India to host the 11th edition of the World PR Forum on Building Goodwill for the Greater Good

The World PR Forum, one of the largest PR events in the world, will be held this year in Chennai, India, with the theme Building Goodwill for the Greater Good. The event, organized by the Global Alliance for PR and Communication Management, is biannual, but has not taken place for 5 years, due to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The event will take place in September.

Aberje represents its members in the Global Alliance and actively participates in the organization of the WPRF. To learn more about what we can expect from the event, we talked to Amith Prabhu, a pioneer of public relations in India, board member of GA and local organizer of the WPRF, about his expectations for the event.

We also take the opportunity to explore his knowledges on reputation and corporate communications, to learn a bit more about the Indian perspective on the field. Amith has over 15 years of experience in reputation management, having worked, in India and the US, in leading marketing communications companies.

Enjoy the reading!

After a few years without the WPRF, we are finally back. What is the importance of having a face-to-face global event again, in a world that is becoming more and more digitalized and hybrid?

While the World adapted to the new normal, it cannot fully have us change our preferred choices or what we grew up watching and learning from. A face-to-face event brings the audience closer and generates a much more enriching experience. Videos and Images will always have a bigger impact on us. It is not the same with the hybrid or the digital world. While some parts of smart working environment are benefitting from it, attending events virtually will not be able to create the same experience as an on-ground event.

We are all already looking forward to seeing more details of the schedule. Which themes will be the highlights of the program and what the public may expect to learn from it?

This edition of WPRF will have an overarching theme of – Building Goodwill for Greater Good and the sub-themes will be – How the world is changing PR and how PR should change the world & Responsible Communication – Your Reputation, Your Influence, Your Role

Taking place alongside PRAXIS and therefore over three days, this conference will comprise high-value learning, global speakers, networking opportunities, delegates from around the world and inspiring sessions.

It is the paramount objective of Public Relations to create goodwill and to retain it thereafter. Public Relations is all about establishing goodwill between the organisation and its various stakeholders, i.e., employees, clients, and others. For doing this, PR practitioners must be adaptive to everything in the process of creating goodwill. Public Relations helps in building a goodwill account for a brand in such a way that the brand can even survive negativity. Creating goodwill is even more imperative now after the turbulence of the last couple of years. The forthcoming edition of WPRF talks about all these and many other elements while focusing on building goodwill for better good.

One of the themes that stands out the most nowadays is reputation. Taking care of reputation is certainly the great challenge for communication teams. What is your view on reputation in companies and how may this be addressed at the event?

Reputation is an intangible yet super important asset that any brand/company works towards from the start and builds on consistently. One slip and you could lose all of it in a second. We have known of such examples in the past. We, at The Promise Foundation curate event platforms for the PR and Communications fraternity, which are themed around Reputation Management. We have had Global leaders and brand CEOs address and talk about reputation in their companies being of utmost importance to them and how they lay a lot of focus on it. Infect, PRAXIS 2023 slated to take place from 22^nd September 2023 to 23^rd September 2023 in Chennai, has its theme as Reputation Management – The Big Picture. Managing and building reputation is what keeps the CEOs up at night! These aspects will be addressed.

India is a huge country, populous and with a very interesting culture. However, in terms of Corporate Communication, we don’t always know the local reality very well. What are the characteristics of the practice of communication in India that you would shed light on as something to share and reinforce for the communication world?

The Indian Communications fraternity is well equipped with the knowledge required to understand and work according to the cultural differences that exist based on geographies. Most communication leaders work with a targeted communications approach specific to the taste, cultures, and beliefs in the respective regions. In fact the communications profession here in India is seeing its best peak in this decade, in terms of collaborations, new media and approach to work with an hybrid culture.

Every year Aberje elects a theme of the year, which is discussed in every activity promoted by the association. This year’s theme is “Connections that transform: the power of the network in the growing business communication market”. How do you think this idea applies to networks as Global Alliance’s? What is the importance of the network nowadays for a better business environment?

The theme is appropriate given that we live in a hyper connected world with multiple distractions. And the need to network has always been paramount. The Global Alliance of which Aberje and Promise Foundation are part of, offers members an immense scope to collaborate because of the shared values we cherish.  And at the core of all that we do is smart networking that helps everyone to succeed. We are confident we will see a lot of this networking taking place during WPRF in Chennai, India in September 2023.

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