The FINANCIAL — Sarke PR, a brand new player in the local PR market, claims to offer innovative service to its clients, a high class service of which there has been no precedent in Georgia thus far.
“While a company might have two-three persons managing a PR campaign, we offer a whole group of professionals with long time experience and qualifications in the field,” Tornike Guruli, Director of Sarke PR, says.
The FINANCIAL interviewed Mr. Guruli on the reasons conditioning the necessity of launching the new direction separate from Sarke Consulting and the basic goals and challenges Sarke PR has set out to deal with.
“Since we saw there was a highly growth demand on PR services in the market and Sarke Group had enough sources to handle the challenge, it just seemed right to launch a new separate branch – Sarke PR, totally focused on this very promising direction.
Sarke Consulting is engaged in branding and marketing works and so the PR approach is fully in the hands of Sarke PR. The latter will provide its clients with a full package service: PR consultations, PR strategy, online PR, image formation, event management. The mission of Sarke PR is to establish quality PR services in the country and help companies to succeed.”
Q. A number of companies have their own PR departments, what are the arguments for why they should become your clients?
A. While a company might have two-three persons managing a PR campaign, we offer a whole group of professionals with long time experience and qualifications in the field.
In the last two weeks Sarke PR has already implemented 12 projects and I dare say no company’s PR department could pride themselves with such an impressive indicator. Sarke Group resources, which includes around 230 people, is a far broader and more obvious guarantee of success.
Q. Have you attracted new clients since the launch of Sarke PR and do the Sarke Consulting contractor companies automatically become the clients of Sarke PR?
A. All the companies who were Sarke Consulting clients are our contractors at present. Moreover, we have some brand new companies which are not cooperating with Sarke Consulting. That’s the case with Kakha Kaladze’s charity fund, which has nothing to do with Sarke Consulting, but is a client of Sarke PR.
Q. How do you manage to settle the situation where a company gives you a task that you're sure will be a failure?
A. After they’re shown concrete examples of the better solutions to the subject we get to convince them that the only right way is to follow successful experience and professional vision. Foreign companies happen to have inadequate thoughts on PR campaign managing in Georgia and that’s what we’re here for, to deliver a clear cut vision of the characteristics of the local ad market.
Q. How important is it to run online PR and how actively are you involved in this direction?
A. Online PR campaign planning can be regarded an exclusive service of Sarke PR. Several companies have already taken that innovative opportunity and the results have been simply amazing as the future is about the internet.
Sarke Research provides us with reliable information on where to put online ads as it’s very important to know the rating of a website in order to figure out whether it’s worthwhile using their ad space.
Q. How affordable are Sarke PR services for SMEs and how actively are you involved in this direction?
A. Sarke PR clients basically include large-scale companies and SME services is not our priority as at the development phase the latter has other tasks to be accomplished rather than getting engaged in active PR campaigns.
Though, we do have experience in this field as well, of cooperation with NGOs. The only direction Sarke PR is not involved in is politics. By the way the election period is not the best time for us as all concentration is targeted at politicians and businesses tend to be passive, more focused at looking at the stability of the country.
Q. How difficult is it for Sarke PR to find PR professionals?
A. In Georgia that’s a real issue. I never look at the certificates no matter how prestigious a PR school the person might have graduated from. What I value most is experience, communicability and creative thinking skills.
Currently 6 persons are employed full time at Sarke PR but in most cases we refer to outsourcing.
I myself first started developing my own PR background back in 1995, a time when the country was still in the wounds of civil war and nobody really cared about anything other than making ends meet. Then I continued my studies in Germany and got a full picture of what PR is all about. Now, in Sarke PR, I’m doing my best to share that experience with the local market.
Q. What's an annual turnover considered by the Sarke PR business plan?
A. The financial side of the business plan is confidential. I believe it’s up to prosperous development in the near future as in the brief period we’ve been represented in the market as a separate unit, Sarke PR has seen huge progress.
As for the service fees, we have two options to choose from: one – a monthly payment, when the company gets a complex packet of various products and the other – an individual offer, the service fee depending on the preferences. The bottom line is that we always find a common language with the clients and provide them with the best solutions and high class services.
Q. Taking into consideration your 9 years of experience in this field, how developed is the PR approach in Georgian businesses?
A. There are lots of companies running successful PR campaigns and these are the ones who plan their annual ad budget in advance. Mostly these companies come from the commercial sector and charity foundations have also started to make serious steps in this respect lately.
Q. How do you see Sarke PR as a separate unit handling the local competition?
A. Sarke PR has all the conditions to be leader of the market. I don’t see tight competition in Georgia as there are only several players in the field. The healthier the competition the more developed the market is as a whole. I welcome every single step forward in Georgia’s PR business as it will only increase the level of our motivation to expand and be the best in the market.
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