This is the Burmese Cafe where I had lunch with Rajesh
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Kahn Market - one of Delhi's shopping destinations
This is the Burmese Cafe where I had lunch with Rajesh
Judging a book by its cover
I know the entrance to our office is not much to look at, but what’s been interesting about where we have met people here has been that the exteriors have no branding on them at all. There’s no swanky reception with beautiful, fashionable people behind a desk.
Perfect Relations was the closest, but only once you got inside. On the outside, it seemed like we were popping round to someone’s house for tea. Only the frosted glass with the perfect relations logo etched in gave away the sophistication on the inside. Quicksand and 20:20 however, were literally like popping to someone’s house.
20:20 Social entrance
Quicksand entrance
Perfect Relations entrance
Perfect Relations was the closest, but only once you got inside. On the outside, it seemed like we were popping round to someone’s house for tea. Only the frosted glass with the perfect relations logo etched in gave away the sophistication on the inside. Quicksand and 20:20 however, were literally like popping to someone’s house.
20:20 Social entrance
Quicksand entrance
Perfect Relations entrance
It was only once I’d met Shahna that I began to understand why. She told me that commercial space is so expensive for start-ups that they are pushed in to residential areas. She said this suits her as it means she doesn’t have to trek across the city from her home, which adds expense and time. So she has her office near where she lives. However, there are significant restrictions on signage in non-commercial areas, so even if they wanted to, they couldn’t set up the exterior as a space to show their design fare.
Rajesh and his colleague and I, met in Kahn Market, Delhi’s luxury shopping hotspot. Like all things in Delhi, you can’t judge a book by its cover. The pathways are dug up, the entrances are dusty and small, but once behind the curtain the shops and restaurants sparkle up, glitzy, well presented and expensive. We had lunch in a Burmese café called The Kitchen. Gloriously tasty fresh vegetarian food (though slightly difficult not to spill all over oneself!)
Rajesh runs the first social media agency in India – Blogworks. He has an extensive background in marketing, from client side to PR. It was during his time at BM that he started to play around with social media as part of a PR programme. He wanted to specialise in it completely, but there were no roles out there that allowed him to do this full-time, so he set up Blogworks.
Like Gaurav Mishra at 20:20 Social (unsurprisingly, they are good friends), Blogworks takes a very academic approach to social media. When, where and how to engage with potential customers, and what to do with that engagement. He works with international clients on India only business, such as Samsung and Global clients who want them to run a programme across all English speaking countries outside the US. The difference with Blogworks is that their theories have started to be proved.
I took him through our social media project New Look TV, which he found interesting, but his one comment was ‘it has one step further to go, when does that feedback from those participants feed back in to product development?’
He seems to be facing similar challenges to us – he says everybody who’s out of work is setting themselves up as a social media expert, because that’s the buzz word. Where have I seen that before? Like me, he feels that it will be a few years before real social media experts are cutting through, as right now, everyone’s experimenting – and so they should be. The backbone to his success, seems to be that he is a stickler for measuring and proving the concept - if it doesn’t work, that’s fine, but we need to set up clear objectives to ensure we are measuring the right things fro that client. In their social media guide blah,blah blah they outline 17 potential metrics, of which the client chooses 3, and they rigourously measure it.
As with Shahna, I really enjoyed talking to him about what it’s like to be such a young business, starting at the beginning of the recession, managing an overhead and trying to get ahead. He passionately believes in not compromising on quality, proving the concept, hiring great people (all his team apart from him have post-grads – he says he learnt the hard way!) and trying not to do too much.
Rajesh runs the first social media agency in India – Blogworks. He has an extensive background in marketing, from client side to PR. It was during his time at BM that he started to play around with social media as part of a PR programme. He wanted to specialise in it completely, but there were no roles out there that allowed him to do this full-time, so he set up Blogworks.
Like Gaurav Mishra at 20:20 Social (unsurprisingly, they are good friends), Blogworks takes a very academic approach to social media. When, where and how to engage with potential customers, and what to do with that engagement. He works with international clients on India only business, such as Samsung and Global clients who want them to run a programme across all English speaking countries outside the US. The difference with Blogworks is that their theories have started to be proved.
I took him through our social media project New Look TV, which he found interesting, but his one comment was ‘it has one step further to go, when does that feedback from those participants feed back in to product development?’
He seems to be facing similar challenges to us – he says everybody who’s out of work is setting themselves up as a social media expert, because that’s the buzz word. Where have I seen that before? Like me, he feels that it will be a few years before real social media experts are cutting through, as right now, everyone’s experimenting – and so they should be. The backbone to his success, seems to be that he is a stickler for measuring and proving the concept - if it doesn’t work, that’s fine, but we need to set up clear objectives to ensure we are measuring the right things fro that client. In their social media guide blah,blah blah they outline 17 potential metrics, of which the client chooses 3, and they rigourously measure it.
As with Shahna, I really enjoyed talking to him about what it’s like to be such a young business, starting at the beginning of the recession, managing an overhead and trying to get ahead. He passionately believes in not compromising on quality, proving the concept, hiring great people (all his team apart from him have post-grads – he says he learnt the hard way!) and trying not to do too much.
Shahna Garg - Dbar
I met Shahna for coffee in Defence Colony in South Delhi. (More evidence of Delhi’s love of coffee!) Shahna is a designer – educated in and trained in New York, she started her own studio in Delhi 2 years ago. She’s doing well, but like the guys at Quicksand, she finds there’s a misunderstanding of the potential of design at the moment. One of the most resonant themes I’ve noticed from all the entrepreneurs established and start-up, is that Indian businesses are reluctant to pay for strategy and planning, they want to pay for execution only… not that different to the model we’ve been working to in the UK for years.
What was interesting talking to Shahna, as a practitioner turned business owner, like myself and Simon, was the challenges of growth, training, recruiting and trying to do everything all at once. I mentioned that I don’t think I could do it without a partner, to which she said she’d like one, but she hasn’t met anyone with the same ethos and international expertise as herself with which to share the load.
One of the things I found most compelling about Shahna, is despite her frustration that there is no networking organisation or in her eyes, good training schools for designers, is that she is looking to the future to actually fill those gaps herself. This ‘can do’, ‘if it doesn’t exist, I’ll create it’ attitude is something common that all the people I’ve met have been like, they’re not looking for anyone else to solve their problems, but trying to find a way of solving them themselves to protect their vision and expertise.
What was interesting talking to Shahna, as a practitioner turned business owner, like myself and Simon, was the challenges of growth, training, recruiting and trying to do everything all at once. I mentioned that I don’t think I could do it without a partner, to which she said she’d like one, but she hasn’t met anyone with the same ethos and international expertise as herself with which to share the load.
One of the things I found most compelling about Shahna, is despite her frustration that there is no networking organisation or in her eyes, good training schools for designers, is that she is looking to the future to actually fill those gaps herself. This ‘can do’, ‘if it doesn’t exist, I’ll create it’ attitude is something common that all the people I’ve met have been like, they’re not looking for anyone else to solve their problems, but trying to find a way of solving them themselves to protect their vision and expertise.
PR in India insights
Spokesperson training
Perfect relations do a lot of training for spokespeople and politicians. More and more of the country’s politicians are becoming more media savvy, but Dillip does say, that with a naturally garrulous personalities, Indians sometimes need someone to tell them when to stop. (He does all of this with a subtle joke and a wink sometimes I thought he was perfectly serious and it turns out he’s just teasing.)
Social PR
Using relations with the press to change both government opinion and push education seems to be a passion point for Dillip. They face challenges with 27 different languages and different state policies across the country, but causes like water sanitation, oral contraception for women and other challenges that we take for granted are championed via the press and lobbyists.
Getting national coverage
There are around 20,000 PR practitioners across the country, but they are mainly centred in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. They have over 700 dailies across the country and 27 languages, so they need translations and PR representatives in all those areas. Most PR operations have ‘reps’, freelancers who are their contacts in those regions, Perfect Relations however insists on having their own people to ensure quality and protect clients’ privacy… one of the perks, says Dillip Cherian, of not having to worry too much about what a shareholder wants
Perfect relations do a lot of training for spokespeople and politicians. More and more of the country’s politicians are becoming more media savvy, but Dillip does say, that with a naturally garrulous personalities, Indians sometimes need someone to tell them when to stop. (He does all of this with a subtle joke and a wink sometimes I thought he was perfectly serious and it turns out he’s just teasing.)
Social PR
Using relations with the press to change both government opinion and push education seems to be a passion point for Dillip. They face challenges with 27 different languages and different state policies across the country, but causes like water sanitation, oral contraception for women and other challenges that we take for granted are championed via the press and lobbyists.
Getting national coverage
There are around 20,000 PR practitioners across the country, but they are mainly centred in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. They have over 700 dailies across the country and 27 languages, so they need translations and PR representatives in all those areas. Most PR operations have ‘reps’, freelancers who are their contacts in those regions, Perfect Relations however insists on having their own people to ensure quality and protect clients’ privacy… one of the perks, says Dillip Cherian, of not having to worry too much about what a shareholder wants
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Dillip Cherian – Perfect Relations
Thursday was a day for influencers… and you couldn’t get two more different men, from Anurag’s affability to Dillip’s chic, soft spoken charm. Both of them seem to be highly influential in the communications industry in different ways, and such contrasting personalities.
Arriving at the corporate HQ of Perfect Relations, it was the first agency environment that we had come to that had some of the superficial trappings of prestige. Sitting in the boardroom, presentation set up, Dillip and two of his team Dev and Poonam came in. Dillip welcomed us with his smooth openness ‘we must have some samosas, it’s 12 o clock, we must have food.’ So we had samosas, paneer and pistachio biscuits and more coffee (I thought India was a tea nation… from what I’ve seen India seems to run on coffee!) I think this is a practice we should start at Trinity – though I don’t know anyone in the UK who makes samosas that good.
Dillip and his team, Dev and Poonam, took us through an overview of the Indian marketing space. We talked about the challenges of e-commerce amongst a nation of customers that ‘likes to squeeze it before they buy.’ Where these guys really came to life was their heartland, PR. The PR industry in India is thriving business, grappling with the same issues with the internet and online PR as we are, but where I found them most interesting was in how important PR is in alcohol and tobacco marketing (where there is an ad ban) and lobbying, for which Dillip himself leads the charge.
Having run a very successful business for over 20 years, I found Dillip’s insight in to managing his overhead concise and inspiring. 1) Reward the people who hit the spot. 2) Don’t carry the people who don’t. 3) Don’t sell to Martin Sorrell where suddenly you have to worry about EBITDA every year. 4) Make sure you’re having fun.
Dev & Poonam from Perfect Relations
Arriving at the corporate HQ of Perfect Relations, it was the first agency environment that we had come to that had some of the superficial trappings of prestige. Sitting in the boardroom, presentation set up, Dillip and two of his team Dev and Poonam came in. Dillip welcomed us with his smooth openness ‘we must have some samosas, it’s 12 o clock, we must have food.’ So we had samosas, paneer and pistachio biscuits and more coffee (I thought India was a tea nation… from what I’ve seen India seems to run on coffee!) I think this is a practice we should start at Trinity – though I don’t know anyone in the UK who makes samosas that good.
Dillip and his team, Dev and Poonam, took us through an overview of the Indian marketing space. We talked about the challenges of e-commerce amongst a nation of customers that ‘likes to squeeze it before they buy.’ Where these guys really came to life was their heartland, PR. The PR industry in India is thriving business, grappling with the same issues with the internet and online PR as we are, but where I found them most interesting was in how important PR is in alcohol and tobacco marketing (where there is an ad ban) and lobbying, for which Dillip himself leads the charge.
Having run a very successful business for over 20 years, I found Dillip’s insight in to managing his overhead concise and inspiring. 1) Reward the people who hit the spot. 2) Don’t carry the people who don’t. 3) Don’t sell to Martin Sorrell where suddenly you have to worry about EBITDA every year. 4) Make sure you’re having fun.
Dev & Poonam from Perfect Relations
Tradition in business
When I handed Anurag my red business card – a ritual start to introductions here, and his colleague Atol, my green business card, he said ‘but it’s the wrong colour, today is Thursday, today is yellow.’ He then went on to explain his uniform for each day of the week, dependent on colour according to Hindu tradition – apparently Thursday is yellow. He was duly dressed in yellow – even his socks, he informed us. Friday requires light colours (Anurag likes to wear pink) and the weekend is Black and Gold.
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