Industry leaders from the country?ÇÖs media, marketing and communications converged for the 4th edition of IMAGEXX Summit and Awards 2024, Adgully?ÇÖs premier PR industry event, which was held on July 18, 2024 at the Holiday Inn, Aerocity, Gurgaon. In a short span of time, IMAGEXX Summit and Awards has been recognized as the PR industry?ÇÖs go-to event.A key highlight of the Summit this year was a panel discussion on ?ÇÿNew Paradigms in PR Metrics?ÇÖ. The panel was chaired by Madhurima Bhatia, Head of PR, Media Engagement & Partnerships, India & APEC (Asia Pacific excluding China), Ipsos. The esteemed panellists included:Abhi Mahapatra, Director - PR, Amazon IndiaDr Rajiv Chhibber, Vice President - External Affairs (Policy, Government Relations & Outreach), Sahajanand Medical TechnologiesHimanshu Raj, Head - Reputation and Policy, Pristyn CareNatasha Wadhwa, Head - Strategic Communications and Brand, Shell IndiaRohit Dubey, Vice President, Reliance JioSunita Patnaik, Director of Corporate Affairs, Mars Wrigley IndiaUdita Dutta, Founder, Artsmith Concepts & Visions (Artsmith.in)Commencing the discussions, Madhurima Bhatia remarked, ?Ç£The importance of PR cannot be overemphasized. It builds reputations. It gives you visibility for the great work the company does. It makes you engage with your stakeholders. And these days, companies have their goals defined at the beginning of the year. And PR professionals and custodians, they are entrusted with the task to ensure that we achieve those goals.?Ç¥ She then asked the panelists how they measure the efficacy and effectiveness of the work in public relations.Abhi Mahapatra replied, " We obsess in inputs over outputs. While we track goals and metrics, including , SoV, earned exposures impressions, reach ?Çô are.some of the parameters that we use for measurement, both on social and traditional. But we are very obsessed about what our input mechanisms are because we believe that if the inputs are right, the outputs will find a way.?Ç¥He further added, ?Ç£We are moving away from SOVs (Share of voice) to SOI, which is Share of Influence, because we believe that voice share is probably important to measure competition benchmarking but not impactful for other tracks."Speaking about the regulated industry such as the implants industry, which is actually governed by the Drugs and the Cosmetics Act, Dr Rajiv Chhibber said, ?Ç£Because our kols are largely doctors, hospitals, and the Government of India as well ?Çô be it the Ayushman Bharat setup we are looking at, or the CGHS or the healthcare schemes ?Çô one thing that we define as a communications policy is an acronym ?Çô SMART, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound. Doctors can give us a maximum of 10-15 minutes?ÇÖ attention, and after that it?ÇÖs gone. So, our strategy becomes very different. And the methodologies to gauge what we?ÇÖve achieved are very different too.?Ç¥Sharing the perspective of the start-up industry, Himanshu Raj said, ?Ç£Being a start-up, there?ÇÖs no scope for qualitative analysis. ?ÇÿDhanda kitna hua?ÇÖ (How much business has been done) is everything. Vanity metrics don?ÇÖt add anything to your business. We now measure something called Share of Headline. How many times we are in the headline, because it gives you a very clear picture. We also do Google Analytics. For any time we give out a press release, we see how much brand searches have increased. Lastly, every time a patient comes to us, they fill a form. There is a segment we have added. Have you read about Pristyn Care in the media? That gives us an idea of what our patients are reading about, and I can directly correlate it to our business.?Ç¥Speaking about the challenges of upholding the brand and reputation of a company like Shell and policy and regulatory goals, Natasha Wadhwa said, ?Ç£Shell has defined a global strategy, which is called ?ÇÿPowering Progress?ÇÖ, which has four pillars. One is about shareholder value. One focuses on net zero emissions, one focuses on powering lives, the impact that we make on communities around us, and lastly, on respecting nature. We have defined a measurement which we call ?ÇÿMedia Impact Score?ÇÖ, which you can call like an index, which has multiple touch points feeding into it, like sentiment, tonality, prominence. We arrive at a media impact score and then we measure it against all these four pillars. It?ÇÖs a quarterly cadence.?Ç¥Speaking on owned media, Rohit Dubey said, ?Ç£Jio was born as a digital-first company. Whatever we did, digital was on the top of our mind. When we were starting the PR way back in 2016, the first thing we did was get an ORM tool. And that ORM tool was then acquired and internally is now being used for so many years, and it has undergone many changes with the advent of technologies all over. And that is what gives us the first set of feedback. But much earlier in our lives, we realized that you can?ÇÖt just depend on online and social media, you also have to move to the conventional of print and television. He further added, ?Ç£The challenge we initially came across was that you have to make PR relevant. It is not the conventional measurement which is going to work for us. You have to work with a set of measurement tools by which not only the impact is measured, but that impact is converted into a measurable matrix for sales, for management and for your finance, how the sales is looking at what PR is doing. And over a period of time we have been able to do it. The dependence of Jio on PR is very high compared to advertising. So, you won?ÇÖt see Jio?ÇÖs advertising except during IPL.?Ç¥Emphasizing on the importance of reputation, Sunita Patnaik said, ?Ç£Mars Wrigley India is obsessed with how we are perceived by our stakeholders, by our shareholders. We are obsessed with how we recruit our consumers. We firmly believe that reputation is not just getting a few stories in the media, but across the value chain. How are our shareholders or our stakeholders perceiving us? And it also helps us in recruiting talent. We are guided by something called the ?ÇÿCompass?ÇÖ. It gives us a good visibility of how our share and our stakeholders are thinking, feeling and what are they doing about it.?Ç¥Speaking from a sports and esports industry standpoint, Udita Dutta said, ?Ç£I belong to the sports and esports industry, which itself is a very happening industry. But when it comes to the aspect of matrix and measuring, we still are a work in progress, because for us, when it comes to live sports, it?ÇÖs all about engagement. So, sharing a voice is something we?ÇÖve been pushing all our clients to move away from. One size definitely doesn?ÇÖt fit all. For sports, I think education, credibility, engagement, and understanding are important. We prefer it if it is a live sport, including IPL. Input is very important for us.
