PR or Public Relations drives a company’s strategy and will determine in large part how well it will be perceived, understood and respected by its stakeholders, employees and externally.
PR is an increasingly vital marketing tool - especially as traditional forms of advertising struggle to catch consumers' attention. The goal of PR is to secure positive coverage in the media, and the well-worn tactics include calling a press conference, pitching stories directly to journalists and setting up interviews. In a phrase, public relations, helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.
Pragma Communication is a public relations outfit. As the name suggests, “Pragma” is derived from the word “Pragmatic” and resolves to being guided by practical experience and observation more than theory. The essence and drive behind Pragma Communication is to help its clients maintain a strong public image. This is achieved by means of a strategic PR initiative that will be derived specifically for each client. A plan of strategic PR initiatives helps enhance awareness and build on the existing brand image for our clients. Since inception in year 2006, Pragma has made associations with fortune 1000 companies operating in industry verticals like IT, ITeS, Real Estate, Art & Lifestyle, Healthcare, Hospitality, Education, Training and HR.
As an extension to online communication, we offer our clients, who have an online presence, value added service of keyword-based as well as site-targeted ad campaigns. This when clubbed with another value service of web analytics for traffic inflow analysis, provides a very compelling value proposition to our clients.
Why would one rediscover the wheel - Why one more PR consultancy firm when there are a hundred others?
It begins with a demand and supply chain. The enterprises, corporate sector, government bodies, et al. need public relations, to help take their value proposition to their target audience. They are continuously demanding services around advertising, editorial news coverage, more and more outreach. A retailer once told us that he wants the retail chain’s logo and information printed even on pieces of paper littered on the floor!
There is acute demand from the top, but there is also a keen demand and a very needful one, coming from the bottom of the pyramid, the SME and the startup segment companies. These are the companies trying to raise their head, make their presence felt and need it critically to grow and develop. They need reference customers and reference customers are recruited when the companies are marketed well. Not a gimmick, but making credible information get across to the right hands and minds.
Yes, Pragma likes to work with SMEs and startups and loves the challenge of growing with relatively unknown names. By means of our service offering to this segment, we have tried to bring enterprise quality services and value to the SMEs. Till June 2008, we have been associated with 8 SMEs and 6 startups, enabling a successful branding exercise.
Secondly, most of the PR firms provide consultancy or media relations, but fail to correlate the inputs to successful conversions into business. There are various indirect mechanisms of valuation towards finding effectiveness of PR or other marketing programs, like impressions/impact model or the good old advertising value equivalence. We call them indirect since it is never a PR strategy (or for any campaign) alone that works in a marketing campaign, in isolation. So, how does one form a correlation that a business query generated, is a result of a hoarding, or a news release on a portal, or the person read through the company’s ad and got across the query.
None of the mechanisms actually help the company establish the direct connection with the consumer and start from there. The approach is more based on assumptions, samples and projections, hence, a lacking element of reliability and its rippling effect into critical business decisions.
For example, we'll be able to establish which avenue (say Outlook Business website) generated what amount of traffic, how many of them converted into leads, and finally into conversion. We'll then be able to compare avenues, geographies, type of communications made, etc.
Since the companies would have this data available, top management of these companies would be able to establish which campaign failed and an RCA could be carried out to understand the reasons behind it.
Pragma Factsheet
