International public relations firms in China: authentic Chinese, embrassed foreign public relations

Introduction:
Since the first overseas international public relations firm entered into China in 1984, the public relations industry has been increasingly approved by the Chinese market. Before international public relations firms simply provided short-term services for foreign-funded enterprises who just opened their market in China. But at present they have started to take up the whole Chinese business and inadvertently led the domestic industry and the rapid development of public relations. Developing till now, the increasing demands from international public relations firms in talents lead to a diverse structure of personnel, including former government officials, diplomats, senior officials, journalists and entrepreneurs who have formed the main force in this industry.

According to a survey by China International Public Relations Association in 2004, PR practitioners from international public relations firm are suffering from higher working pressure than those who from local agencies, with 45 working hours per week, although in return, they get better pay. For instance, an Account Manager from an international Top 10 PR company earns over 10000 RMB per month while the majority of local companies only pay less than 6,000 RMB per month.

Locolization is still a challenge:

Mr. Wang has been working as an AM at a well-known international public relations firm over two years. With these years, Mr. Wang feels the localization of international public relations firms is still facing a biggest challenge. When he just joined the company, Mr. Wang posed a number of suggestions based on the experience he gained from former company, but all were bounced back，which made Mr. Wang really depressed for a while. This was mainly for two reasons: first, the company thought his proposal was too direct. Simply helping clients sell goods doesn't match company's philosophy of building brand first. Second, in accordance with past practice, many procedures mentioned in his plan were not approved.

Xiangyang Chen, committee of China International Public Relations Association, comments that during the 20 years development in China, the process of localization of international public relations firms has never stopped. However, so far, reflection from the domestic market showes that international companies have not yet found themselves the right direction. Overseas agencies do not have a full understanding about China's domestic political environment, media environment and market environment. In the international companies, due to the decision makers mainly consists of foreign representatives, plus those companies who entered into Chinese market in general have long histories and their operation systems are quite mature and improved, if everything is carried out in accordance with China's national conditions then it will be unrealistic. Therefore, when handling a lot of things these companies failed to meet the needs of the domestic market.

International public relations is "picky eaters"

Many international public relations firms expresses that in order to ensure the quality of their services, the companies generally do not take contracts randomly. This approach makes clients always feel that they are superior but not completely close to the market. In contrast, the local public relations firms are more practical, covering a wide range of business and working towards a clear purpose of helping clients sell their products. International public relations firms generally provide indirect services whilst the demand from the domestic market is still at the stage of the need of direct services. In addition, the prices charged by local public relations firm are usually lower compared to the international public relations firms, depends on which local public relations firms successfully seized the market.

Advantage: global resource sharing

Yan Liu and Xiaoyun Zhang are Account Directors of International Communications Cousulting at Hillard Public Relations Consulting Co., Ltd. (China). Yan was a newspaper reporter and Xiaoyun previously worked at Hillard Hong Kong office, responsible for the regional co-ordination work of numerous technological and corporate clients. Their responsibilities generally include: liasion with the media, planning and organizing large-scale activities, product promotion, market research and so on. They are both deeply impressed by gloable resources allocation and management conducted by international public relations firms. Through the allocation and management of resources, working effeciency has been maximized. A project can be supported by colleagues from serveral cities even serveral countries; people shareing their advices and suggestions, which is an unique advantage from international agencies. In addition, international public relations firms focuse on exploring vast potential consumer groups through building clients' brand.

Co-operation with government

When China's Olympic video broadcasted in Moscow on July 13, 2002, , the whole world was amazed. As everyone knows, public relations contributed much to this event. In fact, the work of the government is permeated with public relations. For example, the 45 seconds video, Premier Wen's speech, etc are all related to public relations and are important subjects of the research in this field. The biggest difference to local agencies, internatinal agencies set up very high-end goals for themselves: long-term development strategy in China, the establishment of government relations, the dissemination plan of leading local market, and enhancing the market positioning are main businesses of international public relations. Peng Gao, GM at Blue Focus, a local public relations agency in China, comments: "the international public relations firm has reached the strategic level, whereas the domestic public relations firms still remain at the tactical level."

A "date pit"shape talent structure

In Peng's view, scitentific talent structure is supposed to be in a pyramid shape but current PR talent structure is more like a date pit. That's to say, there is a shortage of low-end personnel and high-end personnel. "Industry Report 2003" indicates that the shortage of senior professionals, especially senior management personnel and project management talents and training resources continuely restrict the rapid development of industry; the new company will continue to emerge and intensify the flow of talent; directors and Account Managersare in a shortage; the sharing of professional experience and knowledge needs to be strengthened; the company's own training and training system can not meet the needs of fast-growing business.

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This article originally appeared on Beijing Daily Online in Chinese and has been translated and edited by Shujuan Zhang. http://lixing.blogbus.com/logs/122287.html