Friday, April 20, 2012

Knowledge driven communication - an initiative by Adfactors PR

Communication professionals in the session
Adfactors PR, India's leading Public Relations Agency has moved to a spacious premises a couple of weeks back at Mumbai and Delhi visualising their long term business growth.  Mr Madan Bahal, Managing Director of Adfactors PR invited me to visit their new facilities and to address their communication professionals.  Adfactors PR ranks in the top 10 among the Asian PR agencies and also in the top 100 at global level.  They are No 1 in India for their revenue.

I visited them on 19th April 2012. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Mr Madan Bahal himself had come to airport personally to receive me.  I was highly impressed with his humbleness and simplicity, in spite of his holding top slot in the industry.  

The centrally located new premises in Mumbai has nearly 50000 sft of carpet area in three floor.  I am told that no PR agency in the world has so much of space, that too in a single location.

Many meeting halls, conference halls, gym with latest equipments, recreation centre, pantry, canteen, spacious working table were highly impressive.  An excellent library with books, periodicals is a star attraction.  They plan to add audio and video books also.  The new facility can accommodate nearly 450 employees.

In all the three floors, they have brought out ancient Indian wisdom through paintings.

They have a new conference hall meant for conducting press conferences fitted with the latest gadgets.  I had the opportunity of addressing their communication professionals in this hall.  Probably, I had the unique honour and opportunity of inaugurating this conference hall by addressing them. 

During the course of my discussions with nearly 50 plus of their professionals, i was taking them to the glory of communication strategies in the early Ramayana and Mahabarata days, which are relevant event today.  The discussions ranged from the new PRSA definition to the clients' expectations to the traiditional media to social media.

I insisted on bridging the 'knowledge gap' of the professionals to keep themselves updated.  This could be possible only through constant updating of their knowledge.  I suggested to them to attend to the seminars, conferences and to join the communication groups and participate in debates.

I was also focussing on the need for getting International Accreditation from institutes like IABC, PRSA, CIPR to become globally competitive. 

Mr Madan Bahal was present throughout taking notes of the discussions.  Finally, I made a small request to Mr Madan Bahal.  Since they have such a huge infrastructure and facility, they can also start an initiative to organise workshops, seminars and discussions for the middle level and senior level professionals of the PR and communication industry.  More than 10,000 professionals are working in Public Relations and Corporate communication segment in India.  As on date, there is no proper mechanism for bridging the knowledge gap.

Since, the tag line of Adfactors PR itself is 'knowledge driven communication', they can take up the initiative to strengthen the knowledge base of industry.  Mr Madan promised to take it forward.  

I even suggested the name as 'Adfactors Academy', which can functions on the lines of National Institute of Bank Management (NIBM), Pune.  NIBM provides training support to the Bank officials at senior and top management level, to update their knowledge.  NIBM is supported by all the Banks.  Now even senior bankers from other countries prefer to take training here.  

All PR bodies, PR Agencies and Corporates can join hands to take it forward.

Please watch the pictures.

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