Dushyant Sinha, CEO of Indian Center for Consultancy Private Limited (ICCPL), a public relation firm, was in pensive mood when his team manager presented him satisfaction levels of their past key account. He had all the reasons to feel so, after all ICCPL had lost one of its key account, Signature Global (SG), a real estate firm. It was sunny day of June in the year 2019, when Sinha was contemplating a strategy on how to win back his lost key customer. Sinha stared at many awards that were displayed in his plush office at Noida, India, which were bestowed upon the ICCPL by the industry bodies and stated, "How ironical it is, we are the most awarded PR agency in the real estate, yet we lost a key real estate account to a smaller unknown player". Interestingly, ICCPL had the best customer retention rate and net promoter score (NPS) in the industry. Finally, Sinha addressed the elephant in the room, "What should we do to get back the Signature Global?"

Public Relation Campaign: Signature Global
 

Background and Context:
Signature Global was one of the client of ICCPL. Signature Global (SG) was a renowned affordable real estate player in Indian Real Estate market founded by a set of seasoned professionals with an aim to amalgamate global standards and quality to Indian Real Estate Industry. The SG Group had a profound experience of multiple decades in stock market and financial services sector. SG Group's promoters had diversified to leverage their expertise of
customer delight and transparent ethics into real estate. In the year 2015, SG was first few
companies to venture in high volume low margin business of affordable housing in real estate. Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MHUA), Government of India envisaged the vision of inclusive growth under a project named, 'Housing for all by 2022' (HFA). Government invited private sectors to participate in this scheme to make affordable houses. Affordable housing referred to any housing that met some form of affordability criterion, which could be income level of the family, size of the dwelling unit or affordability in terms of EMI size or ratio of house price to annual income. Macro environmental factors like rising demand for such dwelling units, availability of micro finance, tax benefits, and subsidy provided by central and state government attracted few private developers in this market. Though these affordable houses had reduced area, provision for basic social amenities albeit closer to industry cluster. The low-cost housing project would generate meagre gross profit margins of
15-20 percent making it imperative to sell the flats fast.Fortunately, at that time global marketing team of Signature Global knew ICCPL managers. They approached the ICCPL and requested them to provide the media coverage and establish the brand image of newly formed company. In year 2015 Signature Global public relations function had no particular benchmarks or past example of excellence. They gave free hand to Sinha to carve out PR strategy for the SG. This whole process was driven by the Agarwal, CEO
of Signature Global. Sinha personally met the marketing team of Signature Global and
understood the growth road map and number of launches planned, and when is company
planning to enter in building residential projects. In the next meeting the strategic plan was presented to the Signature global covering scope of work, editorial media coverage to be expected, positioning strategy and commercials for the same. Elements of PR campaign is given below:

Goal and Objectives of PR Campaign:
In the process of introducing Signature group to stakeholders, the main goal were:
1. Increase in reputation of SG in eyes of Indian public in general,
2. Shifts in awareness and attitude of consumers towards SG in specific,
3. Improvement in employee engagement, and
4. Increase in investors.

Target Group:
Originally, ICCPL thought that target audience would be lower income who do not own a
house and aspires for a house. As the campaign gathered momentum, ICCPL realized that audience extended from lower class to young working bachelor who were living on rental house in metropolis Gurgaon due to high real estate prices but wished to buy small affordable flat. These target audience were split into two main categories:
1. Strugglers
2. Young Aspirers
However, both of these target customer were quite different from the traditional consumer base of real estate market. Strugglers were striving to have one affordable house in their lifetime. Whereas, for young aspirer main purpose was to save exorbitant rents by moving in their own flat and enjoy tax rebates given by government on first flat purchase mortgage amount. Notwithstanding, this was a stop gap arrangement for them with an ambition to move in bigger flats as soon as their income increases. Decision criteria for real estate purchase and media consumption habits was much different for both the target audience.

The Campaign:
ICCPL media strategy was divided in three phases. In first phase in the year 2015 "basic guide" to affordable housing policy of government was issued to wide range of relevant media. The guide had phone number of ICCPL and offered immediate response to any media query. This was quite successful in establishing ICCPL as a knowledge leader in affordable housing. A series of media releases were issued as a follow up strategy to the events of MHUA on housing. Interviews were arranged with senior government officers including with those who were
involved in implementing the affordable housing. As a result hype was created by the media about the dearth of affordable housing in India.In phase two the content was developed around the Signature Global vision. Media kit was prepared with backgrounder (company information); company turnover, vision of company to serve poor, list of SG achievements, awards received by company and pen drive with corporate film of SG. Meanwhile, Signature Global delivered the affordable residential project on time. Project launch event was organized by the ICCPL and media was invited. Interestingly, it turned out to be successful with 100 journalist coming for attending the launch event. Satisfied
customers were also invited for this event. Bringing all the customers who were present in front of the freshly delivered flats provided excellent opportunity for media to photograph the poor customers with their dream house. SG CEO was also photographed talking to customers. Various national and local print and electronic media covered the project launch event. The ability of ICCPL dedicated team to provide faster response to media query was kept in place. Frequent stories of positive customer reviews had been issued, exclusive news stories and features around that was widely placed. This phase two lasted for 5 months. In phase three the brand was built around the promoters and CEO, Pradeep Agarwal, of signature global. ICCPL attempted to position Agarwal synonymously with affordable housing by introducing him as "affordable housing man" to media. Typically in public relation this was called as biography that were written on people. ICCPL wrote Agarwal biography in inverted pyramid news style, that is summary of information at the beginning of the release backed by
facts and less important details in the for the last. All the important information about Agarwal in terms of five W's (Who, what, when, where, and why) were answered in initial paragraphs of press release, so that reader gets the point of the story even if they reads few line or first paragraph. He was projected as a pioneer affordable housing man of India. Media kits were prepared that included hard news release; a Q&A; photo of Agarwal and affordable project; philanthropist activities of Agarwal, and list of SG achievements, and pen drive with corporate
film of SG.

The Results:
Newspaper, magazine, radio and television coverage was collated and regularly analysed for its impact and mapped against the objectives. ICCPL as a PR and communication agency had played a pivotal role to change the public perception of SG as a leading affordable player in Real Estate industry. There were many achievements that suggested the success of the
campaign, for example,
• There was a visible improvement in the public interest in affordable house, it was reflected in the number of articles, broadcast, and websites on this subject. Agarwal believed that it was ICCPL efforts that bore the fruit.
• Interestingly, media fancied the term "affordable housing man" and its usage had greatly increased in media.
• Many non-government non-profit organizations started showering awards on Agarwal. Signature global saw a sale of more than 8000 flats in the period of 2015-2018.
• Signature group had expanded and had 18 projects in Gurugram, 2 projects in Karnal, 3
projects in Sohna and 1 Mall in Ghaziabad under its belt.
• The company could so far sell 22094 units under Haryana Affordable Housing Policy and delivered 2800 units in 3 projects- Solera, Synera and Andour Heights in Gurugram.

Losing Relationship with SG:
Every year the contract between ICCPL and Signature Global was routinely renewed.
However, by mid of year 2018 real estate market in India started showing signs of degrowth. This is the time Signature Global decided that they would stall all the new projects but it was start of the real estate industry slump. Macro-economic factors such as new tax regime, Goods and Services tax, demonetization drive by government to curb corruption effected real estate industry adversely and demand shrunk. On the other hand, with the growth of PR and communication sector a lot of unorganized small agencies mushroomed who would claim to offer same PR benefits at fraction of price. Undercutting for price and poaching other PR firm clients were harming the industry. As a resultant the retainer threshold remained low and it started affecting the bottom line of old organized players including ICCPL. Interestingly, when ICCPL first approached signature global as potential client they asked them about the PR budget at the outset.
CEO of Signature Global decided to revamp and picked up the oldest trick in the book namely, cost cutting across functions. Hard bargaining and negotiations followed for many months between Signature Global and ICCPL. Signature Global finance team after internal calculations convinced CEO that if company hires in-house PR team it could typically execute the PR job of ICCPL at 1/5th of the current contracted price and possibly of better quality with higher control. To make the things worse, one of the ICCPL competitor offered the Signature Global
retainer charges that were exactly 1/3rd of what was contracted price. Soon, CEO of Signature Global confronted the Sinha with the price of competitor. Discussion between them went as follows:

"Agarwal: Mr Sinha, we have been negotiating for last 4 months for contract price rationalization. However, you have not responded to us favourably
Sinha: I appreciate your business and understand that you are our valued customer. You will agree that it is difficult for us to reduce the contracted price. Notwithstanding, you being our old client we are ready to give you a complementary services of social media division, Digicomm free for three months.
Agarwal: We understand that we both have grown over the year and I also understand that you have contributed a lot by building our public reputation over this years. Still, we can easily hire in-house team at 1/5th cost for your work.
Sinha: Sure you can, but, you will agree that we have assets that is difficult for in-house team such as contacts among media houses, expert team of content developers etc.
Agarwal: Well may be, but we do have a quotation of another PR agency who is ready to execute the same work at 1/3rd of price. We do not see any reason why you should not match the price.
Sinha: Sir we have no issues with our competition charging lower than us, possibly they are charging what they think they are worth
Agarwal: Sinha you seems to be stubborn on your prices. Well, I will get back to you soon on our future business possibility.
Sinha: No business would do better if they are undersold". This meeting did not break any ice, followed by Signature Global pausing the PR work for 4 to 5 months of remaining contract period of year 2018. In the month of June in year 2019, Signature Global decided to part ways with ICCPL and outsource the work to another smaller PR agency. But eventually to be executed by developing in-house team and training them in PR skills in long run. After losing the SG account, Sinha called up an emergency meeting of finance head and team leader who was dedicated for the SG account. Sinha instructed team leader, "Your team should undertake the research on the SG' satisfaction, customer effort score and net promoter score". Further, finance was instructed that, "Present me a data on the cost to serve SG." After a month
a team lead presented a research findings and finance head presented the cost to
serve SG.

 

Questions:

1. What ICCPL could do to win back Signature Global - match the price of competitor and earn minuscule 5% profits at least in short run?

2. In which area ICCPL need to be improve its performance?

3. How to convince client that ICCPL is differentiated in PR industry?

4. How to justify the price premium based on strength of ICCPL that were the unique benefits derived by client?