• An interview with ET Brand Equity on PR

    First published in ET Brand Equity.

    PR is an essential component in building a cohesive brand narrative: Manu Prasad, Scripbox

    PR is a great means to develop and propagate a unique voice and point of view. Since we are focused on a specific target customer, PR, through its various channels, is a great way to talk about issues that matter to them, says Prasad…

    As we gear up for the India Communication Summit 2022, a special series has been introduced. ‘My Experiments with PR’ captures the opinions and experience of senior marketing leaders from diverse industries. It aims to bring out to our readers insights on how marketers see the PR industry and leverage communications to overcome challenges.

    In this edition, we present Manu Prasad, chief marketing officer, Scripbox. 

    1. What are the major PR challenges that your industry is facing now?

    Scripbox is a wealth manager, and because we are a digital native, we get classified as a fintech, and more recently, wealth tech. A domain that has been transformative from an economic perspective, and one that has received a lot of attention, some good and some bad. One of the biggest challenges therefore, has been to create our signal amidst the noise, from a brand and messaging perspective.

    Related to that is the second challenge – much of the messaging in the domain has been around specific products and the returns they provide – from IPOs to crypto. In contrast, our focus has been on helping our customers develop the mindset and behaviour that helps in long-term wealth creation. 

    The signal of right advice amidst the hype noise is a challenge in an era of constant FOMO, for us as well as our customers. In addition, our target customer is a mature investor who has seen a range of products and market cycles, so it is important that even when discussing the complexity of investing, we don’t get tagged as being overly simplistic, or too condescending. 

    Lastly, our entire business is built on trust. Building this trust organically, without resorting to seemingly quick fixes like sponsored media appearances, awards etc is not an easy path.

    However, the challenges also present us with an opportunity to innovate and push our creative boundaries. Keeping unpredictable trends in mind, our PR objective is to cut through the clutter, while also staying relevant and communicating our messaging in the media. 

    2. How do you as a CMO plan to leverage PR as a weapon to fight those challenges?

    PR is a great means to develop and propagate a unique voice and point of view. Since we are focused on a specific target customer, PR, through its various channels, is a great way to talk about issues that matter to them.

    Money is not a topic that is discussed enough in the public sphere, though all of us have hopes, fears and aspirations that are almost always intrinsically connected to money.

    By adding this to the discourse, doing our bit to increase awareness around financial planning and wealth management, and providing perspectives that our customer might not have considered, our aim is to build a relationship of trust with them. One based on our expertise and always having the customer’s interests in mind.

    From a channel perspective too, both print and television relatively speaking have their audience’s trust. In a complementary way, digital helps us target very specifically, both in terms of message and audience. 

    3. Is PR only there for crisis management or can it be leveraged to achieve long term goals?

    That does make PR sound like the underappreciated hero who gets to shine only when a villain (crisis) makes an appearance. But that, in my view, is a very narrow way of looking at what a good PR strategy can add to the overall brand perception. 

    In the wake of an unexpected crisis, PR efforts surely come to the rescue of a brand, by taking actions required to minimise negatives and repercussions. But inherently, PR is a long game, and a worthy investment which is instrumental in building a brand’s reputation in the long run. Brand is all about building a perception and in a trust-based business, PR is an indispensable and integral part of brand strategy. 

    Very few brands run brand campaigns (different from acquisition campaigns) all year round. With the right efforts, PR builds consistent visibility for the brand among the target customers. With the help of PR, we are able to establish ourselves as thought leaders, influencing and impacting the space in a way that makes us synonymous to the domain. 

    4. Digital wealth is an up and coming concept and many might not be well aware of what it actually deals with. How has PR helped you in spreading awareness about your brand?

    Wealth management has been around for the longest while, and in recent years, accelerated by the pandemic, personal finance too has gone through a digital transformation. We have always believed in the unbiased power of algorithms, technology’s potential to elevate data to applicable insights, and digital’s capability to provide personalisation and intuitive interfaces. Now customers are increasingly believing that too. 

    But digital is a means. Our objective, as a digital wealth manager, is to relieve investors’ fears and doubts around money and financial planning. Our audience shouldn’t shy away from conversations around money matters, rather finance should be a topic of interest to them. With an attempt to simplify wealth management for our target audience, we strive to educate our consumers with genuine financial advice. Our PR efforts have allowed us to be creative and engage with our consumers on complex topics in a seamless manner. 

    Intending to target a specific consumer base, we have leveraged selective PR to communicate our distinct positioning and desired messaging. We’ve preferred to channel our resources in an effective organic PR strategy, rather than taking the paid route, to increase credibility for the brand among viewers and readers. Slowly but steadily, PR has continuously helped us build trust with our consumers and investors. 

    5. How has been your experience with PR in your professional journey? 

    In the past, I have worked as a brand manager in print publications, I have also been a columnist, and PR has been a part of my recent roles. These varied experiences have given me a relatively more rounded view of the domain. 

    I have found PR to be both a good lead on some brand-driven campaigns (e.g. the annual surveys we do around financial freedom, World Savings Day and Women’s Day) as well as an excellent complementary aspect in general marketing campaigns. There have also been occasions when the PR coverage around a campaign has provided the brand more visibility than the actual campaign – for example, when the brand has used influencers. 

    The challenge of showing the benefits of PR has been an interesting one to continuously solve. From anecdotal feedback to showing spikes in brand keyword traffic, it has been quite a journey. 

    Overall, I think PR is an absolutely essential component in building a cohesive brand narrative over the long term. Media has gone beyond traditional mainstream into many streams and that makes the role of PR an ever-expanding and interesting one. 

  • How the World Works

    Noam Chomsky

    I think the biggest proof of the US hegemony that Chomsky brings up regularly is how (relatively) unknown he is to the world at large. Because it’s not the kind of publicity the US would like. It’s true that the name has come up in many conversations online, and that is the reason I picked up this book, but for his quality of ideas, he really should be known and quoted a lot more.

    This book serves as a great introduction to Chomsky’s perspectives, not just because of the different topics that have been covered, but also because of how accessible it is – thanks to it being derived from the spoken word through Chomsky’s many media interactions. And yes, the index does help when you want to read about a specific topic and get a quote. There is some repetition, but that is to be expected, and as a contemporary reader, we may not have all the contexts, but that’s also a small price to pay. 

    Of the many topics covered, the US government acting as a bully inside and outside the country is one that’s central. Calling out its usage of government agencies, its military, its allies, as well as international organisations like the UN to enforce its will on nations is what makes Chomsky unpopular. Any nation or leader that attempts an alternate path, especially that is good for the people in the long term, is at the receiving end of many deterrents – local and international – acting in the interest of the US. Because an example is dangerous – it shows that something is possible, countries like Vietnam and many countries in Latin America like Brazil have had to pay the price. All of this became even more easier once the Cold War ended. Though it was convenient to show the USSR as the bogeyman, the US was also good at creating other villains. Within the country, the idea is to ensure that the social, economic and political agenda of an elite class is implemented and also that the general public doesn’t get to have a say in the matter even though it’s supposed to be a democracy. Big business has an important play in this and over a period of time, media which is supposed to be a conscience-keeper, becomes a cheerleader. 

    It’s amazing how well his insights age, as many of them can be used in current contexts. It is also fascinating to see history rhyme – Daimler-Benz and Fidelity as predecessors to Big Tech in holding cities ransom and threatening to vote with their feet if they didn’t get tax cuts.


    On one hand, it is a little heartening that the problems we face now aren’t new. The scale and manifestation might have changed, but the fundamental causes are the same. On the other hand, it does seem that there really is no hope on things getting better – the wealth gap decreasing, or the common citizen getting a level playing field. Chomsky’s view is that these are not laws of nature and that the individual can play a role in changing things, but he points out that it only works if everyone takes the subway. If some drive, it’s going to be better for those who drive! Classic prisoner’s dilemma. When educated classes line up for a parade, he says, people of conscience have three options – march in the parade, join the cheering throngs on the sidelines, or speak out against the parade (and of course, expect a price for doing that!) and that’s been the story for a thousand years and more. 

    I am not sure I have read anyone else who has so much information on things that happened in the world and is able to cite examples for any question asked, is able to convert that into knowledge that connects the assorted pieces, and then deliver such timeless insights. Irreplaceable, I think.

  • A proxy life

    I have forgotten where I first came across Goodhart’s Law. It was probably Farnam Street. It states that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” An illustration should help.

    https://sketchplanations.com/goodharts-law

    In the organisational context, it serves as a great lens to evaluate strategy and progress. As the illustration above shows, the entire direction of a desired goal can be changed when measures become targets. But, and maybe it’s a Baader -Meinhof phenomenon, I am now seeing different versions of it everywhere.

    To set some context, as more and more things have been digitised, the volume of information has just exploded. For instance, before the advent of social media, there were limits to one’s “people like me” canvas, because even an awareness of them was constrained by physical distances and the limits of one’s social circle. It had to be in real life, and public spaces like a cinema or even a vacation spot were probably an extreme. Social media changed that scale massively. Many factors including this volume of information, the lack of a granular understanding of the lives of this new set of people whom you’d never meet, and the innate human desire to do better than neighbours meant that appearances became the norm. Since we are not wired to process such large volumes of information, we dug deeper into ‘measurement by proxy.’ Not that this mode of measurement is new. For instance, we have used material manifestations (apparel, cars etc) as a measure of wealth. The stock price is a single-number measure of everything about the company. But with abundance of choice and the limits of processing power, we started developing heuristics and measuring what was easy. Meta photos (FB/Insta/WhatsApp) became a measure of everything from the quality of life to the strength of relationships. Popularity as a measure of excellence, price as a measure of quality, fitness as a measure of health, #booksread as a measure of erudition and so on.

    How does this connect to Goodhart’s Law? We end up optimising our resources for the measure, not the end goal. Which means that though the goal is say, happiness and a good quality of life, we end up aiming for the measure. From the kind of photo that will get more likes to buying that thing/experience that will surely make us happy. And as we feed this more, the mind keeps on wanting. The happiness fades in a short span of time. And as the Buddha has wisely pointed out, that loss of happiness is what becomes suffering.

    In the AI risk narrative, there is the story of the paperclip maximiser, a seemingly trivial task of maximising paperclips that might lead to “first all of earth and then increasing portions of space into paperclip manufacturing facilities”. The corresponding human version that I wrote in Peak Abstraction was that maybe we will get to a state where, if we get enough likes on the couple photo on Insta, there would be relationship bliss! What a wonderful world.

  • Klara and the Sun

    Kazuo Ishiguro

    “The Buried Giant” didn’t really work for me, so I started reading with a mix of anticipation and apprehension. The lump in the throat as I turn the final pages is what I expect from a Kazuo Ishiguro book, and it most certainly delivered on that ache of profound sadness. It reminded me not just of his earlier book “Never Let Me Go”, but also of Louisa Hall’s “Speak”, which is centred around AI’s evolution around stories and storytelling through time. 
    Klara, an “artificial friend” serves as the narrator in a dystopian future where children are “lifted” for enhancing their intelligence. The world at large seems to have a fair share of tribes and movements, as technology has caused a division of classes in which many are “post employed”. We first meet Klara in the store where she is put up for sale, as an observant MF, who loves watching the world through the store window, and who is devoted to the sun (she is solar powered). She is chosen by Josie, a 14-year old made unwell by the “lifting” process. 

    From then on, we see multiple themes playing out – some human, some human and AF, and some just AF. The relationship between the humans – Josie, her mother and father who are separated, their neighbour Helen and her son Rick (who is Josie’s dear friend), and Capaldi, whose studio Josie and her mother visit for her “portrait” – reveal the different “sides” of their selves that play out on different occasions, their understanding of their own fragility, and their diverse views about how society is evolving. This is closely connected to the humans’ interactions with Klara, which show their mindset towards the AFs, again polarised. Most poignant are the moments with the empathetic Manager. 

    But being the narrator, Klara’s own thoughts and actions are the most interesting. She sees the world in boxes (I wonder if that is connected to how we slot people), she “feels” enough for Josie to be prepared to sacrifice anything for her, and has a hatred for the Cootings Machine, both of which are all too human. Her observation also makes her very perceptive (“I understood that my presence wasn’t appropriate as it once had been,”) even though the humans around her are often not. (Spoiler sentence ahead) My favourite is the deep insight at the end, when she says that Capaldi’s belief that there was nothing special inside Josie that couldn’t be continued was flawed because he was looking in the wrong place – it wasn’t inside Josie, it was inside those who loved her. 

    Ishiguro has a way with prose that allows him to move the story forward without massive plot-changing interventions. And as always, he also manages to keep the reader interested with the layered narrative and wonderful insights that make us human. In this case, the book made me wonder about the time when (I am not sure it’s an “if”) AI becomes sentient/ develops consciousness – would humans be able to understand (Klara’s faith in the sun, for instance), what is the kind of loneliness the AI would face, how would it handle its obsolescence, would it also show different kinds of love (the selfish and the selfless), and yes, can it have a heart – “I don’t simply mean the organ, obviously. I’m speaking in the poetic sense”.

    Klara and the Sun Kazuo Ishiguro

  • Artificial Culture

    It’s almost a year and a half since I wrote In Code we Trust. More recently, Tim Ferriss had Eric Schmidt on his podcast (transcript). In what I thought was a fascinating discussion based on the latter’s recent book  The Age of AI: And Our Human Future, (coauthored with Henry A. Kissinger and Daniel Huttenlocher), they also brought up AlphaGo. Go was a game that humans had been playing for 2,500 years, and it was thought to be incomputable until DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat world champions. As Schmidt explained, some of its moves and strategies were the kind no one had thought of before. In Kissinger’s words, we’re entering a new epoch, similar to the Renaissance, this age of artificial intelligence, because humanity has never had a competitive intelligence, similar to itself, but not human. To note, a more recent version – AlphaGo Zero self-taught itself without learning from human games, and surpassed its predecessor in 40 days!

    (more…)