Adfactors' Madan Bahal on the firm's Brand Refresh, PR industry growth challenges

Adfactors PR is the largest PR firm in India by a wide margin and is also among the world's top 100 PR firms, with a fee income of over Rs. 485 crores.

The firm's energetic and forward-thinking MD and founder, Madan Bahal, speaks with PRmoment India editor Paarul Chand on the rebranding of Adfactors PR on its 27th Foundation Day on September 5th, what he sees as the must-have talent bucket and what should be the pace at which the PR industry should grow.

Paarul Chand, what are Adfactors' key goals for the future?

Madan Bahal: The principal goal is simply to stay relevant in a fast-changing world. The business context has changed dramatically since the pandemic. Business risks and consequently reputation risks have multiplied. The earned influence ecosystem has undergone a dramatic shift with the growth of digital channels and platforms.

Our endeavour is to keep transforming. Our current focus areas is to build consultative competencies and capacity, as well as to address the paradigm shift in earned influence.

Paarul Chand: What is Adfactors PR's brand refresh focus?

Madan Bahal: Our core value proposition of ‘knowledge-driven communications’ has changed to ‘an advisory for managing reputation and critical issues’. There is also a minor change in the visual expression to make it contemporary.

The brand refresh was necessitated by external and internal changes.

Reputation risks have increased many-fold and most mid to large business organisations are dealing with existential challenges. Public Relations in the new world order will operate at the intersection of media, markets, policy and an environment of vocal activism from a range of stakeholders.

We are thus building capacity across various competencies to deliver on the new value proposition. These include risk monitoring, c-suite consulting, ESG, policy, capital markets and a variety of digital skills. We are strengthening our crisis support capabilities.

Paarul Chand: How will the talent gap be addressed?

Madan Bahal: Addressing the talent gap has a two-pronged approach. The first is to double up our efforts on learning and development. The second is to diversify our hiring at the leadership level to include a range of new competencies like research, business consulting, ESG, investment banking, law, public policy and sectoral expertise.

Paarul Chand: What are Adfactors' growth targets?

Madan Bahal: We believe in consistent and steady growth to be able to deliver on the aspirations of our people and changing expectations of our clients. Staying relevant is important but it needs consistent investments. I would like to see Adfactors PR maintain a growth of 16-20% in the years to come. By the way, the firm has delivered this CAGR for nearly 20 years.

Paarul Chand: What are the core values and strategies that have contributed to Adfactors' enduring success in the PR and corporate communications industry?

Madan Bahal: Our core values are freedom, transparency, continuous learning and client centricity. There is a certain Indianness in our approach consistent with the ethical values and mores of our society.

The strategy has thus far focused on being an industry benchmark in earned influence. We will stay invested in this strategy – albeit in the context of a radically new paradigm of earned influence due to online influencers and platforms.

Paaraul Chand: What are the key challenges you are facing?

Madan Bahal: The external world is full of opportunity – the challenges are mostly internal. There is a delta between the rate at which the world is transforming and the pace of internal change. There is a mismatch between good intentions and the actual actions to transform. The higher you go up the hierarchy, the slower the pace of change.

Paarul Chand: What about the challenges of flat retainers?

Madan Bahal: This is an industry-wide issue. A flat retainer of Rs. 3 lakhs to 5 lakhs is simply inadequate to manage organisational reputation in a country of 140 crore people, thousands of media channels, unmatched diversity of language and culture, often low journalistic rigour, slow redressal in the judicial process and the power of social channels available to a common stakeholder. Not to mention the unprecedented surge in complexity businesses are now facing.

I see things getting better in the times to come with complexity making reputation a c-suite and boardroom issue. Our challenge and opportunity is to match up on the expectations.