By Adam Wakefield
The weather surrounding the Southern Sun Elangeni and Maharani Hotel on Durban’s beachfront may have been partly cloudy as the sun rose on the coastal city, but inside, PRISA Conference delegates got down to business addressing their industry’s most pressing issues.
The morning was divided into two separate tracks, being academic and professional, with a series of presentations following each other in two separate rooms. In the academic track, communication strategy for stakeholder engagement, juggling collaboration and autonomy, a history of public relations education in South Africa, and research from PRISA and GCIS were presented.
Of special interest was the presentation conducted by the University of Johannesburg’s Professor Sonja Verwey and Clarissa Muir. They spoke about the PR agency model, and the challenges and changes taking place within the South African PR and communications environment.
“In terms of where we are, I want to use this quote by Charles Dickens from a Tale of Two Cities; ‘It was the best of times; and the worst of times’. That is really true for our industry. It’s the best of times because PR as a profession has never been more needed and more recognised,” said Verwey.
“It’s to such an extent that, as many of you know, your clients are setting up their own in-house functions, increasingly luring talent away from the industry into the organisation itself. It’s also the worst of times because if we look and actually did an analysis of 15 years of practice, what we see is there has been a full circle in terms of loss of trust in the industry.”
In the professional track, delegates heard how the youth of South Africa saw the country’s future prospects, Janine Lloyd of PR Experts talking about the lessons learned from her IPRA and PRISM award-winning campaign ‘Creating Groundswell for South Africa’s First Dance Movie’, and Angela Barter of The PR Consultancy covering in-depth how to mitigate the risks of “Greenwashing”.
FleishmanHillard SA general manager in Johannesburg Sharon Piehl gave a presentation on their PRISM Gold Winner Pan African Campaign of the Year for TLC’s Next Great Presenter, and offered insight on how the PR industry needs to evolve to stay relevant in the future.
“It’s still a practice. I think what we got to look at is how our landscape is changing and if we look at what we did for TLC, they didn’t ask us to get them in the next publication. They asked us to get them more viewers,” Piehl said.
“They asked us to drive the business imperative. More and more we’re being called to the table to have conversations at the C-suite, not to talk to the marketing or brand manager, but to talk to the CEO and how the CEO navigates the business environment with these challengers they are facing.”
Whatever the scenario, Piehl said PR and communications needed to start owning that position.
After lunch, CEO of BrandTV Media Network
Adolf Spangenberg spoke about the next generation of brand communication, followed by arguably the highlight for the day, the panel discussion on crisis communication.
Featuring communications consultant Daniel Munslow as facilitator, and Eskom’s Carol Allers, FlySafair’s Kirby Gordon, Vuma Reputation’s Janine Hills and the Sunday Tribune’s Aakash Bramdeo as panellists, many different sides of crisis communication were addressed.
Delegates listened attentively, with Gordon noting how important it is to get senior leaders in the business involved in crisis communication, calling it “pivotal to have your CEO or your senior spokespeople on your side”.
Bramdeo raised the importance of authenticity, stating; “What I find lacking in many of the messages that come by me is honesty. How many companies put out a message in keeping with the way of running their companies?”
A factor addressed by Hills was scenario planning, and the necessity for organisations to put time aside to put together a crisis communication strategy.
“We got to be wise with the way we are managing our budget and our preparation. But if you think about the amount of money you spend on a crisis, you can’t put it together when preventing it,” she said.
Organisational resilience was brought up by Allers, who believes many organisations are now looking at how resilient they can be in the face of a crisis.
“I think it’s incumbent for organisations to look at how resilient are you. How quickly can you bounce back?”
The panel closed day one of the conference, and with the likes of BrandSA CMO Linda Magapatona; Sibanye Gold’s vice president of communication Thabisile Phumo; and Integrated Marketing Solutions chief disrupter, Francois Vorster all expected to address the conference, there is much more to come from “Advance, Rise, Grow”.