First published in February 2010. Reviewed in October 2026: the principles still hold, and we have added a note at the end on how we apply them today.
Sharing a personal angst here: Why is that even after more than 30 odd years that the PR industry has been in operations in India, it still is “col cm” that guides any new PR pitch?
Agreed, PR in India began as a subset of Advertising but isn’t it time that we moved away from the media-fixation and the “number of clips” to providing total PR solutions???
Be it a small company or a large one, an organisation selling “Gutka” or selling “diamond cuff-links”, why is everybody so stuck on media coverage and that too in the top two publications in the country? I mean is somebody going to buy gutka after reading about it in HT/TOI? So why are clients so fixated? Or is it us (the PR guys) who have created the “need” to have media stories as a bench-mark for effective PR?
We tell our new joinees that we are “different” and look at PR holistically and yet most work in office is centred around media – so what is the take-away? Unfortunately, it is a classic case of “Do in Greece, what Greeks do!”
If the rest of the world is offering media clippings as a barometer for efficacy of a PR campaign, do we also follow suit? We have, over the years, met quite a few clients who told us that some of our ilk were willing to commit the “number of clips” that they would give them in the first month / first quarter.
So is a PR campaign justified only by measuring the col cm in the traditional media and other ways to reach out to the target group completely to be overlooked? What about social media, BTL activities, synergistic alliances, relationship management, direct contact programmes, etc.??? What about reaching out to the customer directly???
How we apply this today
Column-centimetre counts are still requested in pitches. We measure against the business goals agreed at the start of each mandate. See how our corporate PR practice works.
