A LITTLE over a year ago, my dear friend and fellow active PR Matters contributor Joy Buensalido wrote about some things our creative industry can learn from K-dramas. Last week, I tackled Korea’s “soft power” strategy, and how Hallyu, or the Korean Wave, is right smack in the middle of it. Let me bring this year’s PR Matters series to a close by summarizing those learnings and relating them to the wonderful world of public relations.
Let’s focus on these three things: foresight, collaboration and cultural invasion. These are among the points that are usually mentioned when discussing how Korean pop culture has, slowly but surely, penetrated almost every region in the world. And I’m only saying “almost,” as I’m not counting Antarctica as a continent that Hallyu has reached—but we never know, right?
Foresight
IN a spirited panel discussion at the Students’ PR Con mounted by the Public Relations Society of the Philippines (PRSP) last month, award-winning director and Hallyu aficionado Jose Javier Reyes mentioned how much foresight the Korean government and its creative industries had when they were just laying down the strategies for what we now know as Hallyu.
Local film producers, in contrast, expected immediate returns on their investments without looking ahead and planning for potentially bigger returns in the future, he said. In the case of the Korean creative industry, it took some two decades for both the government and the creative industries to really reap the rewards of all their planning and hard work. And now even their consumer durables and fast-moving consumer goods industries are cashing in on the success of Hallyu.
For communication professionals like us, foresight is equally important for the success of any campaign, program, or engagement. This is precisely why we spend hours crafting communication plans, mapping our stakeholders, identifying the most appropriate platforms, and making sure our messages are aligned with our objectives and audience characteristics. And these plans are not mere one-offs or standalone creations, but linked to bigger goals: of the greater organization to which we belong or of society and the world at large.
Even during crisis situations, when we need to think on our feet and act swiftly and decisively, a lot of foresight is still involved. Long before a crisis strikes, we already have our business continuity plans in place, geared toward addressing various kinds of crises that may hit our organizations at any time and without warning. We plan for all sorts of scenarios, even as we fervently pray that these never happen.
Collaboration
MULTISECTORAL collaboration is something we can learn from the Hallyu phenomenon as well, particularly the close partnership between the government and the various industries involved in the whole Hallyu universe. In an article on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace web site, University of Chicago PhD candidate Jenna Gibson, who used to be a communication director at the Korea Economic Institute of America, wrote: “South Korean governmental support for the creative industries dates back to the early 1990s. Through policies like encouraging corporate investment and vertical integration in the film industry and slowly removing barriers like screen quotas for foreign content, the South Korean government laid the groundwork. This entailed providing stable financial footing while also encouraging South Korean creatives to innovate and compete with their international counterparts.
“These early policies were particularly focused on bolstering the South Korean entertainment industry’s export potential. At times, this government support has been misinterpreted as the South Korean government supposedly creating the wave of popularity that South Korean pop culture has garnered as it has gained prominence all over the world. But it would be more accurate to say that Seoul created an environment in which the movie, television, and music industries were able to thrive.”
In the world of PR, there is always a need to collaborate. While we are the ones who steer the ship when it comes to communication strategy, we will not be able to move the ship forward if other business units do not move with us. As PR practitioners, we cannot live in a silo.
Cultural invasion
MY own “conversion” to Hallyu was what inspired me to write this two-part column. For more than a year now, I’ve been consuming all kinds of Korean stuff: food, skin-care products, and cosmetics. And this consumption was driven largely by my addiction to K-dramas, which has spawned a girly crush on a former-idol-turned-actor, and has led me to watch hours upon hours of YouTube videos of anything and everything he has appeared in. And don’t even get me started on the CDs, DVDs, and other merchandise that I ordered straight from Korea. Oh, and I can now read Korean, although very, verrrryyy slowly.
This is the kind of cultural impact Hallyu has had on people. I do not even consider myself a super fan. I know people who followed BTS in one of their concert tours; who wrote a PhD paper on BTS; who established fan groups—even a massive one with global following—for their K-pop idols. How Korean culture has invaded our shores and the rest of the world!
As communicators, we do not seek to change cultures, but we do aim to have an impact on perceptions, reactions, behaviors, actions. Through our programs and campaigns, we seek to turn the tide of public opinion in our organization’s favor. We engage with stakeholders so we can work with them for the good of our organization, our cause, or whatever it is we are pursuing. By telling our stories in an engaging manner, with the use of audience-appropriate platforms, we somehow get other people and organizations to want what we want—like how the father of the “soft power” theory, Joseph Nye, succinctly explained the concept.
Let’s always be open to learning from other industries and other cultures. It is only when we broaden our perspective that we truly grow, both as communicators and as individuals.
Typhoon Odette ‘bayanihan’ efforts
AS the rest of the world prepares for their respective holiday festivities, many of our kababayans are reeling from the aftermath of Typhoon Odette. Parts of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao were badly hit, leaving hundreds homeless, just days before Christmas. It is during times like these when the Filipinos’ bayanihan spirit really shines through.
The organizations of some of our Ipra Philippines members are heavily involved in providing aid to Typhoon Odette survivors. The MVP Group of Companies, to which my company belongs, and ABS-CBN Corp., of which our member Kane Errol Choa is a vice president, held fund-raising telethons last Thursday, in partnership with their respective foundations. Each company in the MVP Group also provided millions in cash and goods donations, as well as manpower to conduct repairs on downed power facilities and equipment and personnel to produce potable water.
Companies under the JG Summit Holdings Inc. umbrella, the organization to which Ipra PH member Red Samar belongs, donated grocery bags and go-bags, especially to Cebu, where founder John Gokongwei Jr. traced his roots. The SM Group, where our Millie Dizon serves as a senior vice president, turned some of their malls into temporary shelters and also donated thousands of relief packs to various areas badly hit by the typhoon.
Many other conglomerates, companies, nongovernment organizations, and individuals have mobilized their respective resources to help alleviate the sufferings of our kababayans. After all, giving, like how God gave His own Son to die for our sins, is what Christmas is all about. May we all have a healthy and safe 2022!
PR Matters is a roundtable column by members of the local chapter of the United Kingdom-based International Public Relations Association (Ipra), the world’s premier organization for PR professionals around the world. Abigail L. Ho-Torres is AVP and head of Advocacy and Marketing of Maynilad Water Services Inc. She spent more than a decade as a business journalist before making the leap to the corporate world.
We are devoting a special column each month to answer our readers’ questions about public relations. Please send your questions or comments to askipraphil@gmail.com.