While there has been a significant decline in routine assignments, many agencies are receiving a huge volume of work on issue and crisis management from government and private clients.

Hasan Basar, managing director of Bangkok Public Relations, one of Thailand's largest consultancies, believes that the overall industry size might stay flat or grow slightly.

"The estimated growth in gross domestic product of only 3.5 per cent in the first five months of this year, as well as the current economic and political uncertainties,  have been challenging many foreign companies, leading them to pull out investments from Thailand and to suspend the launch of new products and services," said Basar.

"This has caused a significant decline in PR activities dealing with launches of marketing initiatives and products."

Basar has witnessed a big change in the type of jobs offered to PR agencies.

"Our industry is seeing a short-term boost in billings because of the number of government-driven issues that are adversely affecting the private sector, such as those relating to alcoholic beverages and pharmaceuticals," he said.

"These have all caused havoc in boardrooms. As a result, there has been a lot of issue and crisis management for PR firms."

His agency has already handled around 10 issue-management contracts this year when it would normally expect to handle that number in an entire year.

"Our industry will be strengthened in the long term. Because of the difficulties faced by the interim government on so many of their initiatives, awareness of the importance of public relations among decision-makers is increasing," said Basar.

He said effective communication was critical to ensure the success of any programme that involves winning over public opinion - and the other way around. This should become increasingly obvious to the government over the next several months.

Because of the weakness of the government's communications, popular and media support may continue to decline as important political matters, such as the new Constitution, come forward on the agenda.

"Bangkok PR's strategy continues to focus on working with a limited number of the world's best companies, providing quality counsel and quality execution. In unpredictable times, a strategy that focuses on quality rather than quantity becomes even more important," said Basar.

Danai Chanchaochai, chief executive of DC Consultants and Marketing Communication, is confident growth of the PR industry will be between 10-15 per cent this year, driven by the increase in change management and strategic consulting.

"Only PR agencies doing downstream jobs, such as routine marketing, brand-building campaigns and product launches, will suffer from the economic and political difficulties as their business clients have cut their budgets for such short-term activities," said Danai.

While the country had been challenged by the change of laws and regulations, both the government and private sector needed PR professionals to raise understanding of their stakeholders internally and externally, he said.

Danai said his agency expected its billings to grow more than 20 per cent this year, of which almost 50 per cent would be generated by change and crisis management.

"We are one of the leading agencies in terms of developing corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaigns for our clients to create emotional bonding with consumers and to raise their long-term image in the society," said Danai.

Meanwhile, 124 Communications yesterday announced the revamp of its strategy to focus more on private clients. The company has contracts worth Bt85 million in hand, with first-quarter earnings posted at Bt43.47 million, up nearly 6 per cent year on year.

Chief executive Nimitz Modrakee said the agency would focus on retaining existing customers, together with seeking new private accounts.

"Our move to focus on the private sector follows the decline of PR budgets used by government accounts, which accounted for about 70 per cent of our billings last year," said Nimitz.

"We have to react to change very quickly and adjust ourselves to the changing situation."

124 Communications expects to obtain about 60 per cent of its revenue from private companies this year.

Nimitz added that several new clients had turned to the agency for services since early this year, including American Standard, Apple Computer Inc, real estate company Chaoprayamahanakhon, Mahachai Hospital, Kodak (Thailand), BEA Systems, The Arte-tainment Centre, The Esplanade, Lenovo and the Stock Exchange of Thailand.

Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn

The Nation