DEEP TALKS WITH GLOBAL PR LEADERS

YOMI BADEJO-OKUSANYA

President, African Public Relations Association (APRA) & Group Managing Director at CMC Connect (Perception Managers)

“PR is the business of influencing your thoughts about a product, service and individual”

Ahead of the African Public Relations Association Conference in Tanzania hosting over 300 professionals from across 16 countries APRA President Yomi Badejo-Okusanya shares his insights and experiences with our profession.

José Manuel Velasco (JMV): YOU HAVE A VERY LARGE BACKGROUND IN THE PR BUSINESS. WHY DID YOU BECOME A PR PROFESSIONAL?

Yomi Badejo-Okusanya (YBO):At the end of my University, I had a couple of options, but I felt that I wanted to work rather than depending on my late Mother for money. So I asked myself, “what are the things I could do?”. I didn’t know a lot about PR – in fact I knew nothing about PR, but many people that saw me then often said to me that I would make a good PR person. We had a Nigerian who has been the President of the Nigerian professional Association and had become a Minister, Late Chief Alex Akinyele, and many people said I reminded them of him. So that’s where I picked up my interest in Public Relations.

JMV: COULD YOU SHARE A SHORT STORY OR ANECDOTE RELATED TO YOUR VOCATION?

YBO: None comes to mind immediately. I have been in this profession since 1988, well over 30 years. I started out with Advertising as there were no full-serviced PR firms in Nigeria when I started. My rise through Marketing Communications was quite phenomenal. Within 3 years, I had ended up being a Director of the Company then that I was working for, and I was asked to head the subsidiary that focused on Marketing & Public Relations.

JMV: WHAT DOES THE PR PROFESSION GIVE TO YOU?

YBO: #smiles# Depending on what day of the week, sometimes it gives me a lot of satisfaction, sometimes a lot of frustration. But on the whole, I like it and there are aspects of it I wish were better presented.

JMV: CHOOSE A KEY MOMENT OF YOUR PROFESSIONAL CAREER

YBO: Many key moments. When I started the business and, on some occasion, when I’ve won an account. One defining moment was when I became the Chairman of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, Lagos State Chapter, and then exactly 10 years later when I became the Secretary General of African Public Relations Association (APRA) in Mumbasa, Kenya and when I became the President of APRA in 2016, in Calabar, Nigeria.

JMV: DEFINE THE PURPOSE OF THE PR PROFESSION

YBO: There are many definitions, and I can’t fault all those definitions but they sound very academic. For me, Public Relations is about telling a compelling story. In layman’s language, PR is about persuasion, and for you to persuade, you must tell a good story. In telling that story, you must have the facts, you must be able to present them and you must be able to address the various audiences that you’re targeting. In a nutshell, PR is the art of telling very, very, compelling stories.

JMV: DO YOU THINK THE PROFESSION IS REALLY GLOBALIZED?

YBO: It is. There’s no where you go on the Globe and say PR, that people had not heard it before. They have. Do they have a full or better understanding of it, that’s a totally different ball game.

JMV: HOW DIGITALIZATION IS IMPACTING ON THE PR JOB?

YBO: That digitalization has impacted PR is non-contestable. The question we need to ask ourself is: how has PR adapted to the concept of digitalization? Has it caught us unawares? Are we working in it? Are we leveraging it? Digitalization is just a tool and we as PR practitioners must understand the dynamics of digitalization and work within those dynamics.

JMV: WHAT DO YOU THINK IS OUR MAIN CHALLENGE?

YBO: In the 1990s in Nigeria, we had a new set of PR practitioners. We were born before “digitalization”, we are what you call adopters, not natives. We think analogue and then we need to adapt to the digital world. Now, will the new set of PR practitioners who were born in the era of digitalization, still call what they are doing, “PR”? You find, in my country for instance, the people we call “influencers”. They are not trained PR practitioners but they are influencers in their own right because of the social media followership they command. So, you find a client going to the going for the service of an Influencers, rather than that of a professional PR specialist. What is PR if it doesn’t influence? I think the challenge is that many PR organisations are not creating enough platforms to engage: to create content and to have a massive reach.

JMV: IS THE PR FUNCTION THREATENED BY MARKETING?

YBO: The roles are complimentary but, technically, one cannot do the function of the other. Marketing is concerned with selling while PR is about persuasion. For you to buy, you must be persuaded and that’s where PR comes in. PR is the business of influencing your thoughts about a product, service and individual.

JMV: WHICH DO YOU THINK IS OUR MAIN CHALLENGE ON THE ETHICS SIDE.

YBO: Where there is no law, there is no offense. PR must be predicated on truth and not propaganda. There are lines you must not cross. The biggest problem in PR is that it is a service; it is intangible. Unfortunately, we (PR practitioners) have not been able to convert our service into a solid tangible. We have not been able to sell ourselves well enough as the brain behind the concepts and strategies. A lot of people are still ambiguous about what PR really does. Hence, we have a challenge with determining the value that PR brings to the table. We’ve got a problem with Value Determination. We must let people know that it is in the “crafting”; they should focus more on how we are involved in the strategy to deliver their objective and not so much on the outlets that we have.

JMV: WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO TO ELEVATE THE PROFESSION? THAT MEANS, FOR EXAMPLE, TO BE RECOGNIZED AS A C-SUITE FUNCTION.

YBO: PR needs PR; we must sell the gospel of Public Relations. We must be able to let people know the importance and value that PR brings to the table. We haven’t done that and we haven’t done it enough. I think it should be a charge led by organisations like the Global Alliance in partnership with all PR organisations globally, be they national PR, regional or continental, whatever they are, we must come together and sell the value of Public Relations. One of the things I keep on campaigning about is Affirmative PR. This simply means making sure PR speaks for PR, making sure we determine the value we bring to the table, and making sure we communicate the value that we bring to the table. That will put us in the right light and give us a seat in the room. Most PR practitioners are looked upon as appendages which is a wrong perception of PR. PR is a strategic management tool, it is deliberate, it is planned. We’ve got to bring all these to play for PR to advance.

JMV: WHAT ATTITUDE AND SKILLS NEED A PR MANAGER?

YBO: Knowledge of strategy is very key as this has to do with logic and analysis. The Mexican Statement of 1978 talks about PR being deliberate and planned; about analyzing trends and predicting the outcome/consequences, and counselling.

JMV: WHAT IS THE MAIN DEMAND OF A MEMBER?

YBO: I think knowledge is key. They want to build capacity in the profession and advance in the profession as well.

JMV: WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO A TRAINEE ON HIS/HER FIRST DAY OF WORK?

YBO: Learn strategy. Understand strategy. If you understand strategy, it would help a lot in PR.

JMV: AND THE SAME TO A SENIOR MANAGER OVER 50 YEARS OLD.

YBO: Mentor.

JMV: PLEASE, SHARE WITH US A QUOTE WHICH IMPACTED YOU THE MOST.

YBO: “If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on PR”, Bill Gates

JMV: RECOMMEND A BOOK TO THE GLOBAL ALLIANCE COMMUNITY

YBO: The fall of Advertising and the rise of PR – Al Ries & Laura Ries

Execution: the discipline of getting things done – Ram Charan

Any thoughts or opinions expressed are that of the authors and not of Global Alliance.