Tag Archives: PR Week

The Gulf’s PR industry has a diversity problem – here’s how to fix it

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Only 22 of the 58 people on PR Week’s 2020 Middle East Power List are ethnically from the region. We’ve got to get more Arab talent into the industry if we’re going to reflect the audiences we engage with

It’s rant time, so apologies. But given what’s happening around the world following the death of George Floyd, someone has to pierce the bubble that envelops the region’s PR industry. I’ve said it before numerous times (here’s another post back from 2017), and I’ll say it again – we have a diversity issue in the industry here in the Gulf. Specifically, we don’t have enough Arabic talent, especially at the top levels of the industry.

If you don’t believe me, look at the latest rankings of the PR Week’s 2020 Power Book for the Middle East. Of the 58 people listed, 22 are from the Middle East. Considering that we’re supposed to be mirroring the people we are engaging with, speaking their language, and understanding their culture and customs, we have to do a much better job of making the industry as open and as inclusive as possible to Middle East nationals (sadly, this isn’t unique to PR – advertising has exactly the same issue).

The diversity issue isn’t just relevant to the private sector. In the Gulf, there are far too few expats working for government, despite the sizable communities from regions such as the Asian sub-continent. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the crisis response plans we’ve seen this year would have been much stronger if the comms teams leading them would have been multi-cultural – they’d have taken into account different cultures, languages, and lifestyles (in places like Singapore coronavirus has spread faster in labor camps, a fact that was initially missed by governments).

So, what role can we play to change? I’m going to repeat what I’ve said before, as I feel that this is the best way to make the industry better reflect the region that we are in.

Develop Arabic Talent

First of all, we’ve got to foster stronger connections with universities across the
region, and better educate Arab youth on the opportunities that a career in public relations and communications will provide. And we have to do this as an industry.

Support Arabic Leadership

Part of the lack of appreciation for the Arabic language is that there aren’t enough Arab nationals in leadership roles, both on the agency side and with clients. In particular, global agencies must prioritize fast-tracking Arab talent into leadership roles.

Arabic First

Most of the Arabic content put out by communicators is actually translated from English. We’ve got to turn this around, and start prioritizing Arabic content production, both in the written word, with audio and video. Arabic is such a rich, descriptive language, and so much is lost when content is merely translated.

Your Team Should Represent Your Audience

If you are a government comms team, you’re communicating to the public. And if your public is diverse, then your team should represent that diversity. What’s the value in a monocultural communications team that only represents ten percent of the public? Likewise, the private sector in the Gulf needs to attract more nationals (there were only four Gulf nationals on the PR Week list).

This isn’t a problem we are going to solve overnight. But the industry has to find common solutions for the diversity and inclusion issues here in the Gulf. Given what we are going through right now, it doesn’t take a genius to see that government-mandated localization will increase in the private sector. We’ve got to change of our own free will for the better, before it is forced upon us in a way that will harm the quality of our work. It’s your choice. Now what are you going to do about it?

“Spoiled Journalists” – Why Communicators Should Support MENA’s Declining Media Sector

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The Gulf’s media has had a shocking year so far, with a series of journalist layoffs in the UAE. Is there anything that communicators can do to support the journalists they work with?

I’ve been around the block, and I’ve read, seen and done so many bizarre things in my profession that I’m rarely phased. But there’s a moment once in a blue moon when I have one of these moments where I’m reliving Arsenio Hall.

What set me off was a piece published by PR Week Middle East. The journalist had interviewed a Dubai-based public relations practitioner. The title was “Journalists and Social Media Influencers are too spoiled.” I’ll share just one quote from the piece, which you can read after subscribing to PR Week.

Social media influencers and journalists are being so spoilt and most brands raise the bar very high because they send expensive gifts and also, they have been bombarded by hundreds of pitches a day. This will make it near enough impossible for our brand stories to get noticed in the sea of emails flooding to their inbox – as well as the number of gifts they receive.”

Firstly, I don’t understand how any PR person can lay the blame on the media when the gifts are being sent by the PR people (Santa, why did you bring me so many presents this year?). And secondly, at least for much of the media, this just isn’t happening.

The Media is Collapsing

Over the past month I’ve heard first hand about three dozen journalists being fired from two of the largest publishers in Dubai, the Gulf’s media hub. They’re either being offered salaries which are up to a third lower than what they’re currently making, or they’re being laid off because the ad money is being put into digital (read Facebook and Google).

Why does this matter to communicators? Firstly, the expertise of these journalists is invaluable; they know their beat given their local experience (most journalists are expats, and new journalists often come from outside of the Gulf) and they’re able to put stories into context (one journalist who was laid off from Gulf News is probably the best investigative journalist in the Gulf today). Secondly, like in other parts of the world, the number of public relations people is increasing, and the number of journalists is decreasing. Publishers are increasingly turning to freelancers, not just to provide copy to but actually run publications (they’re cheaper, as their direct and indirect costs are lower – think no medical insurance, no end-of-service benefits etc).

What is different in the Gulf is that without employment, expats must leave. There’s no gig economy to speak of, as individuals aren’t free to take on multiple roles/jobs (unless they’re nationals), and few ex-journos are willing to set up content shops given the costs of visas and setting up business licences. In addition, those journalists who remain are frequently finding themselves overextended, and they’re being asked to take up non-editorial activities, be it supporting on sales pitches, or arranging events.

How Can Communicators Help?

While I’d like to think that the global decline in print media is reversible, I’m not that naive. However, as communicators we have to play a part in supporting the journalists we work with (I’ll always have a soft spot for the media, partly because I respect what they do and partly because I don’t want my job simply to be about working with influencers).

Firstly, we’ve got to clearly state why earned media makes sense to our clients. In an age where trust in other media types is falling, much of the public still believes what they read in their newspapers and magazines. We’ve got to go further than this, and start looking at how we can work with media outlets on concepts such as native publishing. If media engagement matters to us, we have to think how we can support these outlets financially whilst ensuring that editorial and sales lines don’t blur (much of what we do with influencers is paid).

Secondly, I think many of us would benefit from spending a day on the media side. The person quoted in the PR Week article is right in one respect – there’s far too many pitches being made, pitches which aren’t relevant and which add little value to the audiences we’re trying to engage with and influence. We’ve got to move away from the mass-blast press release, and start thinking more critically about how we can create content that is both right for a publication in terms of its audience, and is of a high enough quality for the editor to say, “I’d like to run this piece.”

What I feel will eventually happen is that regional brands will start to move in the direction of organizations in Europe and the US by hiring former journalists as in-house content heads. A part of me would welcome this (the quality of content put out in this region needs to be drastically improved), but a part feels that we’ve got to think long and hard as to how we can work with the media industry to explain why they matter and how they should be considered a critical piece of both communications and advertising strategies for organizations in the region.

Given that last thought, I do hope that the Middle East Public Relations Association (MEPRA) will also step up and support the media sector; MEPRA shared the PR Week story without any comments on its own stated view for or against the “spoiled journalist” opinion. We need leadership in this space, and it’s got to come from industry bodies.

As always, I’d welcome your views.