Richa Seth working as Senior Accounts Manager at Adfactors
PR, one of the leading Indian PR Agencies was recently honoured with ‘Ace
Business Communicator’ (ABC) Award for
excellence in PR among the young Indian PR professionals. She is one of the active members of ‘prpoint’
group moderated by me. She is passionate
about ‘Public Relations profession’ and always explores how the PR concept can
help to develop the image of the Indian industry across the globe. In a freewheeling email interview with me,
Richa Seth explained her passion, her goal, achievements, disappointments, etc. Excerpts:
Congratulations Richa for getting
the PR Award at this young age. What is
the significance of this award? What is your feeling now?
Such recognition makes a lot of difference for mid-level practitioners like us, where we are constantly battling client, team and media expectations. Recognition of this kind helps you to be reassured about the choice you have made. There are enough platforms for senior level practitioners. Since, only a few such opportunities are available for professionals at our level, such awards will motivate us not only do more for the companies we work but also contribute back to the profession and to the nation indirectly.
How many years of experience you have
in public relations field? Why did you chose PR as your career? Any specific
incident that led you to take this decision
I have over 7 years of pure play PR
experience. It is quite interesting to
know that I landed up in PR industry without any clue. As a person born and brought up in Mumbai,
during my childhood days, I wanted to become an ‘Air Hostess’.
During my school and college days, I used to enjoy writing,
organizing events. Unknowingly I was also involved in doing some PR for our
college events. We used to meet a lot of journalists, invite them to be a part
of our events and work with them to build stories around our events, but never
thought that I will continue to do it as a full time profession.
The Managing Director didn’t ask me much about the
profession except a few questions PR books which I read. The answer was obviously
negative. It was a Friday and he asked me when I would like to join. With all excitement,
I told him that I wanted to join
immediately on the same day. He smiled and asked me to join on the next Monday. He advised me that I should join a
professional course on PR and read some
books on PR.
I joined Adfactors PR in 2007 and completed a course in PR
& Advertising at K.C. College and began my new journey into the unknown but
elating. In 2009 I joined Masters Degree
in Mass Communication with a Specialization in PR from Sikkim Manipal
University through distance learning and completed it in 2012. In December 2011, I joined Edelman, another leading PR Agency. In December 2013, I returned to Adfactors
PR.
What is your vision in PR career?
What steps are you taking to achieve your mission and vision?
During my 7 years of experience in
PR profession, I had the opportunity of handling important clients and
challenging situations. I consider every
challenge as an opportunity for me to learn.
Though Indian Industry is doing good, they do not have sufficient ‘PR
awareness’ and hence they are not able to project their image globally in the competitive
environment.
My vision is to make an important contribution
to society through effective communication and building reputation of corporates
and associations. My mission is to showcase the
value of effective communications (PR) to the CXO community across
organizations and get a place at the boardroom discussions. Ultimately, this will help to project the
nation also.
I am constantly trying
to upgrade my knowledge and skills to perform better than before. I proactively
put myself through challenging mandates and enjoy the thrill of a turning
around a
sour relationship. Rather than working for large clients and set
mandates, I love to seek an opportunity to work for startups and unknown
brands. Reading has now become a habit, after understanding and doing
considerable amount of reading about PR, I am now focusing more on broader
marketing and strategic business development, human behavior and broader socio
–economic developments.
I want to learn
everything about India and its vast cultural diversities. I am actually on a
long and very exciting journey, exploring new ideas, new thoughts and new
thinking. I don’t know whether I will be a CEO or a leading Corporate Communicator
but I am sure that it will be make me one of the best professionals in the
country.
Apart from that I am also
an avid
blogger on PR & Social Media,
introduced a weekly column PRQuest on www.vikypedia.in a popular PR blog and
have my own blog too: www.richaseth.com. Keeping up with this mission,
I also give guest lectures at various institutes on PR and Communication
topics. I help to organize short PR workshops
and meet-ups for industry youngsters.
I also initiate
discussions about macro environment impacting the business of reputation
management, share insights through knowledge nuggets about media, PR and more
on online discussion groups such as prpoint group, Indian PR Forum & Media
Forum. I am one of the moderators of Indian PR Forum.
I have seen many ladies with high level of PR passion drop
out from the industry due to many reasons, including the family reasons. PR
industry has lost many women professionals in the midway. Will you
sustain the PR passion and continue your career for long time. How do you
feel that we can retain these passionate women professionals in the industry?
You are absolutely right many successful
women PR practitioners slow down their career progression mid-way as they take
a break during marriage, essentially to give priority to their family. Sometimes
they come back albeit with the same vigor and they take a back seat in their career.
This happens often as she is not the real bread earner in most Indian families and
needs to give more time to being a homemaker. On an average a women
who wants to come back loses 6 months to 2 years of an important phase of work
life, pushing them slightly behind in meeting their career goals. And as Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsi very rightly said, “I don’t think
women can have it all. I just don’t think so. We pretend we have it all. We
pretend we can have it all.”
As far as I am concerned, I am currently
at the same crossroads as most women in the late 20’s
who are under societal
and family pressure to get hitched. However educated ,the attitude of our
society still remains unchanged. I get to hear, “Why are you running behind
your career, you are a woman and will need to sacrifice/comprise/adjust your
life for your husband and family.”
All said and done, I am
not sure how much time I have left to get married but rest assured that
whatever time I have in hand, I completely want to dedicate it to my learning, enhancing
my knowledge about the communications industry and most importantly want to give
back to the fraternity and to the society in whatever way I can. I will do my
best to share my learning’s and mentor as many budding professionals in the
industry. I endeavor
to write a book that will share insights on Practical PR for budding professionals
who aim to join the industry.
I believe that the PR industry can encourage women
professionals by introducing flexi-work timings and work from home that can be
monitored through stringent processes.
Generally, I find that many people
joining PR industry take less interest in updating the knowledge. Why
this phenomena? There are enough mentors in the industry. But no
takers. Sustainability of interest is lacking. I want your views on
this. How to improve the situation?
It
is a very subjective situation as many youngsters who join the industry are
often not mentored by their seniors about the role of a PR practitioner and
immediately put on job to updating media lists and doing press release follow
ups. Senior professionals do not dedicate enough time in training the
youngsters about the nuances of the day-to-day work. They are sometimes not
even involved in strategy planning meetings and in fact in some cases are not
introduced to the clients as well. This is one of the reasons why youngsters lose interest in this
profession.
This situation can be improved if the
immediate seniors judge the capabilities of their team members and advise them
about external courses as well that they can take up to become trained for the
industry. PR consultancies should also organize training programs customized
for people across all levels. The youth today is looking for ‘What is in it for
me’, hence equipping them with technical knowledge and motivation from seniors
will encourage them to be an active participant in this industry.
Do you cherish any specific
achievement during your PR career?
I would like to share an
example of a brand by a start-up company that was solely built through a PR
campaign, launch of a consumer product. We crafted the campaign in such a way
that it was not just about a product launch, but about stalwartly placing India
on the map of global innovators. The brand today has secured global recognition
in the media such as Wall Street Journal, New York Post, etc., and in India
there is hardly any media that has not covered it yet. Today without spending a
rupee on advertising or direct marketing the brand has been able to receive
over 50,000 pre-orders from individuals, funding from angel investors and
partnership offers from global consumer technology brands.
Any specific incident that caused you disappointment. The
lesson learnt out of the disappointment.
It was almost 6 months in my new
job, by then most of us start thinking that we know everything in PR and even I
was overflowing with confidence and the 'know it all attitude'. It was the last week
of December and most of my senior colleagues were on leave as we do not expect
major client activities in that season. But all of a sudden an email landed up
from our client requesting us to arrange for a press conference as they had
signed a major deal and it was important for them to announce it immediately
before the news became stale. Panic struck my senior and they were in a dilemma
to take the press conference forward as only few junior executives were manning
the office.
I pretty confidently offered to
manage the press conference and without much choice all of them agreed. Without
wasting much time I got on to the job, drafted a media invite and shot it off
to all the media I knew could come to cover the event. Sent out SMS’ and even
tried to follow-up, some gave a typical response “someone will come” – I wrote
a status as “confirmed”, some said – “will try” – I wrote “tentative” in my
status sheet and some yelled – “I am vacationing” and banged the phone on me. On
the D-Day, the press conference was scheduled to start at 12.00 Noon and I reached late at about 11.45 am with one of my
colleagues, expecting to find the client fuming. The wait started – 12.00 Noon –
12.15pm – 12.30 – 12.45 – only 4 guys turned up not because my invite had
convinced them but because they got to know somehow that – here is the place
that can offer them free lunch. It was a disaster, client left without saying a
word. I didn’t understand whether to go back to office or leave the job. I called
my senior who patiently listened and told me to relax as well as introspect and
promised he will talk to the client and try to handle the situation.
My learning’s –
1)
It was a holiday season – most
journalists were out on vacation
2)
I did not confirm from any source,
validity of media list I was working on – most of the journalists either had changed
their jobs or left journalism for good and one was no more
3)
I should have asked for help, I was
not aware about the tricks of the trade, someone more experienced than me could
have helped to salvage the situation
4)
I should have discussed with the
client and could have tried to keep the client’s expectations low
Who
is your role model in life and the profession? Why?
In life my role model is
my mother, who is a homemaker but has inspired me to be hardworking, sincere
and persistent; these attributes form the fundamentals of my personal and professional
life. In the professional role, there
are many role models to look upto such as, Chanda Kochhar, CEO of ICICI Bank
under whose stewardship the bank has grown phenomenally. I also admire the
courage and persistence of Indra Nooyi, CEO, Pepsi Co to strive and make a mark
across the globe.
With your passion for PR, how do you
want to serve the society as your 'Individual social responsibility', beyond
serving the clients?
On the professional side, I am
trying to create PR awareness among various industry people and also try to
develop good professionals for the industry.
PR is needed to project the nation in the competitive environment. On the personal side, I want to teach basics of English
to the under privileged children studying in Municipal schools.
Thanks
Richa for your responses. I wish you
more laurels.
Richa Seth can be reached at richa.seth30@gmail.com
Interviewed by Prime Point Srinivasan through email
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