By Femi Falodun (Nigeria)
Chartered Marketer and CEO, ID Africa
Over the near decade of managing Public Relations and Communications programmes for brands across the continent, I have been privileged to hire, train and work with diverse talents ranging from young interns just cutting their teeth in the industry, to seasoned executives with storied careers who’ve been there and done it all.
Common to the most successful of the professionals that I have studied, is the ability to excel and deliver on a number of roles and responsibilities which ultimately stand them out from the crowd, and make them exceptionally effective at their jobs. I consider these skill areas to be the most critical success factors that must be perfected by anyone who wants to have a successful career in African PR and Communications consultancy.
By mastering most, if not all of these skills, I’ve seen rookies with no academic background in marketing or communications quickly grow to become superstars. I’ve also seen people with advanced postgraduate qualifications in communications-related disciplines really struggle to grow as professionals due to failure in two or more of these skill areas.
1.) Relationship Management: This refers to the interpersonal relationship and ongoing interaction that an individual consultant develops and nurtures with the various stakeholders in their professional universe; i.e., colleagues, clients, vendors, journalists, cultural influencers, freelance content creators, production partners, etc.
PR Consultants are relationship managers, and their job is to manage people and build relationships with them. Consultants must manage ‘up’ (bosses), ‘down’ (reports), and in parallel (peers). A technically average talent with excellent relationships will succeed faster, for longer and go farther, than a technically exceptional talent with very poor relationship management skills.
The majority of the opportunities that we get as employers, employees or consultants in Africa are based on acts of faith and trust from others, as competence or know-how alone is never enough. Africans being very communal people with relatively high power distance –– a significantly hierarchical society –– put great value and importance on acts of respect, deference, personal connections and informal interactions.
African societies are generally collectivist, where people usually belong to ‘in groups’ that look after them in return for loyalty and allegiance. In most African societies, there is usually a high degree of interdependence amongst the members of that society. This trait also transfers into the African professional world and features prominently in how people do business.
Source: hofstede-insights
Finding success with one’s co-workers, managers, clients, vendors, regulators, and partners is dependent on how well we treat them and how we make them feel over time. The better we treat these stakeholders, the more value they deliver for us and the work we do.
2.) Planning and Strategy Development: This refers to the creation of high-level strategic plans and tactics which are based on the client’s objectives, target audience, and desired positioning. Strategy is built upon actionable insights gleaned from data generated during research. The art of strategic thinking and execution depends on the consultant’s ability to adopt and adapt tested models, or create new frameworks to guide the client on high-level decision-making.
This skill area includes all client advisory activities that consultants carry out, based on their domain expertise across disciplines such as marketing and brand management, Public Relations, public affairs, investor relations, digital comms, design, media relations, content creation, and other sector-specific knowledge.
Strategy work in PR and comms generally includes the set of activities around the interpretation of and response to client briefs, including research, situation analysis and diagnostics, strategising, tactical ideation, media planning, budgeting, as well as project management. All of these require a mix of critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity and selling skills.
Strategy work is about being able to analyse, identify and interpret problems (responding to client’s brief); being able to come up with creative and logical solutions based on deep diagnosis and insights gained from research (planning); being able to convince the ‘boss’ or the person writing the cheque that the idea you have proposed is the right way to go (pitching and selling), and making sure that the set objectives are achieved (measurement and evaluation).
The ability to do all these efficiently is really at the heart of the most successful consultancies globally, whether in PR, marketing communications, management consulting or other professional services.
3.) Project Management: The Project Management Institute (PMI) defines a Project as the “amalgamations of tasks, activities, and deliverables that must be structured and executed carefully to achieve the desired outcome.” PMI also describes Project Management as “the use of specific knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to deliver something of value to people.”
For a communications consultant, every client brief is a project –– the collection of tasks, activities and actions to deliver value to stakeholders using a variety of communications skills, tools and techniques. In order to succeed, comms consultants must wear the project manager’s cap and execute their briefs by applying unique products, services and processes through the three phases of initiation, planning and execution.
In this context, project management requirements will include operationalising strategy, executing tactical plans, producing activations, managing budgets, keeping to the timeliness, monitoring campaign performance, and ultimately, achieving set objectives and goals, while making a profit.
The African communications project manager’s job is particularly made tougher due to a myriad of socioeconomic and political challenges like insecurity, inflation, low wages, unstable electricity supply, political instability and so on. While these conditions are not in any way ideal, they are a part of the work-life on the continent, therefore, being able to overcome them while delivering world-class services is a prerequisite to succeeding in the African PR and comms industry.
4.) Storytelling and Content Creation: Content is the vehicle that moves the message from a brand (and its spokespeople) to the target audience. Media is the road upon which content travels.
Writing and content creation is the ‘SI unit’ and foundational skill requirement of any communications practice. Every communications professional must be able to develop creative and effective communication materials. This should be second nature to them.
Beyond this, all professionals must also be able to brief and collaborate with an outside team of creatives including writers, designers, video editors, and others to conceptualise, produce and distribute high-quality multimedia content materials for paid, earned, shared and owned media channels.
A consultant’s ability to tell authentic African stories that connect with the people is based on their understanding of each region’s cultural nuances, the nature of the local media landscape, and the peculiarities of the audience.
No communication campaign will succeed without the smart use of relatable storytelling and effective content distribution across relevant media channels.
In most cases, it’s not about how ‘polished’ the content is (i.e., aesthetics or production quality), but how easily the audience sees themselves in the material (i.e., authenticity and relatability).
A well-crafted piece of content will always generate some excitement with the media and among customers, even for a less-than-stellar product or service offering. That’s how much people love stories. Being able to do this well serves the PR person greatly at every stage of their career, regardless of their role or campaign type.
As cool as creative content development may be, it is important to note that superstar practitioners never elevate tactical thinking above strategy. The ‘horse’ (i.e., the strategy: a clear articulation of SMART objectives, market segmentation, audience targeting, and crafting a positioning message) should always come before the ‘cart’ (i.e., the tactics: media choices, content formats, creative materials, influencers, etc.). Just as reconnaissance, mapping of the battlefield and selection of targets always come before the military General orders the firing of their army’s first missile, likewise, a comms strategist must put strategic plans before tactical activities like content creation.
5.) Business Development and Sales: At a certain level in business, every job becomes a sales role: selling vision and mission to the team, products to customers, services to clients, value to shareholders, etc. For comms consultants, every encounter with stakeholders is a sales pitch; every meeting, phone call, email, text message, tweet, blog post, handshake or editorial output is a reminder of why you should remain hired. Every touch point is an opportunity to sell or re-sell, and those who do the best job of selling the best reputation end up getting the best businesses.
Consultants must always be selling, and not only during RFPs.
The most successful practitioners are considered by their employers as superstars whose involvement in a pitch presentation process almost guarantees the company of winning the new business. Beyond the RFP pitch, smart consultants are also continually proposing new ideas to existing clients, championing the consultancy’s perspectives and opinions to decision-makers on the client side, pitching stories to journalists and earning positive media coverage, and changing the behaviour of the target audience by persuading and convincing.
The ability to get people to buy ‘us’ –– our vision, products, services and ideas –– is critical to success, particularly in developing nations, where competition is not just about what is being sold, but also about how agreeable the seller is.
6.) Research and Reporting: Research is necessary at the beginning, middle and end of all communication programmes and marketing campaigns. It is through research that we know what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed (situation analysis and diagnosis), how well we are doing while fixing it (monitoring), and how good or bad a job we’ve done at the end (evaluation).
Research could be done through the analysis of primary data from original commissioned research and owned data collection tools, or from secondary data collected from third-party sources. The research methodology could be quantitative (e.g., through surveys and dashboards of digital platforms) or qualitative (through interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation). Usually, marketers deploy a mixture of methods for data collection, in order to get the most useful information for decision-making.
The ability to mine, analyse, interpret and draw actionable insights from various data sources and use them for problem-solving and planning is the hallmark of a great strategist. The challenge in Africa however is the dearth of reliable data sources, readily available for practitioners to draw from. This is one of the reasons why the Africa PR and Communications Report (APCR) was initiated!
Furthermore, in today’s world, there is increased pressure and demand from brands for marketing and communications professionals to prove the worth and impact of their work on the client’s business. This means consultants must now be able to account for the inputs, outputs, and outcomes of the work they do and present them in a meaningful, articulate, clear, coherent, convincing, and very honest manner.
Fortunately, for practitioners in Africa, there are useful tools such as the AMEC Framework that provide guidance on evaluating and reporting the value and impact of communications. Working knowledge and disciplined application of the framework have become a prerequisite for PR and communications practitioners.
This work of research also includes daily tracking of media coverage, sentiments, tonality, competition activities, stakeholder feedback, market and cultural trends, as well as other performance metrics (e.g., sales, awareness, brand reputation, etc.) that are considered key results by the client.
As the industry continues to grow and becomes more influential in boardrooms across Africa, it is imperative for communications managers and consultancies to focus more on developing these six skill areas in their teams, especially for the younger talents just starting out in the industry.
The bad news is that many bosses, mentors and tutors still don’t properly emphasise the importance of these areas of skills, especially at the beginning of younger people’s careers. I believe that all six can be truly mastered through deliberate, focused study (formal and informal), and lots of practice.
Even if a young professional fails to achieve a high level of proficiency in all of the six skill areas, a mastery of at least four will set them on a fairly certain course to an excellent career in the PR and Communications profession anywhere in Africa… and the world at large.