First aid, help ~ ~! ! ! !

The growth process and challenges faced by local public relations companies

Moderator Zhai Qin:

Thank you, General Manager Sun! Ms Frances Sun came to our forum without lunch. Let's thank her again! The next speaker is Mr Gao Peng, managing director of Zhiyang Public Relations, and Gao Peng is one of the founders of Blue Cursor. He has been committed to the operation and development of local public relations companies, so he must have his own experience on the growth process and challenges faced by local public relations companies. Please welcome!

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks to Ming Dow, Chief Marketing Officer of Economic Observer, for giving us such an opportunity. It should be said that we will spend about 65,438+00 years as a blue label, 5 years as a smart young man, and will continue to do so in the future. Therefore, on this occasion, I want to share some of our feelings with you.

First of all, I want to express my feelings after listening to the opinions of previous experts today. I think the relationship between public and private, on the one hand, may face ignorance, or have not realized its value. So now we emphasize the strategic value of the relationship between public and public, or it is like big public relations, but on the other hand, we can also see the myth that the relationship between public and public cannot be excessive. Like manager Sun Xianhong this morning, I couldn't find public relations when I looked for the police. So some problems can't be solved. What problem does public relations solve? Let's look at a proposition first, that is, whether it is an enterprise or an organization, it is often not the organization and the enterprise itself that determines its success or failure, but to a large extent the public around it, and others decide the success or failure of the organization or enterprise. Public relations is an important means to improve his relationship with the outside public. This is our understanding of public-private relations. Admittedly, public relations is a marketing tool. On the marketing level, public relations may only be used to improve the relationship between this institution, this organization and its consumers, but to a large extent, public relations is to build a harmonious external environment for organizations and enterprises.

The press conference gave me this topic, and I muttered a few words. Everyone here is either the founder of a public relations agency or a public relations employee. Some of them may not be Party B at all, but Party A, and there are many experts. Therefore, I think that just talking about public relations companies is a topic of interest to a small number of people and should not be discussed in big forums. Later, I thought that the reason why the General Assembly asked me to talk about such a topic might have several meanings. For some bosses, this must be your most concerned topic. For practitioners, through our sharing, we can see whether your organization is your dream and pursuit. For Party A, I believe it is necessary to know more about Party B if you want to find a "long-term marriage and long-term partner".

Let's talk about a few topics. One is what the development track of public relations companies is, who we are and what we do. This should be clearly defined. Second, what are the main challenges we face in this process? Finally, mention some of my own feelings.

Generally speaking, public relations agencies should be respected more and more, so they are respected because they really provide a kind of wisdom and thought to their partners. In the big concept, public relations agency belongs to the service industry, but its service is the biggest difference from hotel service and catering service. It provides food for wisdom. Therefore, this kind of service is generally called "professional service organization" internationally, and we are the only one in the professional service organization. This piece is actually subdivided into investment banking, financial consulting, commercial legal consulting, marketing communication, management consulting and so on. This series is all in PSF space, and the spatial subdivision of public relations may be more in marketing communication space.

(Figure) In fact, public institutions have mushroomed in the past two or three years, indicating that their growth is very good, but their market share is relatively speaking, I am afraid it is difficult to occupy a relatively large share in the overall intelligence industry consultation. Judging from the development stage of public relations companies, public relations companies like David belong to the stage of globalization. That is to say, they have reached the fourth and fifth stages. For many local public relations companies, it is still in the first and second stages. At this stage, there is a certain limit between the number of people and the number of tasks. It takes not only courage but also wisdom to break through these ceilings. Therefore, if we really want to do it in the public relations industry, our heartfelt feeling is that it is not easy to do it. Fortunately, these regular things, we learn more from the early development of international public relations agencies. Of course, there is also a very important learning object, that is, learning from our Party A. We have been fortunate to have served excellent enterprises such as Cisco, Lenovo and Canon in the past ten years, and their wisdom and thinking have improved our understanding of our own development. So from the stage of development, for example, from 30 people to 100 people, this is a big threshold. So many companies have only one office in one area, and this department has only 30 people and 50 people. It is not realistic to develop into a company with 100 people, so we must think of cross-regional development, because we know that a good architecture can support you to develop to a certain scale. Small structure and wrong structure will definitely not support your development. So first solve the development problem from the shelf. If you only have/kloc-0.00 people and one or two offices, then your "upper limit is about $654.38+million". Only by further breakthrough can we further expand.

Similarly, in different stages of the development of public relations companies, the management problems they face are also different. Professional service organizations have their own unique topics, but they are essentially enterprises, and enterprises must follow some general laws. We basically extract these general laws, just some general management topics. Enterprises face different management problems at different stages. When you are a small company, a small company may basically rely on a boss and personal connections to develop. You should face the "gray income" frankly, because this is what you have to face in the early stage of enterprise development. In this case, the main topic at this stage is that if an entrepreneur evaluates that he doesn't have extensive contacts and you are not good at developing contacts in unconventional ways, then you may not be suitable for starting a public relations company. But we should also be soberly aware that if we only maintain this relationship, this company is likely to be a company with 30 people. To cross this threshold, we must face some important management problems such as marketing and forming method system. These are also some important problems we are facing at present.

For example, for five years in a row, we went to various colleges and universities to hold job fairs every year. It is precisely because of this stage that this way is needed to solve the problem. Including some reward systems, the original 20-30 people are under your nose, and now 200-300 people, an effective reward system has become a key issue.

The fourth or higher stage will form its own brand characteristics. Some guests today may have a brand impression on them before speaking, so different institutions need to build brand characteristics at a certain stage, and the other is the operation at the capital level. We have seen WPP work like this.

For these local public relations companies, in fact, different stages of development are facing different management issues. That is, at some stage, you must solve the management challenges faced at these stages. Are there any other challenges?

The first question that public relations companies have to answer from the beginning is to decide whether your company will develop with customers or products. Some companies develop in the way of product specialization. For example, we can see that some public relations companies are now writing companies. Some serve institutions, some serve enterprises, and some directly come from the needs of public relations companies. They make this into products to provide services for customers and public relations agencies in all walks of life. This model belongs to product specialization. I develop a product, such as Tianxia Internet, which may also belong to the direction of product specialization. There is also a category called customer specialization, which is subdivided into industry and cross-industry specialization. In fact, answer me, which direction do these companies do? If you specialize in customers, you have to answer a question, that is, can you specialize in industry? Because we know that there are some areas in PSF where there is no trade ban. However, this is a rule in public relations and is not allowed. This impermissible topic is that it is not easy for professional institutions to do professional development in knowledge accumulation. The basic premise of professional development in the industry is that you should know better than your customers.

The second topic is how to relate professional ability to customer relationship. We see that among the four quadrants in the icon, in essence only your enterprise can survive and develop under the two quadrants. The other two quadrants are not places where you stay for a long time. In other words, only two quadrants can live normally.

When it develops further, it will face the question of answering the third topic, whether it is stronger or bigger. Our basic choice is to be strong, that is, no matter what scale we do, we only do public relations services. However, we can see that when some organizations reach a certain level, they will diversify and expand, such as training and advertising services.

Another topic is, when you reach a certain scale, "whether the children are raised by yourself or by others". When the enterprise develops to a certain stage, you will find that you are out of your depth, and then you need to hire a professional manager. Because a typical feature of intellectual services is that laymen cannot lead experts, you should invite an expert leader to manage your company when it reaches a certain level.

Finally, what I want to share with you is that if you intend to be a public-private relationship company and seek long-term development, it must not be developed by cost leadership strategy. The development model like Granger is not feasible in the field of public relations, because the most important thing in the field of public relations is human capital, and the development of public relations companies mainly depends on the differentiation of intellectual capital. Moreover, this differentiation has nothing to do with scale. The differentiation of large-scale companies may not be obvious, but it may be obvious in small companies.

Our experience can be seen from the development of China as a whole. At present, consumers are becoming more and more personalized and smarter, and the power of public-private relations is indeed getting stronger and stronger. If so, from the perspective of pure marketing, we think that the mass * * * relationship market is basically a "personality-led" market. If it is an advertising market, domestic first-line brands may all be 4A companies so far, but the mass * * * relationship market is just the opposite. The rule here is that if advertisers deal with images, there are many places that are * * *, and people in photochina like to see them. Therefore, the globalization experience of international enterprises can be easily transplanted to China market, but public-private relations mainly deal with information, and we know that language has strong uniqueness and cultural connotation. So in the field of public relations, local public relations companies are most likely to become bigger and stronger. Thank you!

Lang Ke's Five Years' Efforts

An invention gives birth to an industry, and a lawsuit is likely to affect the values of a generation. Netac was founded in May 1999. Although it is small in scale, it is destined to become a mysterious symbol in our knowledge economy era.

IT is mysterious, not only because it bears too much controversy on this five-year-old company, but also because its future is full of more variables, and even more because the test it will undergo is likely to indicate that China IT industry is at a great turning point, or it has inherited the past trend. Because of this, it has aroused special curiosity from the outside world.

Purple gas comes from the east, and the king comes

1999 In the spring morning, under a lamp that stayed up all night in Shenzhen, a coastal city in southern China, two young people were still staring at the computer screen intently, and their fingers were tapping the keyboard quickly. One of them is in charge of hardware and the other is in charge of software. In order to invent a fresh product-flash drive (they named it "USB flash drive", and now "USB flash drive" is a registered trademark of Netac), they have been working around the clock for half a year, during which they used up four computers.

As the saying goes, those who work hard are rewarded. When the problems such as how to get power from USB flash drive, how to store it stably and how to make the system recognize USB flash drive as a standard accessory were overcome one by one, their tired faces finally showed a smile. This kind of smile is different from the smile of relief after the usual work is completed, and it is not the joy after the success of general scientific research projects.

Because they know in their hearts that from this moment on, a floppy disk floppy drive industry that has existed for more than ten years will be completely subverted and will never return; Because from this moment on, a brand-new industry-flash disk industry has ignited its spark, which will spread from Shenzhen to Guangdong, and then quickly spread to the whole country and the whole world, shocking the whole world.

In addition, there is one thing that they didn't expect, that is, from this moment on, their names are destined to be recorded in the history of IT development in China-they are two Hunan people, Deng Guoshun and John Cheng, who both resigned their high-paying positions after studying in Singapore for several years.

When the long-lost sunshine shone on Shenzhen through the thick clouds accumulated in the continuous rain, Deng Guoshun and Cheng Xiaohua both breathed a long sigh of relief, and the exhaustion of several months was swept away. After that, they made a decision to set up a company to let all users who find it inconvenient to use floppy disks say goodbye to their troubles.

1999 In May, Shenzhen Netac Technology Co., Ltd. was formally established. At that time, there were only two employees with a registered capital of 300,000 yuan.

The more frustrated and brave, the better the high-speed track.

When Netac was founded, the most important thing for Netac was to find investment. In Deng Guoshun's view, flash drives are small in size, large in capacity, fast in reading and writing, universal in USB interface, and do not need to be driven-such a brand-new product undoubtedly has huge market potential. He thought that such a project with an investment of only two or three million yuan should be easy to find, but this is not the case.

Deng Guoshun and John Cheng have been looking for investment for nearly a year. At first, they found many well-known IT companies in China, but the result was hopeless. Later, I decided to try my luck in Silicon Valley, and met with 10 groups of venture capitalists, but I was still disappointed. The registered capital of 300 thousand has been used up. At the critical moment of difficult support, their happiness fell from the sky, and they got 3 million yuan of venture capital.

Having found his dream investment, Deng Guoshun felt that even if the next thing didn't go well, he should do it in an orderly way. However, when the first batch of USB flash drives slipped off the production line, what Deng Guoshun didn't expect again was that because consumers had never seen USB flash drives, they couldn't find an agent in the end.

Deng Guoshun is trying to figure out why the USB flash drive can't go to the sales counter. In the meantime, he once set a record of "wheel war" with dozens of dealers in one day. As a result, only a few people expressed their willingness to try, and finally they did not cooperate with Netac because of their concerns. Flash drives are still the lab's favorite.

How should an IT invention go out of the laboratory and open up new markets? This is a subject that has not been studied for many years. Deng Guoshun has no time for this. Now he needs to practice with actions, which is far more meaningful and urgent than research.

After graduating from Sun Yat-sen University, he was obviously deeply influenced by the school motto and Dr. Sun Yat-sen's famous saying: "My ambition is to go forward bravely; Perseverance, frustration and excitement ",Deng Guoshun finally decided to adopt a three-pronged market operation mode of" exhibition, bundled sales and agent distribution "to try to promote flash drives.

Deng Guoshun's logic is that all new inventions and products should have their own unique stage, and exhibitions are ready-made big stages; Secondly, if it is difficult for ordinary users to accept new inventions and products at once, the mainstream manufacturers in the industry will be much more likely to accept them because they know more about the trend of technological development and the prospect of product application.

After considering everything clearly, Netac made frequent appearances at China Hi-Tech Fair, CeBIT in Hanover and COMDEX in the United States, which caused great sensation at home and abroad. In the meantime, major media reported Netac's major inventions with eye-catching headlines, and the saying that "flash disk is the terminator of floppy disk fate" can be seen everywhere.

At the same time, after many contacts with IBM, the mainstream manufacturer in the industry, Netac successfully won the generous support of this world-renowned company from June 5438 to February 2000, and IBM announced Netac USB flash drive as the only mobile storage solution in its mobile application solutions. IBM's foresight strengthened the confidence of young Netac.

In addition, Netac also recruited extensively from the IT industry and gathered some elites who are familiar with the operation of IT product channels, thus establishing a nationwide sales network in a very short time. At this point, Netac paved a high-speed track for the development of the flash disk market.

Hold patents and insist on safeguarding rights

Facts have proved that Netac's successful invention of flash drives was not successful. 200 1, Netac achieved a substantial increase in annual sales; In 2002, Netac made persistent efforts and created a record of annual sales exceeding 2 billion yuan. Even when there was a serious shortage of flash memory chips in 2003, Netac once again set a new record.

"No gold mine in the world is more famous than the pyramids in Egypt, although the latter is not made of gold, but only made of stone. This fully demonstrates the value of creative thinking. " Deng Guoshun, president of Netac, made such an image metaphor when evaluating the great success of USB flash drive listing.

The flash drive industry also rose with Netac overnight. Driven by Netac, this industry, which was initially ignored by people, developed from scratch into an industry with an annual output value of nearly 654.38+0 billion yuan in just two or three years. Relevant reports predict that the flash drive industry is expected to grow to 5 billion yuan in the next five years.

As the saying goes, if there is a blessing, there will be a curse. Happy, Netac quickly discovered the potential threat in the market. In addition to domestic large and small manufacturers entering by OEM (OEM), foreign mobile storage manufacturers have also come to China-the battle for the flash disk market is imminent.

How to resist the swarming competitors? Deng Guoshun, president of Netac, made a decision that shocked all parties in the future. He picked up the patent sword in his hand for the first time. In September 2002, Netac sued Patriot, Fu Guanghui and other major domestic flash disk "OEM" manufacturers, demanding to stop infringing their invention patent rights of "electronic external storage method and device for fast flash memory for data processing system" (flash disk), and claimed a total of 4 million yuan.

A stone stirs up a thousand waves. This patent dispute, which was called "the first case of intellectual property rights in China" by the media, not only triggered a big debate on the development and maintenance of independent intellectual property rights in China, but also attracted wide attention from foreign manufacturers. Among them, Armon, an American listed company, went to war not far away.

A senior observer once commented that Netac sued Huaqi for patent infringement, which not only sounded the alarm for some domestic manufacturers with serious infringement, but also built a new Great Wall of Wan Li for China's flash drive market, making it impossible for foreign flash drive manufacturers to "contain" China's dream with patents.

In March 2004, Netac officially sent a lawyer's letter to SanDisk, an American storage manufacturer, and its agent in China, claiming that SanDisk and its agent were suspected of infringing two invention patents of Netac, and gave a serious warning to its recruitment and sales of flash drives in China.

Although we have not received a response from Sandisk's headquarters in the United States, some analysts believe that Netac has applied for more than 100 patents, of which three invention patents have been officially authorized. Netac's complete patent protection system surprised many foreign manufacturers, but at the same time it vaguely saw the arrival of a new era.

Enter the world and return with honor.

Although the patent dispute in China has not been settled, Netac's internationalization has begun. In March, 2003, Netac and JMTek, the largest flash disk manufacturer in the United States, both appeared at CeBIT Exhibition in Hanover, Germany. What is eye-opening is that the two manufacturers are not tit-for-tat competitors at this time, but jointly participating in the exhibition. According to informed sources, the two companies have set up a joint venture in the United States to jointly expand the international market.

It is not the first time that Netac has established international cooperation with JMTek. Previously, the company also cooperated with IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Logitech, ingram micro International, McAfee Security, NEC and other global manufacturers to bundle or OEM Netac's flash drives.

Not only that, Netac also sells its products to the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and other countries and regions. An IT technology revolution initiated by Netac has spread rapidly around the world. Statistics show that in 2003, the global total sales volume of flash drives was close to10,000,000, which was several times that of two years ago. Among them, China market alone accounts for more than half of the total share, which is unprecedented in the history of IT product development.

According to a survey conducted by global sources global sources Co., Ltd. (NASDAQ nm: GSOL), a well-known publisher of international trade magazines, Netac's flash drives have been snapped up by them, and Netac won the "2003 China Enterprise Export Achievement Award" for its outstanding export performance.

"With the patent, we can at least ensure that we can fall asleep when Netac products are exported abroad." Deng Guoshun, president of Netac, said flatly when talking about his "patent paranoia" in the industry.

Compared with domestic enterprises such as DVD and color TV, Netac, which has many invention patents, seems to have a much smoother road to internationalization. In the future, Netac is obviously not satisfied with sleeping at night.