Recent survey of Sri Lankan PR industry professionals paints a picture of an industry resiliently navigating a “Pandemic and economic crisis rough patch” with a focus on systemic arrangements -rather than capacity- giving it the much needed buoyancy.
Competitive advantage creates increasingly better outputs within an industry and gives the companies an edge over their competitors. Practice of Public Relations (PR) is a process growing in acceptance as bringing valuable competitive advantage to companies as a company’s PR activities open a wider customer base and audience for them.
At the same time, there are companies that deliver Public Relations services as their business, becoming part of their own “industry”-the “PR Industry.” Therefore, it shall be important to understand about the nature of the Competitive Advantages that help the PR industry itself, which is an industry that operates to create competitive advantages to other businesses and industries in the economy.
A PR firm’s agility, its culture, product pricing, firm’s size, compensations, DEI practices, stakeholder and industry connections as well as networking, marketing strategies, talent and innovations, digital service offerings, and budgets are among key determinants of competitive advantage in the PR industry.
What would be the determinants of competitive advantage for PR industry in Sri Lanka? A study conducted in October by the world’s largest and influential PR body, the APAC chapter of the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA), highlights the determinants at play in the country’s PR. The PRCA study was conducted to understand and inform on the state of the PR industry in Sri Lanka. 33 PR industry leaders and senior executives from local and multinational PR agencies took part in this study.
PR industries everywhere have been driven by availability of capacities such as talent and innovation. Strong talent and innovation capacities cannot be traded off for any other determinants mentioned above, though other determinants have their own place.
What emerges when the findings of the recent study are analyzed is that the Sri Lankan PR industry players have begun to overcome their competitive advantage pressures via their systemic or organizational aspects rather than their capacities. This is a different turn of events in comparison to the patterns found in the global PR industry.
A global study involving PR firms around the globe, Davis & Gilbert Public Relations Industry 2020 Survey, reported that PR firm revenues from the top three services (for the first eight months of 2020) came from “Social/PR/Content Creation”, “Creative Services” and “Digital.” All these three services pertain to an important pillar; “Capacities that the organization has” i.e. talent and innovation (the idea in “Capacities” here is along the lines of “capital”). Thus, talent and innovation were leading drivers of global PR industry in 2020. In fact, it could be said that this has been the pattern in the PR industry for a considerable period of time and just not only in 2020. Not surprisingly, in their plans to expand offerings in the next 12 months, the global PR firms are expanding exactly on the same three services again-instead of any other services.
On the other hand, the Sri Lanka PRCA study shows almost all PR industry respondents (except for 3%), saying the Sri Lankan PR industry has got competitive over the recent years, with “pricing, industry connections and influence” playing a key role “instead of talent and innovation.”
For the (PR) company, pricing, industry connections and influence are ‘systemic’ aspects rather than ‘capacity’ aspects. Pricing is a result of managerial process and focuses on positioning. Industry connections where industry networking comes into play, is also part of a managerial / operational process. Influence stems from the company’s strategy –especially operational strategy. Thus, these factors are part of the firm’s systemic design.
Talent and innovation are of capacities; in that, they are capital. Talent is “human capital” while Innovation is “risk capital.” “Capital” come into play when the firm is in a growth phase. The “growth” may not necessarily be the growth in the size of the firm but even growth in profits/revenue as well.
“Capacity/capital’ come into play when the firm is in need of ‘growing’ rather than needing to ‘survive’.
On the other hand, operational aspects are usually hinged on production processes. As much as they are part of growth, they also come into play (in a major way) when a firm is pushed to survive. That, the overwhelming majority of professionals (except for a mere 3%), backing the “survival scenario” could be explained as the entire industry’s present priority to be one of “survival” rather than growth, as the Pandemic’s effects, enmeshed by the country’s dire predicament, dismisses any immediate industry growth prospects out of hand.
The understanding that if not for the present volatile situation, “talent” being an industry driver (rather than systemic aspect), is also confirmed by two other findings.
Firstly, the findings on “challenges their clients face”. All the main challenges (budget cuts 91%, exchange rates 64%, import ban 55%) relate to the “country’s volatile situation”. The leading challenge that is not related to the volatile situation is, not surprisingly, “retaining talent” (50%) which affirms the importance of talent attraction and retention.
Secondly, the findings on the keenness of the professionals to “learn within the discipline”. 79% of professionals said that there are many new areas to learn within the discipline, “citing that PR is becoming more social than digital and that it also requires an approach backed by analytics, accountability and ethics”. Doesn’t this boil down to talent –specifically, upgrading it?
Next, two thirds of professionals cite that their clients ‘somewhat’ understood the true potential and impact of PR. This is an important finding in that it may well hint at the stage of maturity at which Sri Lankan PR industry has currently arrived at. In a mature PR market, clients would agree they “better understand” the true potential of PR. Two-thirds of Sri Lankan professionals saying their clients ‘somewhat’ understand the potential of PR, on the other hand, is a sign that the Sri Lankan market is not a matured PR market. Despite sounding to be depressing, this is glad tidings on the future of the Sri Lankan industry -the message here is still “the glass is half full”. This also implies that the local industry needs to gear up on awareness promotion of PR industry -at least among the country’s corporates and businesses.
The Survey finds 88% professionals faced with client requests for ‘crisis response PR strategies’ and 76% needing PR support for internal communication plans. The barbarous business climate in the country takes the clients beyond mere loss projections of their enterprises, to the very survival of their businesses with the daunting prospect of institutional changes or restructuring or even shifting select operations abroad that loom ever closer. In such a background it is natural to see a demand buildup for crisis response PR strategies. The finding that most of the clients were also engaging with crisis response and mitigation further affirms this.
The need for increased internal PR communication services are also in clear tandem with the declining macro business climate, employee turnover and resulting Work from Home practices which necessitate boosting internal communications to a higher level as employees have to be updated on such practices (new and old) as rostering, hybrid work schedules, training (both departmental and cross departmental) and online conferencing schedules etc.
The finding that most clients engaging with “reputation building” and “brand positioning” at a higher rate than “crisis response” and “internal communications” is interesting. This demonstrates that, despite the volatile situation, clients are still prioritizing their PR towards “marketing communications” and less on “corporate communications.” This murmur of finding reveals a million-dollar message that is buried deep within the Sri Lanka PRCA study findings: Even though the present volatile situation nudges local businesses to ask for Corporate Communications PR services, the dominant PR services demand from Sri Lankan businesses likely continue to be in Marketing Communications -a call better heeded by the Sri Lankan PR industry.
The survey however shows that nearly half the local professionals admitting to the need to uplift ethical standards in Sri Lankan PR. This implies half of the professionals still saying Sri Lankan PR is ethical. This, while showing a balance ‘for both sides of the divide’, is yet troublesome news for Sri Lankan PR since in comparison, globally, two thirds of PR professionals say PR industry is operating ethically (ICCO-Provoke Media – World PR Report 2021-‘22). Only one third say there is work to be done on the ethical side. Still, when it comes to Sri Lankan industry, such honest self-admittance by industry players can go a long way at a time when the sector looks forward to emerge resiliently and get back to “business as usual” post-Pandemic and post-national volatility.
