually do. The beginning of the financial year, new budgets and exciting possibilities.
However, when we were planning for the year, most of us failed to consider a small news piece that was trending. We did not think, with all the advances in modern science, a pandemic would be possible.
The last time a pandemic struck the world, it was a very different place. The movement of goods and people was not as fast. Information sharing and flow were slower. Technology, the way we know it now, did not exist. Therefore, when COVID-19 struck, it was an eye-opener.
COVID-19 forced us to reconsider some choices we have made in the past. And the way we want to map our future.
The Changes In The Last Decade
Before we delve into how PR itself was changed by COVID-19, we need to look at the direction communications was moving in over the last decade.
Print media, which was always viewed positively in India, was on the decline in the rest of the world. In India, however, the mere growth of ads gave it the aura of ‘booming’. The real picture was slightly different.
The average price of a newspaper in India was about Rs. 4.00 between 2012 - 2015. The cost of running a newspaper? Much more. No publication could truly be profitable with just subscriptions alone. They needed advertisers to be profitable. And if advertisers found cheaper, easier ways to find their customer aka social media, why would they continue to invest heavily in print advertising. And if the advertisers plugged the plug on print advertising, how would newspapers and magazines truly survive?
The shift was already happening, even if not so obvious. Digital media was becoming a tad more popular and all it needed was more people to jump onto the bandwagon. There were a few challenges to this - primarily related to internet penetration.
In 2011, Facebook had about 25 million users in India. Active users had grown by 132% from Dec 2010.
Whatsapp, which was launched on Android in 2010, began to catch on in India as well. By 2013, Whatsapp had 20 million users in India. In 2020, India is Whatsapp's largest market, with many people considering it a 'source of news'.
Over 60% of people today get their news from 'social' media - be it Facebook, Twitter or platforms like Whatsapp.
Twitter, the conversation starter, took a little longer to get established in India. In 2015, Twitter accounted for a mere 17% of all social platforms in the country.
What we really needed was cheaper internet. One GB still cost nearly Rs. 100. People hoarded data and were more dependent on broadband at home. Why would you spend money to watch a video of 50 MB or more when you could wait to get home. You were connected but not truly.
And then Jio happened. September 2016 - a red-letter day in telecom across the world.
With Jio, the face of internet access changed forever. With the muscle power of Reliance, Jio offered nearly 6 months of free data and voice services, acquiring 16 million subscribers in Month One. By February 2017, a mere 5 months later, Jio had over 100 million subscribers. Bharti Airtel, the largest telecom operator, had 273 million subscribers at the end of March 2017.
Jio also created a ripple effect in the industry, compelling other telecom operators to drop their prices to stay relevant. Suddenly, almost every other Indian could access the internet - it cost as much as a packet of peanuts. With the advent of cheaper smartphones, and a network across the country - internet access for India was now a reality.
There were a few other interesting changes happening around the same time. Hotstar, the first OTT Platform in India, launched in 2015. Netflix entered India in early 2016. And Amazon Prime followed towards the end of the year.
True, much of this could read as people were watching more things online. But the underlying trend was about choice. Most of India is a ‘one television set’ - which means, content consumption was primarily oriented towards what everyone wanted to watch. However, with the availability of cheap data, people had a choice to get online and choose what they wanted to watch.
In a country that is starved of personal space and choice, suddenly people had the ability to choose what they wanted to watch even in a cramped room.
Additionally, with the growth of Whatsapp, Telegram and Sharechat, people could also share other content. Vox pop videos were becoming popular. Video bloggers were the new influencers. If you could say it via a video, you would. Every topic had a vox pop video.
By 2019, nearly 70% of the English-speaking audience in India accessed news mainly on their smartphones, via social media or search. A mere 18% accessed news directly through the portals. However, people over the age of 35 tend to mix it up - accessing both print and online news equally.
Changing News Formats
The growth of social media and changing patterns of news consumption impacted PR storytelling. In early 2018, while brands still wanted to be featured in print media, there was a growth in 'new media' formats and demand to be featured on these platforms. News consumption was high and people were not looking only towards newspapers or even just news websites.
Every news piece was dissected and disseminated in so many ways. Newspapers, Podcasts, Youtubers, bloggers, Micro-bloggers, other influencers, commentary pieces, video messages and so many more avenues!
Indians consumed a lot of news. As per a Comscore report, India is the second-largest online news consuming nation in the world, following China. But the amount of time we spent on a news website was minimal. Most people accessed news on their mobile devices, and they found their way to these news pieces through recommendations on social media.
Even as regional content began to gain prominence, video became a catalyst in news consumption.
The changes this caused in the media industry was not immediately noticeable - at least to the general onlooker. But the industry had noticed. Video players injected about $4-5 billion in content in 2017, an increase of 14% higher the investment they made in 2016.
So when we looked towards 2020, there was an element of video consumption included in our plans. Indians watched the most number of digital ads. So the digital advertising industry was betting big on this sector already. But in PR, not everybody looked at visual communications like we did at Pepper, but it would eventually be a trend.
Enter COVID-19
The first sign that something was seriously wrong was when a journalist declined to turn up for an event in a 5-star hotel in Delhi in early March 2020.
“There is a thing called coronavirus going around and it looks bad. And 5-star hotels are not safe places apparently,” the journalist said and chose to shift the interview to a telephonic. The journalist in question had always preferred a face-to-face interaction prior to this.
Incidentally, this was the same date when 22 cases were reported in Delhi.
The event in question had been planned more than 3 months ago and was in full swing. But the delegates were not too sure about attending and we completed the event wondering what was happening in the world.
A week after that, cases were reported all across the country and we decided to go remote from mid-March.
For most of us in PR, a phone, a laptop and a good internet connection were good enough to work, regardless of the location. But there is something inspiring about working in an office, with your team. The collaboration, ideation - all of that happens better when you are all together in a single place.
When the historic lockdown went into force, we are all home already, comfortable with the remote process.
April and May 2020 marked a remarkable change in the way things were perceived. Of course, we have to take into consideration the psychological impact of COVID-19 that affected work as well.
PR & Communications - both internal and external - had become more important than ever. How do you tell your audience what you are doing, how you are dealing with the situation? How do you reassure your employees that their jobs were secure? How do you retain investor confidence?
The entire world began to focus on Digital Communications and PR.
PR is not just 'media communications'. It engages all stakeholders - internal and external. PR consultants are the guardians of the brand.
And this role was never as sharply defined than right now. PR strategies encompassed broad planning for the ‘new normal’.
Spokespeople who had previously insisted exclusively on face-to-face interactions had to be trained to be comfortable on a video call.
If we had to sum this up, there were 3 changes that COVID-19 brought about:
Prior to COVID-19, many companies relied on the traditional formats of public relations - issue a press release, focus only on the number of coverages. These were looked at in silos - the impact of PR was measured primarily in numbers. No attempt was made to initiate social conversations and tailor all aspects of what you wanted to say.
With COVID-19, suddenly brands opened up to visual communications. A simple press release would not suffice to communicate the emotion or earn the trust required. A video message by the CEO would.
With the limitations imposed by the lockdown, and the pandemic itself, each industry had to adapt rapidly to the challenges and ensure that communications remained open.
We explore these industries separately in some of our later posts.
The third critical change in PR was the interplay between social media and PR. While the two domains often blur into each other, the relationship was enhanced by conscious interaction during COVID-19.
While media publications provide a much-needed third-party validation, social media helps add your own voice to it and share it with multiple stakeholders, and allows them to interact with you, building further conversations. It also brings together multiple voices, helping create a clear picture beyond mere statements on the company’s websites.
Are The Changes Here To Stay?
Consumer behaviour did change during the lockdown, but the stickiness of the same is a question. The pandemic has impacted the way we interact with others, our environment and our consciousness. Even as we begin to resume a normal routine, there are shades of influence from the pandemic, which would indicate that many changes would stay.
Some are related to convenience and some are related to fear of the pandemic. By the time the vaccine rolls around, these might be a part of our normal behaviour.
With regard to PR and media, many of these changes would have probably happened in the next few years - the timing was accelerated by the pandemic. The outcomes?
- Video is the next big thing.
- Visual Communications is the future.
- Listening is important.
- PR is no longer viewed as just ‘media communications’.
- Communication is important.
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About The Author:
Amulya Nagaraj is the Associate Director at Pepper Interactive Communications.
