I completely agree with Ashok ji.
Several CEOs and top management do maintain personal rapport with consultancy/agency people and I have come across some who directly write and call even junior level people in the consultancy / agency side without any ego. It is all about attitude.
Regards,
Jhon
Sent from my iPad
its really appalling the way some corporate communication heads behave, the CEOs are more reasonable than them.
its really unfortunate that despite your seniority in the profession and your telling them clearly that you were not interested in their business and that you were helping as a samaritan , he should have contacted you directly instead of through his secretary, even CEOs come on the line and talk when their secretaries connect, having failed in that he should have come to meet you in your place or if he was so hard pressed for time, he should have explained on the phone and requested you to come to the hotel for the meeting --- that would have gone down better and not presented him as an arrogant person without basic etiquette PR is all about etiquette and manners in dealing with the public. vendors and media or stake holders -- if you fail this test , then you are not a good communications person.
people who have spent all their time in communications in corporates have a wrong impression :
1) that journalists can be influenced to their view point with drinks/dinner, expensive gifts/ free shares in their cos/ and free rides to exotic destinations. maybe one percent of the media does bite the bullet, but the entire community is quite dedicated looking for news only and nothing can influence them. as a senior journalist i can vouch for that.
2) that journalists make the worst PR Men. maybe they lack the finesse of suave corporate guys and girls, but my experience is that they make the BEST PR Men with excellent communication skills. They have the gall to tell their CEOs that such and such angle will not SELL, they can smell when a campaign can go horribly wrong with the media or the public, they can sell an idea better and more professionally to media and explain things better to the public. as a communications professional i found journalists were more free and frank with me and appreciated my selling an idea to them -- i would say no compulsion to do the story, this is the angle, if you see merit, run it..... invariably they did. i never gave any expensive gift to any journalist but only communications tools or aids which they appreciated.
the reason i found was that a journalist goes through rough tumble of life and meets all kinds of people in the course of his job and learns how to interact with each one of them to get what he wants INFORMATION. thats why they are better trained for corporate communications than the so called professionals. yes, some journalists also make bad PR sometime because they will speak the TRUTH and quite BLUNTLY instead of couching it in inanities or sweet nothings which the real CORPORATE PROFESSIONAL is well trained to do ( I am not criticising them but praising their fine art).
MORAL of the story: No corporate professional should be presumptive in his approach in dealing with vendors, fellow PR colleagues in agencies, or the media. As tamil films comedian vadidelu says " Give respect and take respect .".
cheers
ashok.
On 28 November 2012 11:40, V Jagannathan <v_jagannathan@yahoo.com> wrote:
Well that is true of people in any profession (including journalists). What many dont understand is that the respect they gain is due to the organisation they work for and not in their personal capacity. They realise this hard fact once they get out of their company.
If this attitude is prevalent across the country then there is something wrong at our society -home, schools..
Let me narrate my own experience. Last week an official in a corp comm department of a software company asked me whether he and his colleague can come to my office and hand over an invitation for an event.
I told him not to be formal even an email invite is sufficient. After that I did not hear from him or any of his colleagues.
A day before the event he calls me to find out whether the invite that was couriered and emailed reached me. I said no.
Then he emailed the invite.
I am now wondering whether I should have made him to come to my place to deliver the invite at the first instance itself.
It seems just because I was informal, I am being taken for granted.
RegardsJagannathan
From: Vikram Kharvi <pr.vikram@gmail.com>
To: prpoint@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 10:26 AM
Subject: Re: [prpoint] Corporate Arrogant Communication (CAC)
Dear Sir,I don't want to advocate the corporate communication's side case here but can say for sure that arrogance of any kind will lead one nowhere. At the same time, please correct me if I am wrong, from your entire narration I can see you describing two different types of personalities. The first one is he who moved from an agency side to corporate communications and the second a Corp Comm or marketing head of a large company.While for the first type of personality to get embroiled with bad attitude will certainly not help and will surely soon bite dust. One should never forget that we live in a very small, socially networked world; you may never know whom you may report to tomorrow and what perception he/she may have about you. On the other hand even addressing your PR agency partners as vendors is a crime. A sincere hard working PR agency team can help you not only build your company's reputation but also strengthens your existence within the company. A successful client agency relationship is very much like a marriage, where two people with differing skill sets come together, complement each other's efforts and stand by each other in good and bad times.With the second type of personality, I assume that he must be at a very senior level working for some large corporate. Here I don't think much change of behavior should be even expected as arrogance as well as ignorance has been well established in such people and are too rigid to change. They have stopped seeing the world with transparent glasses. Max one can do is to ignore them and distance ourselves if possible. These people holding senior positions let their own personal preferences, biases and pet theories come before the benefit of their organizations.While there is scope for the first type of personality to improve and wake up to the reality by little help from his/her true well-wishers. Having said that I believe not everyone at the corporate side of communications practice has forgotten their roots. Many still cherish their learning they have earned, while being in the agency business. A professional who has been successful at the corporate side, while having an agency background will always in most cases respect his PR partners, guide them, collaboratively work towards the benefit of the organization, provided the partners as sincere and dedicated as the corp comm manager. No smart person will mess up with the good resource at hand and will always build on it.Best Regards,Vikram KharviOn Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 9:21 PM, Rajendra Deshpande <rajuixu@yahoo.com> wrote:
Most of these executives as my experience goes,are yes men of Top Management.They agree to unreasonable demands of top managemnts and fallvictim to undue pressures from Top .Inevitably this passes down the line to vendors,to subordinates.they live in Euphoria that they are Top Bosses.
They have always operated in protected environmentand hardly faced any competition.This hapens in many of such organisations while treating not only PR vendors but all others. Hope fully this will go as these companies start facing competition and the market grows eventualy.Rajendra.Deshpande.
Trainer.From: Prime Point Srinivasan <prpoint@gmail.com>
To: Prpoint Group <prpoint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 9:02 PM
Subject: [prpoint] Corporate Arrogant Communication (CAC)
hi allEarlier, on various occassions, we have discussed about the arrogant attitude of some of the officials in the corporate communication departments towards the professional seniors and other vendors like PR Agencies.Changing attitudeLast week, one of the top officials of a PR Agency called me to say how the attitude of one of his staff drastically changed, when the person moved to Corporate Communication Dept. of a well known company. When I sought the views of other senior professionals from other Agencies, they broadly endorsed this view. It appears to be a common phenomena nowadays.One Senior Corpcom Official from Mumbai also endorsed this view broadly and he even commented with frustration, "What I can do Srinivasan? Many of them when they join assume that they have two horns on their head, because they are handling vendors".At the same time, there are lot of exceptions also. Even the Corpcom Officials with good attitude feel that it has gone beyond their control. It is a disturbing trend for the PR/Communication profession.We have even discussed in the past as to how such arrogant attitude and behaviour cannot help such persons in the long run professionally.A personal experienceLast week, I also had a personal experience from a senior Corpcom Head of a big Company. This experience prompted me to write this mail.This Company has some huge operations in Southern Tamilnadu. They are facing some crisis, due to various reasons. This company has the Head Quarters in North India, while their operations are in down south. To avoid embarrassment i have suppressed the name of the company.Last week, the Corpcom Head called me over my mobile saying that their company wanted to engage a PR Agency and they were contacting few agencies over phone for presentation. I told the corpcom head that I did not want to participate. Since, I am in regular conversation with different political leaders and media persons, i know some of the real issues of the company. Hence, I shared some of the real problems of their company with the corpcom head during the course of conversation. Though, I did not want to pitch the account, I suggested him some ideas as a fellow communication professional. Corpcom Head expressed his interest to get more insights, when he planned a visit to chennai in the subsequent week.After three days, i got a call from the Secretary of Corpcom Head (Head Office) informing me that an appointment with the Corpcom Head for me had been fixed at 12 noon on the next day at one of the top hotels. I presumed that they might be listing my name along with others who were participating in the presentation. I clarified to his secretary that I was not interested to pitch the account. However, as I was giving their boss lot of insights about the problem, he wanted to discuss with me more at Chennai. Hence,I told her if he wanted to meet me to understand more about the insights, he was welcome to meet me any time at my office during his stay at Chennai.Again after few hours, I got another call from another person informing that his boss had given an appointment to me at the specified hotel to meet him at a particular time. I was totally shocked and got angry. I declined to meet him to give my suggestions for the benefit of the company, that too after fixing up an appointment.
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