Badi Al-Badrani The public relations industry in Saudi Arabia witnessed healthy growth in recent years, as manifested in doubling the demand for public relations services coupled with increasing convictions of many government and private institutions in the significance of communication with their key audiences through significant tools such as the mass media: TV, radio and the Internet. This growth was coupled with an increase in the number of local or global companies that provide services within this promising market, both through the opening of new agencies which are launched for the first time or through established international agencies opening offices in Saudi Arabia. In fact, growth in this industry was associated with the growth of Saudi economy, which continued its strong performance despite the difficult circumstances experienced by the global economy over the past 3 years. Notwithstanding this growing number of public relations agencies in Saudi Arabia, viability and sustainability of these agencies depend on the transparency and professionalism in their work and capability of innovation and creativity. While we notice the emergence of new agencies for the first time in the Saudi market, we also notice other agencies are phasing out from the market after a few short years of operation. This is exactly what is taking place these days, which means that there is healthy competition that will ultimately lead to the exclusion of the weakest or least professional agencies and survival of the best agencies that operate with transparency and professionalism. Yet big challenges face the industry. In years past, the public relations functionality was envisaged by both the private and public sector institutions and organizations as a luxury rather than a necessity. This was one of the historical challenges encountered by the public relations industry in Saudi Arabia. However, this foggy and obscure outlook has recently started to clear out. Despite this improvement, however, not all companies are on the same degree of understanding of how to optimize the use of public relations. For example, the aim of some private sector corporations from engaging a PR agency is to try to sell their products and services indirectly through press releases solely. Accordingly, you find them sending scores of press releases to the media, although most of these releases are not even worth publishing. It is not also surprising to find an abuse of press releases, some of which are published to expose the achievements of the general manager of a given company, institution or organization. Others publish daily press releases through the mass media to cover each and every minor event or occasion. In certain companies, the criteria of evaluating the role of public relations continue to be restricted to the number of press releases published in the media. This manifests a great degree of confusion because publication of press releases only represents a fraction of the overall, diversified roles, competencies and issues normally taken up by the public relations functionality. On the other hand, there is a lack of awareness among decision-makers toward the PR function. For example, competent bodies of government institutions hardly create any departments of public relations, and when they do, we find that this function is either misused or abused when their role turns into a routine and administrative function that lacks creativity and innovation. This is especially true when the PR function is restricted to covering the visits made by the chairman or the director of the respective organization in the absence of any clear or meaningful messages to address the general public served by these institutions or the implementation of innovative programs to educate the masses on the main courses of action and options available to them. Among the challenges facing the PR function is also the shortage of talented and proficient Saudi national. In this regard, public relations agencies encounter great difficulty in the recruitment of new staff, which may limit their policies for future expansion. Added to these are the challenges associated with the growing need to measure and substantiate the value of public relations in light of tighter budgets, the ability to measure the rate of return on investment, without relying on the tactics based on the volume of readers or viewers in measuring such rate. Increasing pressure is also being exercised from customers to demonstrate the value of public relations programs and their impact on enhancing the performance and profitability, revenues, customer base and the perception of stakeholders, competitiveness, tackling pressures encountered from the media, increasing awareness, understanding and informed appreciation, etc. This challenge is not being encountered by Saudi Arabia solely, but is also facing the public relations function in the region at large. For example, forums were organized recently in the United Arab Emirates between the media and professionals in the public relations industry and discussed the tools to measure the value of public relations. These forums were found to be very useful for both parties, and are envisaged to greatly assist in arriving at a professional approach and principles to measure the return on investment in the field of public relations. The challenges facing the PR agencies in Saudi Arabia vary from absence of clear guidelines from headquarters or local management, limited resources and budget, difficulties in justifying PR spending to drafting press releases with not enough substantial content or no news content at all. Even the international PR agencies do face challenges in doing business locally, notably, understanding local business issues, politics & know local audiences; knowing media landscape and differences in journalistic approach; finding message themes that connect with audiences across borders and cultures; and considering local language issues and different time zones. – The writer is the founder and managing director of MPR Communications. A veteran and well-rounded business journalist before focusing on PR business, he had won a number of local and regional awards in the economic press field, including from then Governor of Riyadh Region Prince Salman Bin Abdul Aziz for ‘Best Economic Journalist' in KSA, and on two occasions, the Dubai Journalism Award held annually under the patronage of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
