Should Media Relations be combined with Investor Relations?

Investment relations (IR) is the amalgamation of communications, building relationships and guiding management in taking the final decision. Essentially it is a strategic responsibility to enable effective communication between the company, financial community and the public which finally contributes to company’s securities achieving fair valuation. Usually an IR department or person reports to the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or the treasurer. In some organizations, IR is managed by public relations or corporate communications department and is called “financial public relations” or “financial communications”.

The investor relations deal with handling inquiries from shareholders, investors, or anyone interested in company’s stock or financial statements. The IR also has a vital role in crises management such as changes in management, industrial damage etc. Investor relations has the responsibility of managing perceptions of the investors and deals with any information about the company that may affect the stock price or earnings of the company. It is important for the company to attract the investors because they are the only source of capital for the company and increased investor interest leads to increase in the stock price of the company.

An IR department is the only department which has interaction with the stock market. Earnings releases, earnings forecasts, annual and quarterly reports and most press releases, are all part of investor relations and the responsibility of the investor relations officer or department. Previously IR used to just focus on release of financial information but now the trend has changed and almost everything issued by the company is the responsibility of the IR department. This change is partly due to increased regulatory requirement and also because it’s been seen that whatever the company does or would eventually do, will affect the profits or the stock price of the company.

On the other hand, Media relations (MR) refers to working with media in order to disseminate information to the public about an organization’s mission, policies, practices etc. in a credible manner. Working with media on behalf of an organization helps the company to create awareness amongst chosen set of audiences, both small and large set of audiences. Media also encourages two way communications.

The relationship between an organization and news media is very crucial as the story pitched to the media is under their control totally and the journalists will publish the stories which interest their audiences. Media relations services include: Financial and business media, trade media programs, market commentary, online media programs, regional media programs etc.

Looking at these two separate functions (IR and MR) from the purview of them being the subsets of the concept of Public Relations (PR), while there are spaces of commonalities between the two, there are also exist differences.

In terms of the common touch points, both investor and media relations deal with the influencer community that includes the likes of financial/equity analysts, industry analysts, journalists, bloggers etc. Further, both investor and media relations use the same flavour of information to showcase to the influencer community, there are key differences in how this information is served to the two different sets of audience. While the IR department predominantly uses financial data points and strategy to engage with equity analysts and other similar end-users, the Media Relations uses company and product strategy to influence journalists, bloggers, etc.

Further, a revolution is taking place in how organizations are communicating with their audience using social media platforms. While Media Relations has for long pioneered the use of social media to communicate with its respective set of influencer community, the investor relations officers are also actively making use of these tools to enable a two-way communication between the company, the financial community, and other constituents.

In conclusion, while in theory its near-ideal to combine the two PR functions discussed above, there are differences between them that deem organizations to treat them as two separate entities. Maintaining them as separate groups, PR heads can look at using innovative ways of sharing resources within these teams – while this will help curb costs, it’ll also save the team the effort and time taken to train two separate resources on nearly the same aspects of the business.

Many organizations today have successfully adopted this model and are investing in a common pool of resources that function as the backbone to the different PR functions. Clearly, impetus is on maximizing utilization of resources with standardized skills coupled with specialists leading each of the separate units within the PR department.

Decisive Communication Moment

Decisive Communication Moment

“I’m a PC” Campaign – Microsoft’s response to Apple’s “Get a Mac” Campaign

A $300 million advertising campaign was created for Microsoft by ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CPB) named “I’m a PC”. This campaign was designed to challenge the Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign which showed the PC as boring, clunky and stereotype when compared to the cool and intuitive Mac. This campaign by Microsoft had a huge impact on people and eventually there was a tremendous sales growth as compared to the Apple’s sales.

Stage 1: Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign

The “Get a Mac” campaign was created for Apple by the company’s advertising agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab. The campaign became an instant hit because all the series of the ads had a white background with two men, one of which were dressed in casual clothes and introduced himself as Mac (“hello I’m a Mac”) while the other man in formal suit and tie introduces himself as Windows (“And I’m a PC”). The two of them compare the capabilities and attributes of Mac and PC. The PC is portrayed as a formal, polite, stuff, overly concerned with work and frustrated with the more laid back Mac’s abilities.

Apple’s ‘Get a Mac’ campaign is over after one of the most long-lived advertising runs of all time. The campaign which began in the year 2006 was replaced by the Apple’s website with a new “why you’ll love a Mac” campaign, which asks consumers, “Why get a new PC and just upgrade your computer, when you can get a Mac and upgrade your entire computer experience?”

The “Get a Mac” campaign obviously forced Microsoft to challenge the campaign and there it was with a $300 million campaign!

Stage 2: Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” campaign

The “I’m a PC” campaign first began in September 2008. As discussed above, it was designed to challenge the Apple’s campaign. The campaign was created by CPB advertising agency and featured that normal PC users are found everywhere. The 60-second ad features more than 25 different people as PCs compared with Apple's one in all its TV spots. The intent was to demonstrate how PC users are ordinary people. Microsoft proved that people buy products that they see advertised and it increases awareness and they build an emotional connect with the brand or the product.

As soon as the Microsoft “I’m a PC” ad started airing, the Apple’s ad “Get a Mac” just disappeared. Microsoft’s sales were touching the sky as Windows PC was much cheaper than the Mac and also the “Windows. Life without walls” marketing made the people go crazy about the PC. Even netbook sales went up, giving additional uplift to Windows laptop sales.

Unfortunately this campaign faced some serious criticism. It was found that Microsoft's "I'm a PC" advertising campaign was created on a Mac and the celebrity speaker brought in by the software giant were all professed Apple fans. Also the four still images of the campaign posted at Microsoft's press site contained digital fingerprints from Adobe Photoshop being run on Apple computers.

To the above criticism, Microsoft issued a statement saying that almost all campaign workflow, agencies and production houses use a wide variety of software and hardware to create, edit and distribute content, including both Macs and PCs.

Johari Window

I discovered today that the concept of Johari window closely reflects my decision to join the Public Relations course at Xavier Institute of Communications.

Johari window is a psychological tool which helps people to better understand their interpersonal communication and relationships. The movement in the window marks the growth in a relationship and these windows are divided into four quadrants, namely: open, blind, hidden and unknown quadrant.

The open quadrant represents things that I know about myself and others know about me. Initially when we meet someone new, quadrant I is small but with time as the process of getting to know each other continues, it expands in size, shrinking the quadrant III which is the hidden quadrant. The blind quadrant is the one which represents things that others would know about me but I would be unaware of.

The third quadrant is the hidden one where there are things which I know about myself but others don’t know. For example if I never mentioned to anyone before that I sing, then no one would get to know about the same. But once the first quadrant grows, that is when the relationship matures, and then we find it unnecessary to hide such information. The last quadrant is the unknown quadrant which represents things which I don’t know about myself and nor do people know about it.

The concept of Johari window relates very closely to my recent introduction to the arena of Public Relations (PR) and admission to Xavier Institute of Communications (XIC). For the past three years, I was trapped in a profession for which I did not have a natural passion and it was only recently that my friends introduced me to the world of Marketing Communications. This situation relates to the quadrant II, the blind spot and it was constant persuasion by my friends that helped me recognize my natural inclination towards Public Relations.

While I was initially hesitant to make this transition, I became sure of my abilities when I cleared the written exam of XIC. I can hence relate this concept to my personal experience and it’s been enlightening to learn about the other quadrants of this window.

Is Online Examination Going to be the Future of India?

So before I present you my opinion on the online assessment, let me gather your attention towards the movie 3idiots. It was a site to watch Aamir Khan and his friends running from the hospital to give the exam and the way they kept writing after the time was up and not to forget how Aamir managed to mix up the papers with the rest, as the professor was unaware of their roll numbers. Well this luxury would surely not be accessible in online examinations. Online assessment is a step towards making the assessment more secure, transparent and fast. Such an assessment has become easier because of the fast and accurate computers as well as the improvement in technology over the years. With over a million people sitting for entrance examinations, it’s really not surprising to see the shift from traditional exams to the online exams.

Core reason for such a shift which is hard to ignore is the cost saving through online exams. Some experts suggest such a method reduces cost by approximately 20-50%. Moreover this method of conducting the exams provides flexibility to the students to choose as well as reschedule the dates of their respective examination. It ensures security, nullifies the error of transferring the question to the answer booklet, helps in faster assessment as it’s all done through the computers and reduces the chance of human error in calculations etc. It also nullifies the chances of leaked question papers. Online assessment is unbiased in a way that everyone gets the same time to complete their paper; so sadly, we can no more beg our teachers to give us two more minutes to write down even when the time is up. Reminds me of the good old school days, sigh! One can’t scan through the questions once the time is up. Also the marks awarded are through the computer, so no need to be a teacher’s pet anymore to get those extra marks! For the institutions also, it is more efficient to conduct online exams as it spares them the horror of distributing answer sheets to thousands of candidates, collecting the same, signing the sheets, transferring the answer scripts to the evaluation centres etc. Thus in turn there is no need to appoint large staff to check the answer sheets and tally marks.

Online exams are to some extent similar to the traditional paper pencil method in a way that one has the ability to move within the sections, change answers, review the answers etc. But I personally found it a bit stressful to give the exam online. It was very difficult to understand various buttons on the screen right before the exam and one has to take care of not pressing the “finish” button as it ends the paper right there. It’s all so much complicated unlike the traditional paper pencil method. The speed counts a lot in such exams. Some entrances have different sections in a paper and a particular time limit is allotted to respective section and ones the time is up, one cannot revisit the same questions again. How is it really helping the students? It’s building more pressure on them. It reminds me the teachers telling us to leave the questions which we would not know in the paper and do the ones which we knew perfectly first and then apply brains to those which we have left. Do we have such a luxury anymore? Well we don’t anymore have the luxury to even scan through the questions in the paper ones it’s in front of us; the shock comes one by one! We recently had the CAT exam online for the first time ever and it did face a lot of glitches in between. Many candidates could not sit for the exam on the particular day allotted to them because the server went down! Although they were given separate dates to appear for the same. Such a shift to online assessment would require a good infrastructure and technology that can adapt to the Indian requirements. In turn all this would require a lot of experimentation and up gradation of technology to make such a system a success.

According to a survey covering 75 university chancellors, registrars, controller of examinations and over 400 students across the country, 77% of these people consider introducing online exams, 68% revealed that they would conduct online exams in the next 6-36 months. 69% of all the students especially from the tier III cities stated that those institutes that conduct online exams are more technically advanced. Even though after facing the glitches in some of the entrance exams recently conducted by various institutions, it seems that the online exams are here to stay.

In my opinion, I’m strictly against such a shift as I consider it to be more stressful as compared to the traditional method of conducting exam. More over there needs to be a better infrastructural and technological development before we shift base the method of conducting the exams in our country. According to a study, the penetration of online assessment would increase by 5-10% in the next two years. Despite the snag faced, the universities still feel in positive impact of technology. So what’s your take on it? Are you ready to face the challenge?

Do-Re-Mi

“Music speaks what cannot be expressed, soothes the mind and gives it rest,

heals the heart and makes it whole, flows from heaven to the soul.”

Just like a river must flow into the sea, my tryst with music was truly meant to be. This might sound primitive, but my stint with music dates back 15 years – yes, it was in 1995 that I hit the chord. It all started with a suggestion from Dad for me to learn the harmonium and there I was, all of 6, sitting in a music school and using my young pair of hands on instruments I had previously known little about.

Initially there to gain mastery of musical instruments, I found deep interest in classical singing thereby discovering a new talent in me. Funnily enough, the instruments appeared bigger than what I looked at that tender age and it surely had me uncomfortable to wonder if I was doing the right thing. To make things further twisted, I was the youngest of the lot there and hence the extra scare that I felt. But as they say, rest was history – as I began to recite the musical notes with my Guru, I underwent a transformation and soon gathered that I had found the right medium to express myself!

Just the way sugar mixes in a hot coffee, the same way I suffused into classical singing. It always used to relax my body and mind and helped me carve a soothing persona. Slowly but steadily, I also managed to effectively use few musical instruments such as the Harmonium, Tanpura and Tabla. While these instruments usually play in the background of any song and not many realize their essence, I grew with a special bond with them - I understood the beauty of music sans words.

While I feel blessed to have discovered music, the fact that it came at an early age also presented me with a peculiar challenge – balancing studies with a hobby I was (and still am) extremely passionate about taught me the art of time management and multi-tasking. Not only I continued to further explore my talent and also practice for stage performances, I continued to surprise myself with a consistent academic record.

It’s fascinating for me to look back into history and uncover instances of how music has helped - whenever I was bored of studying or felt low or burdened with the books, I would start humming the ragas and automatically my mind would be at peace. This not only helped me to de-stress and re-energize but also helped to imbibe a sense of confidence. As they say, all work and no play makes jack a dull boy!

Social Media – A Boon or a Bane

Are you on Facebook, twitter? Oh I forgot and how about LinkedIn? Well these are some typical questions which we get to hear these days. When we meet someone, before taking their contact we usually ask them for their e-mail id’s and well it’s assumed that they would be on one of these social networking sites or may be on all of them. Hmm interesting indeed. Isn’t it? Commonly known as the Web 2.0, these sites are not just a rage amongst the youngsters but it’s surprising to see how people from all walks of life are taking fancy to social media tools.

Interestingly enough, while for some, these remain to be a mere tool or a means to connect with friends, for many it is an extension of their personality. Parallels can also be drawn how enterprises use these social media tools – while some imbibe the ethos of customer driven marketing, for others it fails to feature or qualify as an integral part of their IMC programme.

Social media is considered to be an offspring of promotion mix. The advent of social media on the internet has made it possible for a person to communicate about his products & the company that provides the same to a mass of people. It helps the companies to talk to their consumers directly thereby unlocking the secrets of consumer perception and buying behaviour. At the same time it enables the customers to talk directly to one another. But this lies in contrast to the integrated marketing communications epitome whereby a high degree of control is present unlike in social media marketing where there is no control over the frequency and content of conversation amongst the consumers. Thus the managers need to keep the vision and mission of their company in mind and evolve the consumer discussion around it.

Social media tools are not just used for marketing but companies are making a judicious use of this tool for recruiting people as well. According to a survey it is observed that 45% of employers use Facebook/twitter to screen job candidates. Recruiters feel that hiring people through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn is a lot easier than doing the same through job boards etc. If there is a vacancy in a company, it simply tweets about it and the job is done! Within a few days only one would be able 2 decide upon the candidate.

It’s surprising to see how much we are dependent on these sites from Hiring people, marketing products to communicating our views to the world outside, having discussions, making reservations for dining, and the list goes on. The latest here would be to address complaints to the Delhi Traffic Police on facebook (http://bit.ly/bI3Amn)! With internet enabled portable devices, information is available on the move and it makes it easier to be connected from anywhere.

On one hand, the Web 2.O sites have proved to be very useful for people from all walks of life but at the same time I (and many others) believe that they are making people less emotionally attached to each other. I’m sure most of you who are reading this post will agree. Isn’t that true that back in time we used so much use of the landlines, then came the cell phones and now internet through cell phones. In this fast moving life, no one’s got the time to spare on the phone but surprisingly enough people tend to connect through facebook, twitter, orkut etc. Isn’t that making you less emotionally attached to your peers? Don’t you think instead of writing on your friend’s wall on facebook, it’s a good idea to call them up? It does not really take much of an effort though. Do you expect birthday calls anymore right at 12am, or do you just open up facebook and other such sites to see the whole list of wishes? I guess the latter would be true in most of the cases for this generation. Then how do you think these sites are doing any good to you when you can’t even feel that bond with your near and dear ones?

Succinctly put, although Web 2.O sites have been a very effective tool of communication, it has made a lasting (read negative) impact on our lifestyles. It has given rise to a new cult which is here to stay! Think about it, most of us have the time to tweet, but make no efforts to meet?

My 2c worth!

Global + Local = Glocal

This post refers to my previous post on International and Global strategies. The idea to talk about Glocalization struck me when I had posted that previous note and thought it would be of high relevance to bring up this topic.

The term Glocal comes from the Japanese word "DOCHAKUKA" which means global localization. Dochakuka evolved into a marketing strategy when the Japanese businessmen adopted it during the 1980's. By definition, the term ‘glocal’ refers to any individual, group, unit, division or organisation which is ‘able to think globally & act locally’.



In today's market scenario, enterprises are forced to rethink on their decision of aiming at just globalization and ignoring localization or vice versa. It is of prime importance for marketers and other key decision-makers to develop a two-pronged go-to-market – a global marketing and product strategy combined with dedicated localization plans. An integration of the two is a must for enterprises aiming to foster a global footprint for its products or company.

Glocalization has also been much spoken about (and written) topic by the academia. Renowned authors have published white papers, books and other journal entries debating about the intricacies about this; below are a chosen few.

According to Doole and Lowe (2001), ‘think global, act local’ or in other words ‘glocalisation’ encloses the true nature of globalization. Hollensen (2004) says that in order to have a successful glocal strategy, it is necessary for it to reflect the aspirations of a global integrated strategy along with recognising the importance of local adaptations/market responsiveness. Keeping this thought in mind, major international organizations, over the last decade have adopted long-term strategies to establish a worldwide presence. Terpstra (1990) is a votary to this outlook. According to him, convergence does not mean standardization or uniformity, even though it is true that the technology, economies of scale and
internationalization are leading to a greater convergence of both products and marketing methods.

Hollensen (2004) has explained this ‘glocalisation’ or ‘glocal strategy’ through the ‘global integration/market responsiveness grid’ (below):


Making inference from the above, its apt to state that to increase the sales and venture into new markets the global products need to adapt to the local needs. Likewise, in order to increase the sales of the local products in the global market, enterprises need to adapt to the global needs of the customers.

To further aid understanding on this topic, below are some examples from the Indian marketplace. While I have tried level best to make references to commonly known brands in India, there will always be more examples which many of you might note in everyday life – please leave a comment and share some of these with me, always works well to exchange thoughts and knowledge!

NOKIA – While their products solve the same purpose all across the globe, Nokia does well to customize the marketing messages to cater to local needs and add higher relevance to their campaigns. Taking Nokia E72 as an example, while this gadget does the same job for professionals (and other users) across the Asia Pacific region (and World-wide), the company uses local languages (Chinese, Hindi, etc) to effectively communicate with the respective set of audience.

MC DONALDS – This is yet another suitable example of a glocalized strategy. Despite being a global brand, McDonalds customizes its menu to cater to domestic eating habits and also respect local traditions (if any). The "Maharaja Mac" and no beef/pork products in the company’s menu in India validate the above argument.

AYURVEDA in Western Countries – This example suits the reverse trend of globalizing strategies that have only done well in a specific (read localized) environment. While Ayurveda is a very popular line of medication in India but comparatively is still a new concept in the western countries. So for the likes of Dabur looking to launch their products in countries like UK and US, there is a critical need for marketers to identufy the unique set of challenges (including differences in purchase behaviour) they are likely to face in the world market and accordingly address them through the product and marketing strategies.

While there’s a lot more that can be discussed about this topic, it’s important for me to limit my post to ensure it does not put you to sleep! To aptly summarize the topic, glocalization means the capacity of being rooted in the local market and also to face the global challenges. It is a change in the strategy or development of a new strategy and if managed well can lead to the growth both for the local and the global markets.