Working in PR outside of the U.S. and outside of the familiarity of Western culture requires an insider's understanding of heated cultural, political and economic issues of which many communications executives have only marginal knowledge.
Understanding the impact of issues such as NAFTA, apartheid and the debate over the International Monetary Fund bailout in the Far East carries more importance if you are working in Mexico, South Africa or Asia. Understanding the influence of these global factors can mean the difference between cutting the mustard and struggling in an emerging market.
In these stories, PR NEWS looks at the life and times of four PR executives making inroads in growing marcom and strategic communications markets: Brussels, Belgium; Shanghai, China; Johannesburg, South Africa; and the Latin American market.
All four are regions being targeted by PR agencies such as Burson-Marsteller and Edelman. Edelman, in fact, is doggedly promoting its brand in China. Timothy C. Heberlein, MD of its China operation, recently addressed the US-China Business Council in Beijing about economic reforms in Asia.
For this series, we spoke with Ketchum's Jeffrey Tarmy, a 30-something senior manager in Shanghai, one of the leading global centers of Chinese and multinational commerce that includes Beijing and Hong Kong. We also interviewed Paul Adamson, founder of 24-person boutique Adamson Associates, which was just acquired by BSMG Worldwide, New York; Fleishman Hillard's Rissig Licha, who works out of Miami as MD of the firm's Latin American network; and Lucien Vallun, managing partner of FH's South African affiliate Vallun Wilkins.
It's A Small World?
At face value, the kind of PR practiced in these divergent geographic pockets mirrors communication in the U.S. There is the heavy dose of media relations as well as the surging crisis management field. Last week, Vallun was knee-deep in crisis work for client Edgars, a retailer embroiled in a strike over a wage freeze.
Globally, PR professionals also continue to inch closer to the boardroom. The executives we spoke with counsel major global players, from Chrysler in South Africa to Exxon in Europe.
Some also work closely with global organizations such as the European Union, which includes nations whose borders touch on waters from the Mediterranean to the Baltic seas.
What also is very different in these markets is the execution of PR. There is a breadth and depth most U.S. communicators don't regularly face unless they are handling public affairs campaigns that have international impact. The public relations industry, as a capitalist concept, is surfacing as a key force in countries that not only are competing on the open market but developing their economic and business infrastructures.
Licha, for example, believes the Latin American PR trade represents a potential $500 million industry in that region. He also anticipates continued growth for Fleishman Hillard's Latin American network, which includes Mexico, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Columbia, Peru, Equador, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia and Argentina.
The Miami PR office, the nucleus for this area, opened five years ago to handle PR in these countries and works with 100 Fleishman-Hillard staffers based in various Latin American and U.S. cities. One of their cornerstone clients is Walmart [WMT], which Licha says has "revolutionized" the retail market in Mexico through its customer-service focus.
That bold claim is something a PR professional in the U.S. can rarely make and points to the power PR is having in developing countries.
Mentoring on PR Morals
Across the seas, Tarmy regularly lobbies on behalf of Western PR ethics. He has to explain why the firm won't pay for stories in government-owned papers, a practice U.S. PR firms say they are balking against in Asia. Another sign of the complexities facing PR executives abroad is a fact of life Vallun wrangles with regularly. South Africa has nine official languages, including tribal ones such as Zulu and Sotho.
"What would seem like a simple task in the U.S- for instance, distributing a news release about a rate increase for an electric utility, would likely permit you to come up with an homogeneous message," says Vallun. "But in South Africa, that work for a national utility company would require you to handle it very differently and not in a blanketing way. Your messages would be heterogeneous."
To foreigners, in fact, the U.S. appears as a continent whose cities are relatively homogeneous. The argument prevails that the cookie-cutter approach can have more influence here. But many PR markets are emerging in countries whose political systems are far more tenuous, sometimes even easier to influence.
Case in point is Tarmy's assessment of media relations in Shanghai. "I find it easier to get coverage since the media is owned by the government and it wants to publish positive news," he says.
Ketchum's Shanghai office, which nets nearly $1 mllion in billings, regularly pitches newspapers Xin Min Evening News and the Shanghai Business News for deep-pocketed clients, including U.S.-based FedEx [FDX]. Its success rate is estimated to be nearly double that which Ketchum's Washington, D.C., office faces when it approaches press outlets in D.C.
One similarity between the two offices is the reliance on English. Everyone in Tarmy's 10-person office, which was founded in 1994, speaks English as well as Mandarin or Cantonese, China's chief dialects. Tarmy, in fact, is learning Mandarin from a 72-year-old Chinese woman once placed under house arrest by the Communist government, who still has no concept of what the term "spin" means. (Paul Adamson, 322/230-0775; Rissig Licha, 305/520-2000; Jeffrey Tarmy, 86/21/6215-8681; Lucien Vallun, 2711/706-880);