By Adam Wakefield
The second and final day of the
conference began, following introductory entertainment, with an address by recently elected PRISA president,
Thabisile Phumo, who warned the assembled delegates to be aware of the “Kodak moment”, a concept raised during the academic track on day one.
“I think it’s necessary because it reminds us to not take ourselves and the industry for granted. The PR profession, in my view, has a crisis, in a time where the world is yearning for meaningful contribution,” Phumo said.
“The internal crisis talks to an identity crisis that resulted in many of us of playing around with semantics to get a name that is relevant enough to gain us a seat in the centres of power.”
As PR professionals, they needed to be clear about what and how their industry should position itself relative to others. They could not continue talking about their industry without spending time looking at the building blocks required to practise the profession.
Phumo’s meaningful address was followed by key-note speaker Linda Magapatona-Sangaret of BrandSA, who told the room; “You are either a marketer and a communicator or you are not. There are things that are based on people’s character and personalities that allow themselves to specialise and thrive in an industry.”
As they sat there, they as professionals found themselves in a very demanding and competitive business environment.
She then moved onto the theme of nation reputation, and how it is the role of every citizen to play their part in building South Africa’s reputation and be an ambassador for their country.
Head of operations at measurement company Ornico, Francois van Dyk followed, who spoke about the integrated evaluation framework. He was then proceeded by Phumo once more, who this time spoke about the necessity of business acumen within the PR space.
From her position as senior vice president of communications at mining company Sibanye Gold, Phumo said the audiences PR professionals were speaking to today were discerning, and stakeholders no longer just accepted the message but also responded.
“The sources of information are multiple. You are no longer the only spokesperson for your company. Your cleaner with a Facebook page is a speaker,” she said.
Business people are waking up to the importance of the message and they worry how people think. A communicator’s role is to enable those in the C-suite, the level communicators must play at, to make better decisions based on what was happening in not only their relevant sphere but also across the entire country.
“You are supposed to be connecting and building relationships with the company and its publics,” she said.
Communications consultant Daniel Munslow was next, where he referred to insights from the VMA study on South Africa and Africa’s communications landscape, as presented at the World Public Relations Forum earlier this year.
Among the both sobering and positive insights mentioned, Munslow said one of the biggest challenges in the PR profession were the pressures placed on budget, both for remuneration and training purposes. Professionals had to be more agile but also sought a better work life balance, and yet, there was still much to be positive about, such as those in the C-suite beginning to realise the importance of communications within their business’ goals and objectives, and how outsourcing would remain relatively stable over the coming year.
After the tea break, partner at Judin Combrink Inc Michael Judin spoke to the room about the looming release of the King IV corporate governance report, and how as PR professionals, everyone in the room had an important role in ensuring its implementation and communication across all levels of the business.
Made up of 16 principles, King IV was a “people’s document”, following from King III which had unintentionally become part of the common law. South Africa functioned in a stakeholder-centric model, and within that model “lies your future”.
“In a stakeholder-centric environment, of the global average, and it’s probably worse here, 13% of the board understand the digital world,” he said.
“Less than 10% of companies trading on the stock exchange at the moment understand social media. The people who understand the social media world we dropped off at school this morning. In the Facebook world, it takes nanoseconds to destroy a centuries old brand.”
Chief disrupter at Integrated Marketing Solutions Francois Vorster followed, with a presentation on how PR can thrive in the digital world through starting conversations and measuring those conversations.
A panel discussion on integrated communications was next, facilitated by Vorster and featuring Sappi’s Andre Oberholzer, BBM’s Adam Pattison, ACA/M&C Saatchi Abel’s Jerry Mpufane and Van Dyk.
PRISA president-elect, Kavitha Kalicharan, closed the conference with some choice remarks, with delegates leaving Durban with much to think about as the PR world continues to change and how communicators can take hold of its own destiny by realising their power and importance as professionals.