Book Review: The Pursuit of Reputation

Let’s start with an honest admission. While I’ve worked as a journalist for most of the last 25-30 years, I have also worked in Public Relations and Corporate Communications for a few years. With a German car manufacturer, in Formula 1, with India’s only F1 and MotoGP circuit, and with a leading agency that’s headquartered in Bombay. So, I can claim to have seen both sides of the coin as a journalist and as a PR professional. And yet – and this is the surprising part – even after having spending a few years working in PR, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to fully understand what PR is all about. At one time, in the distant past, PR used to be mostly about sending out press releases and then following up with newspapers and magazines for media coverage. Now, what with the rise of bloggers, vloggers, social media influencers, YouTube, smartphones, apps and a thousand other digital doodads, I’m told PR is much more complex – a ‘strategic’ function that’s at least as important as marketing. These days, we have highly-paid specialists who ‘craft’ ‘PR strategy’ for companies and going by the terms they use – content marketing, earned media, owned media, paid media, positioning strategy, messaging strategy, share of voice, advertising equivalence value and many more – the PR pros are giving MBA types a run for their money when it comes to using buzzwords.

But seriously, as someone who gets cold feet whenever the term ‘PR strategy’ is mentioned, I’ve always felt the need to get a better understanding of what PR really is all about. I mean, it’s got to be something more than just calling up a bunch of journalists at 8:00 p.m. and saying, ‘Sir, aapko woh press release mil gaya? Sir ek story kar do na…’ So, when I saw this new book, The Pursuit of Reputation: Unlocking the Power of Public Relations, I was quite excited. The book has been written by Amith Prabhu, whose LinkedIn profile says he’s a reputation scientist, co-creator of PRAXIS and Founding Dean of the School of Communications and Reputation. Along with Prabhu, there’s co-author, Sujit Patil, currently VP and Head of Corporate Brand and Communications at Godrej Industries Ltd., and Head of Corporate Communications at Tata Chemicals Ltd. Before that. Given their impressive credentials, these two gentlemen must surely know anything and everything about PR that there is to know, right? I was really keen on reading the book and the publishers, Westland, were kind enough to send me a copy.

In the preface to the book, the authors tell us that the idea behind writing this book was to put together a work of ready reference for anyone who wanted to understand PR better. ‘We felt there is no comprehensive book that covers the multiple nuances of modern public relations and corporate communications that could be referred to by organizational leaders. The seeds of co-authoring a book were sown,’ they say. ‘We believe there is more to PR than just media relations. We reached out to over 75 leaders from public relations and allied fields to contribute a piece of knowledge to the book,’ they add. And hence, in addition to documenting the authors’ combined knowledge of PR, each chapter in the book also benefits from expert commentary from industry bigwigs, making the book more useful for its readers.

In the opening chapters, the authors chart the rise of PR over the last 100 odd years. While the underlying principles of PR have been used for hundreds – maybe even thousands – of years, PR as a profession gained recognition about a century ago. A few early practitioners of the craft, who find mention in the book, are Ivy Lee, who worked as publicity advisor to John Rockefeller back in 1903, Basil Clark, who set up the first UK-based PR consultancy in 1924, and Edward Bernays, who wrote a book, back in 1928, about the mechanics of propaganda and the psychology of public relations. In the Indian context, we’re told that PR gained a foothold in the country in the mid-1950s, with the Public Relations Society of India (PRSI) having been established in Bombay in 1958. However, a real upswing may have happened in the 1990s: ‘Globalisation of the Indian economy led to a significant rise in competition, due to deregulation, entry of MNCs and increased opportunities for foreign direct investment,’ the authors say, adding that this was when brand building became more important than ever before, and that liberalization triggered the need for professional PR setups. 

Despite the fact that even in this day and age, many business organisations still insist on combining marketing and PR into one single function, or keep PR under the wing of marketing. The authors insist that PR is ‘not marketing’s stepchild’ or ‘advertising’s poor, neglected cousin.’ They highlight the critical importance of third-party endorsements, which can often resonate with the target audience for their authenticity (vis-à-vis paid endorsement, which advertising represents), and the role of PR in critical, challenging situations where the reputation of an organization might be at stake. The authors also explain, at length, the need for companies to monitor social media channels, respond to negative comments and utilize the power of owned content and local influencers to build a positive brand image – an ongoing PR process that takes times and effort, as opposed to advertising. ‘PR is still about messaging and storytelling. What has changed is the audience profile, mindset, attention span and consumption patterns. Even a great story passed down generations, needs to be revamped to better fit today’s audience,’ the authors explain.

There is a full chapter on digital PR, which has gained great importance in the last few years, what with the inexorable rise of social media influencers and platforms like YouTube and Instagram. The authors write about the process of setting up a digital PR vertical, which includes identifying a clear, specific vision, identifying the players, curating a content strategy, establishing a format for digital communication and integrating these with the offline PR effort. Also discussed is the critical importance of influencer marketing, which is now an integral part of PR – influencers share a special bond of trust with their audience, which brands can leverage to their advantage with some judicious PR. There is also a full chapter on online reputation management (ORM), with an explanation of how digital PR is an indispensable part of ORM.

There are chapters on the role of creativity in PR, on the need to reimagine internal communications and using that to build a better, stronger corporate narrative, and the need for all corporate communication to be responsible, credible, trustworthy and ethical. And there are discussions on research- and data-driven narratives, the need for every organization to function like a media company (in the context of producing content – business storytelling – to support its PR function), crisis preparedness and the role of AI in PR. Indeed, the authors seem to have covered all bases – nothing seems to have been left out. PR in this day and age seems to be a complex integration of many different elements and the authors have done a good job of explaining each element and how it must all come together to form a unified PR strategy. Inputs provided by senior PR professionals from across industries – there are simply too many, so I won’t mention individual names – add real value to the book. These inputs come from people who’ve spent years – in some cases, decades – working in the PR industry and their insights and perspectives will be useful for any PR professional who chooses to read this book.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, PR has always been a difficult subject for me to fully comprehend. Did this book help in making it easier for me to understand PR and how things are supposed to function? Yes, it did to some extent, and it made me wish I’d had the opportunity to read this book 10 years ago, when I was actually working in PR. Of course, it’s a book, not a magic wand – reading it won’t instantly make anyone an expert in PR. It’s a reasonably complex subject and will take time to understand, but multiple readings of The Pursuit of Reputation should be an important first step towards gaining a better understanding of everything there is to know about PR and the ways in which it works. Kudos to Amith Prabhu and Sujit Patil for writing this book – it can easily serve as an excellent handbook for PR professionals and is a must-read for anyone who either already works in PR or anyone who hopes to make a career in the PR industry.

The Pursuit of Reputation is available on Amazon