PR is the Most Dynamic Business in the World

The best way to start a new month is to read more about the bright future of creative ideas, big dreams and work challenges. Here is an excerpt of the interview with our CEO Maxim Behar for Romania's premier business magazine Business Review, where he shares how the social media is changing the PR business every day and how the opinion of every person matters now as it is public, valuable and builds the world today.

What are the main changes that you considered happened in the last two years in the PR industry?

Public Relations now is a business which is changing, if not every minute at least every day, somewhere in the world. And in fact – this is the beauty of this business, which I do consider as the only one where creativity and profits cross their ways and also go together. Nothing which had worked ten years ago does not work anymore and although the reasons are many and complicated I would like to underline one very important. First time since Public Relations started as such, sometimes in the beginning of the last century, the ownership of media has changed and now everyone owes media – our clients, ourselves, governments, business… even taxi drivers and all other people, who never ever before had for a single minute an idea that one day they might be opinion makers and will own media. So – the first change is that everyone owns media – profile on social media, blog, web site, forum… This is the main base for the second big change – nowadays everyone is public. In the past the public persons used to be very limited number of people – stars from sports and show business, politicians and journalists… Very limited number of people, but let say important ones. Now…everyone is a public person, which means that in the public space everyone is important in a way. These facts put huge impact on our business, they changed the world, changed the people, changed the way we communicate, behalf, the way we sell and buy even. When it started some ten years ago, the main messages were delivered publicly in the text format and the contents of social media – mainly Facebook and Twitter was dominated by the content with very small presence of visuals. Now… the past two years. The main change is namely the content – pictures, videos and all type of visuals started being cast majority of this content and logically our business is adapting to this reality. Graphic and  web designers, together with the social media expert in the beginning of 2016 are already at least 50 percent of the team in my company, two years ago they were 30 percent, five years ago – less than 10. This facts changed also clients’ requirements on how to reach our targets and how to have better results.

Do you foresee some more for the near future?

Absolutely. Again – every single day. Public Relations is the most dynamic business in the world. Traditional media like printed newspapers are disappearing, radio is already not the traditional place for advertising and most probably soon will also die in this format, TV is getting closer to the online media. These facts require total change in our business too – much more attention to the visual content and completely new abilities and knowledge of our teams. Instead communications with media, now we must learn how to manage the media as we and our clients own them.

Do you see any differences, beside the cultural ones, between the PR industry in the Eastern versus the Western Europe?

There are differences, but I would say not between Easter and Western Europe, but more between Southern and Northern Europe. The differences comes mostly with the national characteristics, level of emotions and consumption habits of the different countries. But we must be aware that social media make these differences less and less and next generations all over the world (except purely and strongly religious countries) will become very much closer with the mentalities and interests. They will work like never before in the history and they will know so much, like never in the history people had knowledge. It makes our business very international and less dependable on the national differences.

What are the main PR trends you see for 2016?

Clients became extremely demanding and majority of them started to work with PR companies not with a regular retainer fee contracts, but only on a project base. This is a great mistake. This business must have strategy – mostly long term ones and also strong continuity. In 2016 our business, alongside will all the changes in the social media and adjustments for the new media environments, must very proactively fight to prove the clients that we are the masters of content and none can do this better than us. Imagine there are three main circles in the modern public communications circles today – PR, Advertising and Digital. The fight now is between PR and Advertising who will get the most of digital business, but the simple truth is that those three circles in the very near future will merge into one and my strong believe and prediction is the PR will prevail. The first steps of this will be done in 2016, trust me.

You can read the whole interview here: http://www.business-review.eu/