media update’s Adam Wakefield was at the Hyatt Regency in Johannesburg to hear what leading minds in PR, both in South Africa and internationally, had to say.

Agencies need to learn how to adapt 

The summit was opened by The Holmes Report founder, Paul Holmes, who said he’d “never experienced a period in time where the change is as fast as it is today".

While such change can be disorientating, Holmes believed it presented local PR practitioners with an opportunity, since the nature of PR in South Africa is not as codified or rigid as it is in developed markets.

The first panel discussion of the day, titled Finding post-truth purpose: Why addressing societal needs are more important than ever, focused on why purpose should be placed above brand strategy and operations.

Chimene Chetty, director at the Wits Business School Centre for Entrepreneurship, said there is a global movement towards accountability, with millennials and Gen Xers calling on brands and communicators to be relevant, accountable and, critically, authentic.

Strong, purpose-driven brands must be linked to strong communication strategies. Companies need to understand their market's culture.

PR in today's modern marketing world

The second panel of the day focussed on PR and marketing. Abey Mokgwatsane, managing executive for brand and communications at Vodacom, noted that the time of creating “experiences that are completely fluid for the customer has arrived”.

Communication teams are ebing structured around consumer clusters, instead of there being distinctive departments, which removes barriers that, in his words, are “getting in the way of consistent, fluid, customer communication”. The customer expects a brand to speak to them in one voice.

Joanna Oosthuizen, national managing director at Oglivy South Africa, said PR agencies are reorganising themselves to become organisations “that understand multiple disciplines”.

“You’ll be an expert in one area, but you will become more educated around the other disciplines,” she said.

PRs need to start from the beginning with working media

The future of PR agencies and how they can respond was the focus of the third panel.

Clockwork Media’s Tom Manners, M&M Brands communications head Keri-Ann Stanton and eNCA’s Marcelle Gordon engaged in a robust discussion, directed by The Holmes Report CEO and editor-in-chief, Arun Sudhaman.

The discussion was about how PRs can best work with journalists and other media, why local PR agencies were lagging behind their international peers, the importance of measurement and the need for diverse voices in decision making positons.

Ethics, communications and reputation management was the focus of the next panel. Francis Ingram, director general of the United Kingdom’s Public Relations and Communication Association, said, “[in] public commentary, we shouldn’t wish to be loved. We should wish to be respected”.

Herman G Kotze, CEO of Net1 UPS Technologies, sympathised with PR companies when dealing with corporation reputation management since, as the client, corporates sought “instant gratification” when their reputation was put on the line.

PRs needed to ensure the companies and clients they worked for understood that such results, where reputation is concerned, are not instant. He further noted that there should not be “any distinction between personal ethics and corporate ethics”.

Governance is key

After lunch, the fifth panel of the summit assessed the importance of governance, and how the way an organisation is governed makes an impact on how it acts, leads, handles its ethics, makes decisions and whether a business is a good choice for investment.

James Brice, group CEO of EBS Advisory, said that “any communicator should really know the client, know the business and hopefully win over the client to share a bit of the soul of the business.” 

Jean Pierre Verster, equity portfolio manager at Fairtree Capital, stressed the importance of authenticity in a way a company communicates and acts, and the value of a company's soft signals beyond what it says.

The last session of the day saw Sudhaman and Alan VanderMolen, president of international at WE Communications, talk about the effects PR agency holding companies.

According to Sudhaman and VanderMolen, these holding companies are using their individual agencies to create multi-agency, client-specific teams. 

After the summit's conclusion, attendees were left with much to ponder, following a thoughtful, honest and relevant day of discussion about the PR industry. 

For more information, visit www.holmesreport.com.   

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Reputation management was one of the topics discussed at The Holmes Report In2Summit South Africa and a more important commodity than ever. Read more in our article, Why reputation management is essential to business.