keep your promises guys!

Your sitting in a five star hotel, facing your client and fidgeting with your cell phone.

Journalist had promised you that he is going to be there. You checked five minutes back and he confirmed that he is on this way; just in front of the hotel. coming!
Another call : yes yes i am coming!
one more call after 15 minutes - his phone is switched off or not taking your calls.

Boom.... he has just turned turtle at eleventh hour . He is not coming ... :-/

How many times this has happened with you in your PR career? I am sure, must have happened at least once. I think, they say many things just to play along,but, why bother doing that. Why not tell us that he are not interested in a meeting or doing certain story? Is it because that we PR people do not take no for an answer and keep on pestering a journalist, until he says yes?

Well, whatever is the reason; i cant put with the shindy my client is going to kick up soon.

Back from the Press Conference- Yawnnnn

I have just come back from a press conference(was playing good Samaritan- colleague’s client) and now I am dead tired. Well, media turned up, as expected finally, infact more than 50  people came.


I am happy that I went to this press con, even though I am like a dead chicken now, because I have pitched my clients to a couple of the financial newspapers.


The Economic Times, biggest financial paper here in India, has agreed to have a telephonic interview with my client tomorrow and the business Standard has asked for more details.I have also met many new journalists. 


Attending this conference and giving a helping hand to Shweta, my colleague, was successful for me too- kind of killed two birds with a stone( well, i will really hate to kill a bird) :-D

I am looking forward to many more such press conferences. :)

Peeing Behavior of Some PR Agencies in India

I received this funny email from Sporshi. i liked it so much that i thought of putting it on my blog.

Peeing Behavior of top PR agencies in India as observed by an unknown person in the loo during a PRCAI Summit:



1. Person walks into the loo...looking very uncomfortable..looks around and then runs out..he was spotted doing the same thing over and over again..till finally he ended up peeing in his pants...(employee of Vaishnavi - they are taught to hold on to their Pee as they can be needed anytime by the TATAs)

2. A smartly dressed person walks in enquires if there is a special loo for IT consultants..getting no answer he looks around and then walks out looking disgusted and frowning on others who were using the loo...(employee of Text100 - they expect special treatment everywhere they go...he was later seen sleeping next to the commode..they usually get drunk and behave like this)

3. A person very casually walks in sees that all the urinals are taken..he walks to the basin and pees in that..(employee of the Hanmer & Partners)..they don't really care about how and where they do it..they take the brief and then somehow they do what they have been asked to do...

4. Two buddies walk in together joking and laughing about some new client they have conned..seeing that there is only one urinal available...they both decide to use the same urinal and pee together...(employees of Perfect Relations..they truly stand for team work and take pride in conning people)..

5. A very formally dressed person walks into the loo..he opens his bag..takes out his measurement flask..walks to the urinal and then pees in the flask..measures the pee in the flask and then throws it...(employee of Genesis..very professional and process oriented..they are taught to measure everything they do...infact these guys don't get paid if they don't measure their pee and report it online..they are also forced to buy their own measurement flask and sometimes they have to measures their bosses flasks as well.....

PR 2.0 or Marketing, I don't care! Let me work

Yesterday I did extensive research for how to go about doing PR 2.0 for a mobile launch. I consulted some bloggers and my twitter social media expert friends and all the possible people I could. Well, my team wanted to invite bloggers to some place for product launch. Since, most of them were not based out of this region and this phone is a not-so-well-known-brand. So we had two options:

Pay for their flight tickets and hotel bills ( but still were not sure that they will come)

OR
Engage them by some online activity
The online activity could be something like send some top bloggers a handset for review and explore an opportunity to run a contest on those respective blogs. The winner (1-2 or what ever my boss decides) will get a handset. We could run this parallel on the client’s website too.

I said, this will possibly result in to links and can get viral. We will get good online visibility.

A senior colleague of mine jumped in to a conclusion before I could finish. He said,’ oh you don’t know what is PR 2.0 what ever you are saying is marketing.’ You know I am a social media expert and I have bashed many well know bloggers but they haven’t said anything, and he jabbered name of some well know blogger.

Well I did not fight back but I was thinking yaahhh!! right they did not reply coz what ever you write on I am sure will be such a tiny thing that no one apart from you will ever come across it. And besides they know there are many dumb creatures like you and prefer to ignore negligible things like you.

Well, so much so, we are not going ahead with Social media campaign; I was so excited about.

Pheww What A Day!

opening my blog after a long time. All these days were so very hectic including today. Today I have organized a relationship building meeting of one of my clients with a financial journalist who write on his industry but more of features. Meeting was good until my client broke news to her which even I did not know. I was zapped oh my god what is he doing? It was not supposed to be this way; we were planning to formally introduce this news to media after a week.


I even sent him a message from across the table but I think that sms never reached him.
But as soon as the meeting was over I called a journalist of one of the financial paper and gave the news to him, and as I share good relation with him I told him what happened. So tomorrow I am sure if not much this news will be in one of the top financial paper.

Now I am waiting for my client to send a note on the subject to the journalist who has already called me thrice as his story filing time is approaching him. On my part I have already spoken to client twice and told him journalist’s plight. Now it’s already 5:42 in the evening so let’s see what happens?

Are we new age PR professionals?

I am a PR professional and i love my job. Not only i am enjoying my work , but there is also this new interest I have hooked in to from about 7-8 months, and that is reading blogs on PR 2.0, communication, as i don't want to be left behind. India PR blog is my favorite PR blog.

I am amazed to see that how many people, with immense passion, write on PR and how PR profession is evolving.


But it’s saddening to know “Social Media” is still an alien term for PR professional at large in India. Not only they are ignorant to it, they are not even interested to know. I asked PR people of an eminent PR agency in India about Social media and to my horror none of them knew about it and what disgusted me the most they said “it's shit”

When all these people are there in the profession do you expect “ Blogs” Podcasts” making there way in to traditional PR practice?